The Writer's Escape

1. The Clinic

Serena Scarlet wanted to smash her computer into a wall. 

For the ninth time in the last five minutes, she held down the backspace key on her keyboard, watching the cursor eat up her last pathetic attempt at a paragraph.

The blank page stared at her mockingly, the white glare of the computer burning her eyes. 

The problem, she thought, was the characters. No matter what she did, she couldn't get them to move. All that Berry, the useless side character, had to do was wake up and walk to the other side of the tavern— how hard could it be? Yet every time Serena tried to make her do it, the words sounded all wrong. 

Serena scraped her chair away from the table. Her eyes wandered around the dimly-lit room, drifting over the mirrors, the shiny posters, the tidy bed and folded-up clothing. They caught, as they always did, on the stack of hardback books on her bedside table: the Dragon's Heart trilogy. Cloaked, dagger-wielding teenage girls danced on the glossy covers in front of fiery arcane symbols, the pages inside still white and crisp as ever. The name "Serena Scarlet" was emblazoned in proud red letters across all the books.

Serena sighed. She drummed her fresh-painted red nails over her desk. Would she ever recapture the magic of that first book series? She still recalled the smell of the fresh ink the very first time she had held a copy of her book in her hands. Back then, she could churn out novels, thousands of words a day. All she had to do was sit down at her laptop, and the words bubbled through her chest and streamed out onto the page; she couldn't type fast enough to catch them all. She missed being able to lose herself to her writing, to be totally absorbed by the story. 

Now she had to fight tooth-and-nail for every sentence. 

Come on, Serena, focus.

But the hazy red glow of sunset through her blinds burned away to darkness, the coffee in her mug turned lukewarm and then cold, and her leg fell asleep, and still the computer screen stayed as blank as ever. 

"Screw it," she muttered, and opened another tab. Her favorite writing forum was bookmarked on the front page, and unthinkingly, she clicked on it.

Her lips twitched in a smile when she saw the green circle indicating that Magpie_writer was online. They might never have met in real life, but Magpie and Serena had been close friends ever since they worked together on a fanfiction story of a video game they both loved years ago. Magpie had even had the idea for one of the love interests in the Dragon's Heart trilogy to turn traitor. 

MAGGIE, she typed, Send help! I can't get anything written again. 

A few seconds later, a reply appeared: Still with the writer's block? Ha, maybe you need to switch gears for a while. 

Serena snorted. I wish, she replied. But I've already missed two deadlines. My publisher's gonna let me go if I don't have a complete draft soon. Just typing out the words made her stomach writhe. Serena had never been fired before. 

How soon? Magpie asked. 

Two weeks, Serena typed. Then she saw the alarm clock blinking bright green letters on her desk. It was 1:05 a.m. Scratch that, she said. Thirteen days. 

It took a few minutes for Magpie to reply. Oh, you're screwed, she said. 

Yeah, thanks for the help. Serena never got annoyed with Magpie— talking to Magpie was the only thing in her life that stayed consistently good. But it was late, and a knot of pain was starting to form in the back of her head, and she felt like a worn-out rubber band about to snap. So she was about to shut her laptop closed when another message flashed up across the screen: