The Typewriter

Six

For months following the accident, Milo could not bring himself to return to the Smith Corona in the corner of the basement. He avoided it as if it were radioactive.

Night after night, he would close up the town library and return home, microwave his dinner, and then settle down to read. He had read a good many books during those long months, the television rarely went on.

Silence now ruled his life. The silent library where he spent his days; the silent house where he spent his nights. The quiet slowly, steadily infiltrated his body, gnawing through bone like an illness, until he became one with it. He became the silence.

Then one day, for reasons Milo could never fathom, he got up the nerve and went back down to the basement, but not to work; working in the basement had been forever spoiled for him -- too many associations with that terrible weekend.

Instead, he carried the typewriter up to the first floor and put it on the dining room table, a table he knew would never again be used to gather a family for a holiday meal. It now became his work table. Unlike the card table in the basement, the dining room table allowed him to spread out, with plenty of space for paper, pens, his dictionary, a coffee mug. The light was better in that room.

Once Milo had set up and arranged his new work space, he sat down and held his fingers over the keys, his heart pounding. Outside, a fierce wind howled, driving a hard rain against the house. Tears came to his eyes as he gathered strength for what he was about to do.

After a long tormented moment, he typed...

ELIZABETH

ANNA

JAKE

He sat back and waited.

THE END