Muse and Misfortune

I

Marshall rolled out of bed, hearing a crunch as he stepped on a stray sheet of paper. Ignoring it, he groped his way to his desk in the darkness, more papers crackling underfoot. He reached for the light. He turned it on, blinking at the sudden brightness.

Across the street, he could hear the sound of distant voices, so many that they blended together, sounding like white noise. His new neighbor was having guests over again, it seemed, and they were being as loud as usual.

He turned on his laptop and waited for it to light up with a cold glow. He glanced at the time in the corner of the screen. It was two in the morning. Much too late, much too early for anyone to be having guests over, let alone on a weekday.

Marshall tried to ignore the noise. He had something better to do. He opened up a word processor, eyes still stinging from the light. The glaring blank screen in front of him began to fill with words as he typed, so fast he could barely feel the keys beneath his fingers. He felt almost giddy as he wrote, the scene fully visualized in his head. He couldn't even remember the last time he'd ever felt so inspired to write.

The scene in his mind almost felt like a memory, familiar to him. He could feel the dusty atmosphere, see the old carpet on the ground. He could smell the faint scent of burning incense. He could hear—lots of loud voices.

The sound was jarring. It didn't belong anywhere in his quiet little scene. He paused.

His neighbor really was being loud.

Though he wasn't one to judge. She was allowed to do whatever she wanted. He looked back down at his laptop, conjuring the scene once more.

The sun was streaming in through a window, warming the room. He felt as if he were there, crossing the room to the large bookcase, sliding one of the leather-bound books off the shelf. It was heavy in his hand, but the weight was comfortable. He opened the book.

Suddenly, there was a particularly loud sound from across the street, almost a shrill scream. It jolted Marshall back to reality.

What was going on over there? His neighbor had just moved in last week, and already he was getting sick of all the noise. He could hear so many voices that his neighbor's house must have been bursting with all the people crammed inside.

He glanced back down at his computer screen. The cursor was waiting in the middle of a sentence.

What had he been about to type again? He couldn't remember how that sentence was supposed to end. It was as if all his words had fallen down into the empty chasm of his mind. Marshall blinked. The cursor blinked back at him.

It was silly of him to blame his neighbor for his lack of words, but he couldn't help the thought. Any enthusiasm he'd had just ten minutes ago had disappeared, and he was left staring at the screen, the same thing he'd done yesterday, and the day before, and the day before.

The noise was getting louder. Marshall could almost imagine the ground shaking from all of it. And why hadn't anyone else in his neighborhood done anything about it? He usually let his other, more hot-tempered neighbors deal with all the issues in the neighborhood. Most times he didn't even realize there was a problem until he found his neighbors fixing it.

His hands hovered over the keyboard. He didn't know if he dared type another word. Just one word could ruin everything.

He tried to focus, bringing back the scene, but he just couldn't block out the voices across the street. There was no way he was going to be able to immerse himself in the scene if the voices didn't stop.

Getting fed up, Marshall got to his feet and went over to the window, pulling back the curtains and peering out. The house across the street was the only other house in the neighborhood that still had the lights on. He wondered, what was so important that his neighbor and her guests felt the need to stay up and make such a racket?