Who is this Muse, a mystery, a mystery writer or you?
He was tall and gaunt; a bag of air tied in the middle with a
shoe string, or was that a memo clip? He stared at me and me at him. My voice
was frozen in his eyes. I could not utter a sound.
A long thin hand with gnarled knuckles reached out to me.
"Muse," he said.
My mind questioned. My voice could not.
"My name—Muse."
I nodded and still his grip would not release my voice. How
could someone's eyes hold you speechless, his did?
"You want to know why I'm here. You summoned me. To put
it bluntly you cursed me and implored 'how dare I leave you without warning—without
story.' Think dear child~~Are you the only writer? Do you have exclusive rights
to the muse?"
With that he brushed by me and floated about the room. No
foot falls of noise, no noise at all. Apparition I tried to convince myself. I
have not awakened. I dream still. That's all it is. He is not real. He is not
here. I dream a fitful nightmarish dream.
He sits upon the counter now, legs dangling, playful-like.
He's thumbing through the dictionary. "They're all here, and here,"
he pulled a banner with the alphabet on it from his pocket and unfurled it over
his head. "At a loss for words? Pick one, or three." He tossed the
heavy dictionary at me.
"Leave, scat, shoo." The words came easily without
the dictionary's aide.
"No, read, at random. Three words. I'm serious,
now!" he demanded.
"Button, dregs, prepare," I said running through
the pages with my fingers.
"You know the rule of threes don't you?"
I shook my head. What did he want with me and rules, rules
are for fools I once heard and I believed it.
"Everything, everything always in threes. There is no
other way. Take your three words and begin. Just write. There must be
beginning, middle and end—say three.
There must be characters, plot, scene,--say three.
There must be place, protagonist, antagonist, say three. He
continued to bombard me with lists of three. "Haven't you heard even
deaths come in threes?"
I shuddered as I scribbled on the tablet he had given me. As
I wrote the ink dried and disappeared. A sinking feeling began in the pit of my
stomach and hauled my heart down with it as fear began to paralyze even my breathing.
A horrible dream, a nightmare, my thoughts were out of control.
I filled three pages quickly with no problem at all. But, the
pages were blank now when I looked back.
"Remember, three pages a day. That's all you need to
write. In a year, 365 days later, you will have written 1, 095 pages that could
be three books. See how simple, how many pages do you have now?" he
questioned.
I looked down at the blank note pad. None, your pen is no good. I tried to say but only the thought
floated through the room.
He whipped the pages from my hands and held them over a
lighted candle. I thought he was about to burn them, the words I had written
suddenly became visible over the heat.
"Ingredients," he said. "Thoughts, words, and
execution/action. Action, reaction, effect. Pick the words, slurry them around
with the ink, heat them up. You've cooked up a story. One, two, three. It had
nothing to do with me. You only thought you needed the muse, the muse was
inside of you not out there."
He bounced across the room. The sound of him was a merry
tinkling as if he were adorned with bells. As he opened the door he turned.
"You are your own muse. Listen to yourself
and remember the rule of threes."
"Wait!" My voice came back, surprising me. He
vanished as though he never was. But, I, I found my voice again. "Thank
you muse." I said and bells tinkled somewhere not far off.
Then I had to lie down with a wet cloth on my face, to
contemplate the muse and dictionaries and alphabets and rules of three.
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