Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)
The week’s prompt is ‘Craft’. This being zoe’s Six Sentence Story bloghop where/when everyone is invited to write a story (of six sentence length, no more and no less) using or otherwise relating to the prompt word. You need to try one this week, it’s really quite… enjoyable.
Craft
“When does my Muse show up?”
The man sat at his desk in the late half of night; next to his keyboard a very ugly coffee mug sat in midst of an Olympic circle of tan rings, artificially-sweetened glyphs of late night and early morning writing sessions.
“Your inquiry is very important to us, please remain on the line and your call will be answered in the order in which it was received,” the tinny voice, coming from the handset, interrupted the engagingly repetitive music that played in-between recorded messages of new opportunities and announcements of expiring offers.
The Company’s Offering showed up in his email the night before, the subject line saved it from immediate deletion, ‘What do successful writers have that you don’t? A Muse, we can arrange it, all you have to do is be willing to pay’!
Laughing at himself for being old, he clicked the link at the bottom of the email, ignored the three pages of densely-legal language and read the very last paragraph: ‘In exchange of my immortal soul, I will be provided a Muse’, listening to the silence in the house around him, all other life long since driven away by his insistence that his craft was his only worth, maneuvered the cursor over ‘Send’ and stabbed the ‘Enter’ with far more force than necessary; in the quiet house he thought, as if for the first time, ‘so when does the magic begin?
A quiet, gentle voice that somehow echoed in the pre-spoken silence of thought, whispered in his ear, “Granted.”
About clarkscottroger
I liked this one.
I’m glad you enjoyed it.
I gasped at the end! Excellent 6 sentence today.
You’ve captured a moment immemorial no doubt in the minds of all artists at one time or another….what would I trade in order to….
I’d always heard Steve Harris made a deal :D
thank you
Oh man! I got chills!!! Eek!! So well done!
cool!*
* thank you
Yikes! I’m deleting that email if it appears in my inbox!
lol
Oh, my! Now i just hope it was worth it.
yeah… we always have to weigh the benefits against the benefits
I think I’ll wait until my Earthly muse turns up luckily she usually turns up at the last minute smiling shyly and fluttering her eylashes.
yeah, I agree probably much better to rely on the known inspiration
I certainly love the story and the description of being on hold, those messages, oy. Would I, could I, should I? I think I’ve already sold my soul to the graviteers.
well you are in good company, that’s for certain
This is FABULOUS! Reminded me of the movie, “The Muse”–Sharon Stone and a guy whose name I can’t think of…sheesh!
Joe Pesci!!!! (no…not him! that was Casino…. Michael Douglas!!! worse! that was Basic Instinct… wait, I know this one!)
This was excellent… and scary… and very good reason to heed that advice to not open emails from unknown senders! I believe that it is indeed possible to barter your soul in an exchange, and you’ve captured this hauntingly well. Whoa!
Thank you J