Free Brain Food by J. Joseph Wright

 
     
     
     
    1.
     
     
     
     
    Blink. Blink. Blink.
     
    The cursor taunted him. It toyed like a disaffected lover, heaping misery upon heartbreak, and reducing him to a mere shell of his former self.
     
    Blink. Blink. Blink.
     
    The cursor shamed him. It bled him dry day after day, draining him of his will slowly, stealing his confidence little by little.
     
    Blink. Blink. Blink.
     
    He hated that fucking cursor. Why did it have to stare? Why did it have to flash again and again, making him feel worthless, stripping every single shred of his dignity one motherfucking blink at a time? He wanted to shout. He wanted to stand up and punch the goddam keyboard right off his desk and stomp the screen in half. Then he wanted to dropkick his computer out the fucking window. But he couldn’t. It was the only computer he owned, and he had to get something written.
     
    Blink. Blink. Blink.
     
    His mind was blank. He didn’t want to admit it. Never wanted to admit it. He glanced up at his Writer’s Guild Award, the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, the Isaac Asimov Award for Science Fiction. All won in ’04, all the pinnacle of his career. He stood and tapped his forehead on the Asimov three times.
     
    “Okay, Ike. Help me out, here,” he reached for a slice of papaya, devouring its sweet, orangish flesh. “Writer to writer, okay, old buddy? Give me an idea. Just one,” he leaned again. “Just one.”
     
    He slurped on another piece of papaya, then drank from the giant tumbler he’d left precariously close to the electronics. A Southeast Asian concoction—kale, soy milk, and lots of avocado for Omega-3 fatty acids. Not too tasty, but the natives in Ea Bông swore by its mind-augmenting properties.
     
    Didn’t do shit, though.
     
    Blink. Blink. Blink.
     
    “FUCK!” he threw a double-fisted punch at his twenty-five inch flatscreen, intent on slamming the fucker across the room. His clenched fists inches from the glass, he stopped. No matter how pissed he got, no matter how blocked he became, he was still too much of a pussy to stop writing and get a real job.
     
    Then his computer went black. Not blank. Black. The screen popped with a blinding light, then darkened, crackling and fizzling.
     
    “What happened! Who turned off the power!”
     
    From upstairs, in the master bedroom, came her shrill cackle. He cringed at her voice, looking for somewhere to run. Too late.
     
    His office door burst open and in she strode, all purple spandex, plastic tits, and counterfeit blonde. “What the hell did you do, Stan?” she put hands on her hips. “You didn’t pay the electricity bill, did you?”
     
    He bit his tongue a little. He knew this day would come.
     
    “Let me guess,” she tapped her foot. “You didn’t pay because you couldn’t pay, right?” she eyed him up and down. “Look at you. You used to be hot. You used to be Stanley Cox, New York Times Bestselling Author. What happened? You haven’t had a decent idea in years. You’ve been sliding further and further into this-this depression, and it’s killed our relationship. I mean, when the sex went, that was one thing. I could live without the sex. But money? I can’t live without money, Stan.”
     
    He wanted to say something, list the reasons why she would have been stupid for leaving. He couldn’t think of anything even halfway redeeming. The writer’s block had eaten a hole into his work, now it had crept into his life, rotting it all into dust.
     
    “What’s the matter, Stan? Can’t think of something witty or charming to sweep me back off my feet? That’s what you used to do, you know? You swept me off my feet with your words. You swept the whole world off its feet with your words. They had magic, Stan. Magic. Where’s the magic now? What happened to you?”
     
    He rubbed his eyes, then opened a jar of supplements and downed several straight, chasing it with another sip of nutrition shake.
     
    “That stuff’s not