The Tin Writer

Part 1

          In the dusty attic of a small home, there sat a Tin Writer. It looked like a regular person, except for its metal skin and glass eyes and screwed joints. Surrounded by dust and towers of cardboard boxes in the dim light that came from a small circular window, the Tin Writer sat hunched over a desk. It sat unmoving, for it had nothing to write. Every day the pen hovered over the paper, but ink never flowed from its tip. Before the Tin Writer had been neglected, it would write marvelous stories, stories so real that they felt like a magical portal to another world, another life, a journey that did not end even once the story was finished.

         However, the Tin Writer no longer wrote, for its lack of inspiration. The child who had sparked every story it wrote had grown up and left the Tin Writer alone to collect dust in the attic. The man was simply unable to figure out the inner-workings of the Tin Writer, and after many years of separation, he came to the conclusion that perhaps the Tin Writer never wrote at all, and he had simply imagined it all. He remembered how much he enjoyed them, but couldn't help reread the stories with embarrassment. Who would want to read such childish things?

        And so the Tin Writer was forgotten. For years it was left to blankly stare at the withered paper before it, unsure of what to write. The Tin Writer did not have feelings, for its works had been fueled by the feelings of the boy. Without a source of inspiration, it had not so much written a single word or jotted down an idea in all that time, doing nothing except rusting in the hazy light of the attic.