Alan Donahue

“And their fingers touched as she whispered in his ear, ‘I’ve never felt this way before. How is this possible?’ He pulls back and gazes in her eyes…He pulls back and gazes in her eyes? That doesn’t make any sense. Gary is suppose to be a soulless being from another galaxy who doesn’t know what love is, and yet can gaze in her eyes? That’s one way to insult the readers intelligence.” Alan sat back in his suede chair that his mother got him for Christmas when he was 13. He had written over 20 novels since that time and felt that the chair was his good luck charm. Alan was 26, having just celebrated his birthday and the recent release of his New Novel, “Death is Love”  he set to work on a new piece-a piece with no title. He always had some trouble with titles, that’s why he always entrusted the title to his best friend, Lily. Lily had been his friend since they were in the womb. Lily was his twin-figuratively, of course. One evening, when they were having their 17-years-of-being-friends date, which most in the real world would call an anniversary, they discovered that they had been born at precisely the exact same time-all the way down to the 100th millisecond. They were so ecstatic with the discovery of this news, that they began to call each other “Twin”.  Soon after that, Lily, became a literary agent-proving that they were destined to be best friends after all.  

Alan was experiencing something that had never occurred to him a day in his life: Writers Block. The wretched disease had spread through him within a day’s time. He’d been stuck on the 39th page of this new project for 3 hours now. Finally, haven given up, he ripped out the paper he had been stuck on and threw it out. “Maybe, writing a new page will work-no, starting over just ruins everything. I should just re-write. That’s what Arthur Miller would want.” He dug back into the trash can and retrieved the paper he had just crumpled. He placed it on his desk, smoothed it out, and begin to rewrite. His process of writing was a lot different than most writers. Instead of carefully planning, plotting, and developing every aspect of his project, he’d quickly start writing. When he got an idea he had to go with it, and as he wrote he’d figure out what worked and what didn’t. And when he would write, you’d never hear anything else except the scraping of his pencil. He stopped writing, however, put the pencil down, and looked around his flat. It was dark, the only light in the room was that of his lamp. He pulled out his watch, and examined the time. 

“4:40 am?! Dear God, I’m going to be late. I can finish this later.” He quickly raced to his closet and pulled out his shoes and rushed out the door. The room was left alone. There was no sound. There was no movement. In the shadows of the room, appeared a silhouette of a man. 

“Hey, Lily, I just saw what time it was. I am rushing to get there now. If I’m late, close your eyes and wait till I get there. Don’t you dare start without me! Call me back. Bye.” Alan closed his phone, and threw it to the passenger seat. He was driving to a nearby hill, Sandy Hill, it had been his and Lily’s faviorite hill, because it was the tallest in the city.  The hill was their favorite because at exactly 5 am, the sun could be seen miles away, becoming dawn before it had hit their city. The sun rise lasted for 30 minutes before finally becoming a full sun.  After every release of a new novel, they would both go up to the top of the hill, and watch  the sun rise. They would stand there and talk about nothing, but they always had such a great time. By the time he got there, the time was 5:00. He had just made it. He hiked to the top of the hill, and sat down next to Lily. She was wearing a dark sweater, and her hair was in a ponytail. 

“About time you got here. I was considering starting without you.” She laughed. 

“ Sorry, I was working on something new I came up with.” 

“Really? What’s this one about?”

“An alien who falls in love with the girl next door.” He grins. He loved sharing his ideas with her. She was genuine when she had her own advice for what he was working on. He never got mad at her. He just admired her.

“ Love?” She inquired. 

“I know. I know. I’ve been writing about love for the past 3 books, but it seems to be working. I always come up with a new concept for the way they fall in love.”  He stared forward, smug.