The maddening world of P.S. Gifford

The Submission

By P.S. Gifford

Phil Griffin shook his head sharply from side to side, in abrupt harsh gestures.

"One day I will show them!" He abruptly blurted out loud as if a volcano of anger had erupted deep in his very being. "I will, I will definitely show them. I will write the most twisted fiction they have ever read. What a marvelous day that will be."

Still shaking his head he began to feverishly pace back and fro from one side of the small room to the other.

"They think I am a complete waste of bloody space they do. Yet they have miscalculated me! They should not write off old Phil so bloody quickly no sir."

He laughed out loud, a laugh bordering on hysterical.

His walking back and forth intensified even further and he began to gesture awkwardly with his hands, shaking them above his head with excitement.

"That is it!" he all at one proclaimed as a twisted gleeful look formed on his unshaven face. A face that looked significantly older than it's relatively youthful forty years, a face imbedded with anguish and torment.

"I know precisely what my next book will be about!"

With that he promptly sat down on the floor, as perspiration dripped down his face, and pulled his favorite writing instrument from the pocket of his trousers, and then he frantically and passionately began to scribble…

****

Doctor Koontz raised a graying eyebrow and glanced at his colleague Doctor Saul as a smug look formed on his well manicured features.

"He is getting far worse," he said "I knew that giving the poor bugger a red crayon and paper would not help him. As I suspected he is even more disillusioned than before. His madness is escalating as he slips further and further away from reality. The poor soul actually believes that he is a horror writer- absurd, simply absurd."

"I don't understand, I truly believed that if he could express him self through the magical written word that his suffering would somehow be eased." Doctor Saul replied, scratching his chin thoughtfully "But if this neurotic behavior continues we are surely going to have to transfer him to the rubber room-for his own good." He paused for a moment and once more carefully studied the pathetic figure locked in the room, who was mumbling to himself as he frantically scribbled away with the crayon.

"Bloody writers, they seem to almost enjoy their self inflicted misery, I swear nearly everyone in this friggin' place thinks they can damn well write."

Doctor Koontz chuckled as they walk away from the one way mirror to Phil Griffin’s room and continued to make their rounds.