Haldon snorted. Still, he opened his bleary eyes. “What?”

“What if you really were chained to a typewriter? What if the only way to get free was to finish? But not here. Here you’ve got all your toys.” Derrick pointed at Jim Carrey, frozen mid-gape. “All your distractions. But I know the perfect place.”

That was how it all began.

BOB

Added Up to Nothing

Bob kept his fingers moving over the keys as he endlessly stepped forward. But just like his steps, his words added up to nothing. All they did was delay Derrick’s return. The spy camera would see Bob typing, but not the actual words.

In front of me squats the typewriter. The empty page stares at me, unblinking. I need a shower. I slept poorly last night. I pleaded with Derrick for coffee, but he brought none. He demanded my email password in return for a visit to the toilet.

Now I realize how shortsighted I was to give it up. Anyone who expresses concern will be met with a lie. People know I don’t answer my phone, so that won’t worry them. With email, Derrick will be like a Skin Changer, only via technology instead of magic. Although what is magic but that which we don’t yet understand?

And who would even be concerned? Jamie would just think Bob was avoiding him, as he had for months. Frank, Bob’s agent, who had been with him from the beginning, knew he didn’t like to be bothered unless it was vital. As a result, Frank just sent him the occasional round-up of new foreign deals to increasingly smaller, more obscure countries.

This morning had been humiliating, first the begging (Bob refused to poop in the chamber pot) and then shuffling down the hall, his chain clanking. The boy had allowed him to close the door. Inside, the only window was a glazed square too small for even a child to squeeze through. The medicine cabinet and drawers held just a tube of toothpaste and three toothbrushes, one still in its wrapper. In the shower, a bottle of shampoo and a bar of soap. Nothing Bob could repurpose. In movies, prisoners turned toothbrushes into shivs, but they had concrete to sharpen them on.

After being shackled to the desk again, Bob had tried writing Eyes of the Forest as ordered but hadn’t been able to complete even a sentence. Now he was freewriting. There were few rules in freewriting, mostly just not stopping. Even if he only typed I don’t know what to write over and over, it would still be freewriting. No worries about grammar, word choice, subject-verb agreement, or even typos. He’d already had to let that last one go. No COMMAND-Z on a typewriter.