Jed's Basement

An old man with big teeth and a nose like a muffin spent most of his life at a typewriter.  It was always his dream to write a novel that would live on long after he passed away.  He woke up early in the morning when the sun was still calm and pink.  He drank tea, unless he felt abnormally tired, in which case he drank black coffee with a few cubes of sugar.

The old man’s name was Jed and he set up his typewriter in the basement so that he wouldn’t disturb his family.  He was tall for an old man and sat with such a curve in his back that his spine remained bent even when he was standing.  His fingers were long and snappy.  They were always perched on the desk as if they were about to pounce on the typewriter.

Jed had a pretty wife who walked with a cane.  She was once a steady-handed surgeon and for most of the marriage she did all of the cooking, cleaning, and paid the bills.  They had two children, a girl and a boy, both grown, each with a child of their own.  The family seldom came to the house, and when they did, there was always an argument between one of them and Jed.

Jed drank his tea, or coffee, in the dark basement and looked out the sliver of a window that was meant to be for ventilation.  Once he was fully awake, he sat in front of the typewriter and waited.  Some days he’d wait for an hour, other days he’d be sitting there well into the afternoon.  The long hairs in his eyebrows dipped and rose as he tried to think up clever things to write about.  He licked his bottom lip disgustingly with a fat tongue and grimaced at the keys.

Very seldom was anything worth reading written on that typewriter in the basement.  Occasionally, he’d get out a sentence or two, but mostly he’d just sit there having a staring contest with it.  And he always lost.  After some amount of time hunched in the chair, Jed would curse under his mustache, snatch his empty coffee mug, and storm upstairs.

One day, after a particularly taunting session in the basement, Jed used his sinewy arms to grab the typewriter off the desk.  He shook it said something foul in a shrieking voice.  Then he carried the typewriter upstairs, past his wife, and up another flight of stairs into his bedroom.  The window was stubborn and it took the old man some time to get it open.  He had to put the typewriter down at the foot of the bed and use both hands to pry at the sill.  When he got it open, he picked the typewriter up and slung it out the window.  It crashed into about a million pieces and that satisfied the old man.

After a few days without the typewriter, the old man became so down in his spirits that his wife bought him a new one.  She made him promise not to throw it out the window and he agreed that this one should be burned with gasoline and matches.

He got up the next morning, prepared his coffee, and went down into the basement.  His white hair was stiff and sideways on his balding head.  The basement smelled like ink and metal from the new typewriter.  Jed was sure this was the day his writing would begin anew. 

After several hours of sitting with his long fingers curled like spiders on the desk, Jed made his fists ready to attack the machine.  His mouth was dry and his cheeks were red with anger.  Then he stopped himself.  It was easy to stop his fist because they were old and weak, but the anger continued to rage in his belly.  He said to himself that he would not leave the basement until a commendable amount of writing be done.  He promised himself, even if he never saw another room in his life, that this would be the day.

The day passed.  The sun seemed to watch Jed all day through the narrow window until evening.  A cricket came alive and mocked the old man in the dim light.  His back ached and his stomach grumbled, but he refused to get out of the chair.  Even when his wife poked her head down and called for him, he told her that he wasn’t coming up until he was finished.

His head drooped and the hunger pangs came and went several times.  There was a candle on the desk.  Jed lit it to bring more light to the dark basement.  It smelled like pumpkin.  Still he dozed.  Then he used the broken match sticks to prop open his eyelids so that all he could do was sit and stare at the typewriter.

It was sometime in the early hours of the next morning that Jed began writing.  The pages filled and the nozzle of the typewriter zipped back and forth.  For the first time, he cursed with joy at his day’s work.

Sleep deprivation had done the trick.  The old man had always been too analytical, almost to the point of robotic.  By the time his hands mounted the typewriter, all the logic had burned away and all that was left were his tired wild thoughts.

From that day forward, Jed slept late and skipped his breakfast tea.  He went into the basement in the afternoon and would often stay buried in the typewriter until the sun came up the following morning.  He wrote pages in stacks and for the first time in his life Jed was happy.

Unfortunately, Jed never published his novel.  In fact, he died at his desk on one of those sleep deprived nights, from a massive heart attack.