Monkey's Writing Paw

William Jacob passed around his study, each step on the wooden floor made his headache hammer its rusted nail deeper into his brain. 2 months, 2 months of wasted ink on paper, 2 months of staring at a blank page with disdain, and 2 months of having his mind gunked up with filth, blocking any drop of creativity from flowing out. The half-finished drafts on his desk lay scattered, Jacob looking at them like they were mocking him with their very existence, tempting him to just take out a match and let the fires of hell consume them, using their burning bodies as warmth for his fireplace, and for a half second, he considered it. Taking out his novelty lighter, he stared at his own mocking creations until another paper caught his eye, a note that he had ignored ever since he had gotten it in the mail last month.

It was a letter from one Caroline Baker, a pretty young thing with a beautiful face and more beautiful body that William had the pleasure of seeing up close on her 20th birthday when her father had invited him over to him look better to the other traders at the table. She was smart enough to know her own independence yet ignorant enough so she would be unable to recognize when the man who wrote her favorite book and was 20 years her senior, was just trying to get her clothing off with a few compliments and convincing her that she was mature for her age, keeping the act up just long enough so she would lead him to her bedroom for what he would see as a quick fuck.

The letter was your usual, flowery, love letter sent in secret inviting William over to a ball her father was hosting in celebration of a successful shipment or whatever the old fool cared about, convinced that he was truly the love of her life and that they would get married under a moonlit night before interloping to his private estate where they could live out the rest of their love life. William's headache turned into a migraine as he truly read the over-dramatic trash for the first time, barley legible garbage that was clearly taking inspiration from his own work, weather it was to win him over or just because Caroline had the same writing skills of a soft skulled toddler didn't really matter to him, what mattered now was the splitting pain in his skull that made him want to smash a hole in it just relief the pressure.

William made his way through his extensive house and down into the wine cellar, the sun's blinding rays poking through the windows just as it was falling past the horizon and making him trip over his feet in his pained state, and making the headache fall to frustration. His steps echoed against the stone walls as he navigated the cellar easily, knowing the path by heart from the nights when he needed his old friend to clean out the pipes in his brain or even walk with him during a night out through the town. He scanned the rows of bottles, even in the dark he could identify the brand by the corks that they used, each brand had its own different feeling but they all went down the same, that's what he liked about it, it didn't complain or argue with him, he just drank it and it did its magic. William's finger suddenly stopped on a bottle of rice wine, Zu that he had bought from a shipment from India and was planning on opening for a Christmas party he plans to host when he finally got another damn story done but he needed to take the edge off and he could buy another bottle with the earnings.

William soon found himself outside, stumbling through the dark streets of London without remembering how his legs had taken him to the random alley he had found himself standing in front of, the walls and street swam around his vision before he took another pull from the bottle of Zu, silently regretting even learning about the savage country as he steadied himself on a nearby alley wall, his boots and socks slowly dampening from the rain that he had now noticed that was pedaling down on him, he liked the rain when it wasn't pissing on him but when it was, the bottle in his hand looked like a bottle of ambrosia. Somehow his drunken eyes caught a light breaking through the darkness of the alley and alcohol fueled haze he had put himself in, it took a moment for his vision to fully clear, and his mind finally realized what he was looking at through the haze.