Issue Two
December 2024
A Cursor In Space
Mathew Gostelow
A cursor blinked in space. Jack was paralysed, hypnotised by its rhythmic pulse. The document stubbornly remained blank. When did writing cease to be fun and turn into such a terrifying ordeal?
He ran a hand through his unwashed hair, surveying the room. Evidence of a wasted week lay scattered around him. Unfinished sudoku puzzles, grotty coffee cups, browning apple cores, crumpled tissues. Notepads and exercise books with flimsy, aborted brainstorms, scrawled attempts to turbocharge a story that refused to crawl, let alone take flight. All of it coated in a layer of toast crumbs and dust.
There was an unpleasant smell, at least partly emanating from his own body. It was an agonised landscape of entropy, procrastination, and failure.
Days had trickled past. He would research a topic, vainly hoping some fact would fill the sails of his imagination and whisk him off to new shores of storytelling brilliance. Then he would scroll social media. This was usually followed by a period of staring at nothing while his mind wandered hither and yon.
Sometimes he would masturbate half-heartedly, just for the blissful moments of distraction it provided. Then a cup of tea to reset, before the cycle would loop back to the research phase and begin again.
Blissful Indecision: original artwork by Anne Anthony
Now there were just eight hours until the deadline and Jack was a twitching bag of tensions with a mind as vacant as the aggressively empty document on his screen. For the three hundredth time that week, he typed a first sentence, read it back, felt a cold shock of terror and immediately clacked CTRL+A, Delete. Where was the explosive emotional resonance? The laser-sharp insight into the human condition?
He flicked across to the other tab. The tab with his endless, ongoing, ridiculous science fiction yarn. The tab where emotional truth and human condition didn’t matter a jot. The tab where the words always came so easily.
Where had he left off?
***
Kaweena, the psychic nun of the Jedar-Bo order, kissed Captain Moebius passionately, her forked, reptilian tongue thrusting eagerly into his mouth. The exotic spice scent of his tanned skin made her head spin. Breaking their embrace, Moebius saw Kaweena’s purple scales blushing pink, all three of her breasts heaving, threatening to spill out of the tight-fitting habit she wore. As he watched, the spines on top of her head became erect with arousal. Surely now she would help him find the Eye of Tarin.
Suddenly the doors of the nun's boudoir burst inward. In a flurry of yellow tentacles and splintered wood, evil King Zarlak crashed into the room, accompanied by a kill-squad of robotic assassin drones.
"We have you now Moebius," he snarled. "My droids will ensnare you with their stasis rays."
Not stopping to think, the chisel-jawed space ranger drew his twin energy pistols and made quick work of the squid-shaped drones, superheated rays of plasma cutting them to pieces before they could ready their own weapons. "Not today Zarlak" he quipped.
As sparking chunks of exploded droid rained down, Kaweena bolted through the back door, with Moebius following close behind. Sprinting across the devastated landscape of the war- torn planet, they made it to his ship just ahead of Zarlak, who moved surprisingly quickly for a guy with tentacle limbs.
"Hold onto something," Moebius ordered the nun, punching the ignition key and blasting them away from the dusty surface.
Later, in the safety of deep space, with Kaweena sleeping, satisfied, on the bed nearby, Moebius opened his Intraverter. It would be eight hours until they reached the Magroyd system. Time to relax and unwind with a little escapism. Some writing perhaps? He flipped to the tab that held his ongoing story about a 21st Century writer luxuriating in an existential crisis of blissful indecision.
Where had he left off?
***
About the author
Mathew Gostelow
Mathew Gostelow (he/him) is a dad, husband, and author, living in Birmingham, UK. Some days he wakes early and writes strange tales. If you catch him staring into space, he is either thinking about Twin Peaks or cooked breakfasts. He is the author of two books: a collection of speculative stories entitled See My Breath Dance Ghostly (Alien Buddha Press) and Dantalion is a Quiet Place, a novella-in-flash to be released in 2025 (DarkWinter Lit). Mat has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best Microfiction. You can find him on Twitter: @MatGost.