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The
Dreams of a Down and Out Author
a short story by Lifelike
Cyrus had a very nasty habit of learning things the hard way.
Other writers knew what they were doing. Cyrus was just a kid still opening his blind eyes in the wake of his high school graduation, a fresh-faced newbie with a pocket full of hope and an unshakable dream to be in the highest elite ranks of the literary community. He thought becoming an author was much like being a talented young actor about to be “discovered” by a movie producer: you submit a sample and they love you and publish you. Cyrus thought that talent was the only decisive factor in the writing world, but it was so much more. It was money, it was company, it was publicists and advertisements, support and good cover artists.
Cyrus had $1,000 in savings, a picture drawn in Crayola colored pencils with Photoshopped text, and his one and only biggest fan: Mom. It was quite clear to Cyrus as he was evicted from his apartment and received rejection letter after rejection letter from popular companies that he did not meet the financial and cosmetic requirements needed for any person to become a respected and loved author.
He was lucky to have good ol’ Mom nearby, because being homeless on the streets with a sign reading “FAILED WANNABE AUTHOR LOSERS NEED TO EAT TOO” in smoggy Los Angeles didn’t appeal much to him. When he had arrived at his mother’s with a single, medium-sized suitcase and an eviction notice in his hand, he knew just then that having a back up plan might have helped. So Mom went out and bought text books, Cheese Whiz, and eighteen two-liter bottles of generic diet cola and told him to study hard.
Cyrus didn’t study. He didn’t know how. Instead, he turned to the computer and the internet in the hopes of finding a publisher big enough to provide him a guarantee of a massive sale that would accept him. He came across several independent publishing companies started by freelance authors who, like Cyrus, were not exactly “publishing material”. Cyrus stayed away from them. He felt better being his own person instead of being thrust into the category of “Independent” and “Freelance”. He’d much rather be simply “Cyrus, author” rather than “Cyrus, independent, self-published, freelance writer and artist”.
After three weeks of searching, Cyrus gave up and tossed himself into the bed and refused to move. What was the point of moving, he’d decided one night. He would never amount to anything. No matter how many times his mother tried to spoon feed him hot chicken broth, no matter how many times she expressed worry for his health and felt his forehead for signs of a fever (looking for an excuse to baby him further, Cyrus imagined), Cyrus still kept the idea fresh in his head: he was a failure. Every time he shut his eyes it appeared, bright red behind his eyelids in the darkness: FAILURE.
After two weeks of not leaving the room, Mom hired two friends of his to drag him, quite literally, out of the room by his ankles, thrust him into the shower and get him dressed to go out. Then they took him around the town, taking him to lunch, getting him out into the open. By this time, Cyrus’s skin was pasty white and he hadn’t seen real sun for fourteen days. He returned home with a headache and a desire to climb under the covers and sleep until winter.
No such luck. The next day, they came back, pulled him out, dressed him, showed him schooling areas for kids like him, showed him potential job interests (most of which, to Cyrus’s great relief, didn’t involve flipping burgers or taking orders, rather, they were paid internships and camp counseling gigs, both of which Cyrus felt he didn’t have the patience to pull out to his best potential, which he had, up until that point, been pouring into his writing) and took him to lunch again. Cyrus returned home with a faint glimmer of hope behind his disheveled hair and dismal face.
One month passed, and Cyrus landed a job for a movie/CD/action figure/movie memorabilia/authentic junk store. He spent the time sitting lazily behind a counter, a book propped into his hand as he systematically scanned barcodes over a scanner, punched in numbers and popped a cash register open and shoved it closed again. When he wasn’t doing that, he was restocking shelves and counting money, sorting them into those paper wrappers that could then be opened to pour change into the register. He worked with people of his same mediocre mood: minions only trained to count money and scan barcodes.
One week passed before Cyrus got bored with it and began to question writing. And, when business was slow, which was oftentimes the case, he would shove his book aside, pull out paper and a pen (or a pencil) and would begin to write. Anything, he thought, that came from his head here was the result of extreme boredom and sugar highs from all the soda he drank as he sat behind the counter. What resulted were tall tales and fables of strange, purple creatures, bright orange kittens and old men with green skin. By the end of two months, Cyrus had written an entire book, and if it wasn’t a book, it was at least a novella. With a smidgeon of confidence, paired with the loving encouragement from his mother, Cyrus wrote a letter to a popular publishing company with low-set hopes of being accepted.
Two weeks later, he got a letter: rejected. He didn’t feel much. His mother had come up to him with her misery face on, dismally handed him the letter and clasped her hands worriedly. Cyrus looked at it indifferently. Well, yes, it was a rather stupid story, he thought. But he couldn’t help feeling just a little bit remorseful. When his mother realized he wasn’t going to go crawl back into his bed, she smiled and headed back for the kitchen while Cyrus sank into a chair and sighed.
He couldn’t believe how much of a loser he was. But in a way, being a loser was quite relieving. At least he didn’t have to live up to too many expectations. The most he was expected to do was to sit around and feel sorry for himself. And occasionally, he met that.
And finally, the store closed down due to lack of profits (who in their right minds wants a demonic looking action figure of Scarface anyway?) and Cyrus was thrown back into unemployment. This time, though, he studied hard, learned about important things like mathematics and communicating and landed an internship with a local law firm. Using this internship, registered at a high school education level, Cyrus scraped enough money in to try one more time at his dream. He paid the postage with a thud in his heart as he dropped his one and only masterpiece into the mailbox on the corner of Third and Orange and waited two weeks.
When he checked the mail, he found a letter addressed to himself. Fingers shaking, he withdrew the envelope and opened it carefully.
Accepted.
Cyrus pocketed the letter and then couldn’t help but laugh, cry, yell and whoop and run down the street, waving letters and hefty catalogues to passersby with his right hand and thrusting his fist forward like Superman with the other. He returned home with a grin on his face, thrust the letter into his mother’s hands, and danced about the house to house mixes and techno beats.
Three months later, a copy of Cyrus’s book lay in his room, propped against the window with his own autograph on it. As he listed it on eBay to help him out, since book sales weren’t quite up to the caliber he’d always hoped for (yet), he glanced at a copy of the New York Times.
“Stunning and charming,” read the review, “it leaps right at you and tells the sad and cynically funny account of an author trying to get onto his feet. Pulls you in from the very beginning.”
Stunning,
Cyrus thought, clicking “Submit Auction” on the page and wheeling
around in his chair. I sure am, aren’t I?
Author's Note: Reviews are nice. I am submitting this to my school literary magazine. I named my new iPod after Cyrus. Because I love him. :3 /useless factoid
