The Blank Page

By Steve Cristinzio

Kevin is a writer. 

Kevin spends much of his time writing stories. Everywhere he goes, he carries a notebook with him in case inspiration strikes. Every so often, his stories turn out quite good. Sometimes they don’t, though the quality of his work never mattered to him. He revels in the joy of creation. 

Kevin’s life is rather uncomplicated. He wakes up, goes to school or his job depending on the day, comes home and unwinds in front of his keyboard. Even if his writing hasn’t made much of a splash in a professional sense, just being a member of the literary world is enough to put a smile on his face. 

He is content. 

Then life becomes much more real. 

At first, the freedom of no longer having to go to school is exciting. Kevin thinks his adult life will begin as he always imagined it would. He’ll spend maybe a week or two applying to jobs, nail the interview, and make enough to get by while still having time to hone his craft. 

Kevin is a naïve fool. 

It takes an entire month before he hears from a single employer. 

“Your application is no longer being considered.” 

As disheartening as this is, knowing that someone took time out of their day to communicate with him at all makes him feel an indescribable “something”, but a vague sentiment will not pay his rent. 

Another month of fruitless searching passes. He ends up getting a part-time job as a cashier at a fast-food joint. For the next three months, this is enough for him to at least pretend like he’s walking the path he dreamed of. He goes to work in the morning, then drags himself through his front door nine hours later and sits down at his computer ready to type away. But writing doesn’t feel the same anymore. 

Soon enough, his landlord raises his rent. Kevin has two options: get a raise or get a second job. Asking for a raise nearly gets him fired from his current cashier position, so he finds extra work. Kevin settles on an overnight custodial job he performs on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. It pays just enough for him to get by. 

Over time, Kevin’s writing grows more and more infrequent. Each page he writes has less text on it than the last; each word carries less meaning. 

One Thursday evening when he gets home from his cashier job, Kevin sits down at his computer, opens a new document, and prepares himself to write his sorrows away. But no matter how hard he tries he can’t write anything. Sometimes he writes a sentence, but it’s never good enough. He looks at his pitiful creation, recognizes its many flaws, and erases it. 

Kevin stares at the blank page as hot tears carve a path down his cheeks. He buries his face in his hands and wastes away until finally falling into the cold embrace of nightmare addled sleep. 

When Kevin wakes, he finds himself in an empty space. There is nothing but an endless expanse of white. No objects, no sound, no shadows. Nothing. He shouts through his confusion, but his voice remains absent and the quiet persists. 

Kevin is alone. 

He sits in the void, unsure of what to do. After a while he thinks of his apartment. Not a moment later, his apartment constructs itself around him. He watches the walls assemble from nothing and all his furniture pop into existence. It’s exactly as he remembers it, but something isn’t right. It’s too good to be real. Too clean. It doesn’t seem lived in. 

Inauthentic. 

Kevin investigates his surroundings first by opening his kitchen cabinets. There he finds more white space. When he imagines what snacks should be inside, they appear just as the walls had. 

Kevin has an idea. He imagines a basketball rolling across his apartment floor. Lo-and-behold, a basketball appears and rolls across the floor. He is the master of this place. Kevin looks at his front door and imagines what could be behind it. 

He thinks of a forest teeming with life. There are massive birds and wood elves frolicking without a care in the world. But then he second guesses himself. Maybe there aren’t wood elves and birds, maybe there are only trees. Or maybe there isn’t a forest. Maybe it’s a desert, or a tundra. He can’t decide on a single location. The infinite possibilities of what could be behind his door fills him with fear and uncertainty, but his curiosity demands he open it. 

Kevin slowly approaches his door. He grasps the handle with his sweat drenched hands. He twists and pulls it open. 

The cosmos lies before him. Endless potentiality all existing in the same place. It is indescribable, both beautiful and horrifying. 

Paralysis grips Kevin. He doesn’t know what to do. Kevin has the power to shape this strange reality into whatever he wants it to be and yet wields his power impotently. He tries to create a few coherent places to inhabit but nothing is satisfactory. He creates fantasy worlds, alien planets, his childhood home, and everything in between, but it’s never enough. There’s no real meaning. It’s all surface level. 

When all is said and done, Kevin simply wishes to return to the white space. At least there, he has nothing to worry about. Nothing to fear. 

If nothing exists, nothing can hurt him. 

So, he sets things back to how they were. Now Kevin sits in the endless white void again. He lies down on nothing and bathes himself in his tears. 

Kevin was a writer. 

Steve Cristinzio is a young writer that graduated from Temple University with a Bachelor’s Degree in English. He spends a great deal of time reading and writing and hopes to further his education and writing skills in a Master’s program in the near future.