Subconscious Choice

Thomas sat at his desk, his fingers tapping his keyboard. He lacked any inspiration of what to write, or perhaps he was just tired. He definitely wasn't the one who knew. After several minutes, he wrote five words.

Chapter 1: The Old Bay

He stared into the light of his monitor, his eyelids were growing heavier, yet he did not feel tired. Sleep beckoned, he ignored its calls. Thomas changed the chapter's name.

Chapter 1: Harriet Bay

He brushed his hands through his hair. He looked down at the keys and clicked enter, then delete, then enter, then delete. He couldn't decide where to go with his story. He didn't know what to write. Perhaps Thomas simply lacked inspiration, but he wasn't keen to search for it. He wanted the story to be his. He wanted it to be original. He didn't want to steal, even if it was from reality.

Thomas clicked save. Untitled document.

"Right..." Thomas stared into space.

He always did have trouble naming things.

"The Mystery of the Bay... no, that's not catchy..." Thomas brainstormed. "The Old Yard... The Grandfather Clock... no, that doesn't make sense... maybe, Isabella's Lament. That'll work for now."

And so the document was named. A name that would shape the book's story, even if Thomas had yet to learn that. It was an inspired name, even if Thomas didn't mean it to be. The subconscious can influence one's actions in many fascinating and mysterious ways, from forgotten trauma, to inspired genius, or perhaps even unrealized suppression, the subconscious can be all of these. In Thomas' case, however, it was an unrealized suppression, with a hint of inspired genius, a massive heaping of trauma, a single, long blocked memory.

Thomas stretched, shut down his computer, and headed to bed. He hadn't wanted to be persuaded by sleep's callings, but its words spoke too strongly. He fell into unconsciousness within seconds of lying down.

Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Be—.

Thomas sat up, checked the time, 06:31, and got out of bed. Once his shower was completed, he threw on his gray leather duster, hooked the leash on his tabby cat and the pair headed out the door.

Thomas found the morning wind quite refreshing. Even though his neighbors gave him looks for walking his cat, he didn't care, not in the morning at any rate. He simply wanted to enjoy the walk with his cat.

"Thomas, do you really think that cat is a dog?" a woman called out, one of his neighbors, Diana.

She was African-American and had beautiful curly black hair. Some of the other neighbors, not excluding Thomas all the time, would sometimes call her pretentious, but nonetheless kindhearted. She would help around the block with cleanup every Sunday.

Thomas picked up his cat and looked her way. "I don't, though Belle might."

His cat attempted to squirm her way out of his arms, he didn't resist.

"Seems like Belle wants to continue forth," Diana observed. "I'll leave y'all to it. Have a wonderful morning, Tom."

"Same too you, Diana," he replied, slowly walking behind Belle.

The walks weren't long, in fact, they rarely lasted more than twenty minutes.

Once home, Thomas put some food into her bowl, checked, cleaned, and refilled her water fountain, and then headed to his office.

It was like the night before all over again. Thomas just stared at the chapter and its name. He thought about the title, wondering what it reminded him of. He wasn't sure, but he didn't know if he wanted to learn. After several minutes, he wrote the first sentences.

Chapter 1: Harriet Bay

This is a tale of sorrow. A tale of tragedy. It is about a girl who can see the future, but can do nothing to change it. It is about the girl's death, and her attempt to alter fate at any cost.

Now all Thomas had to do was write what happened next. The next sentence was all he required.

"The next sentence," Thomas muttered. "The next... sentence..."

Thomas tapped his desk. He couldn't think up anything. He couldn't figure out what to write, but he had to. He needed something before the deadline. His editor had told him that she'd be visiting on the 9th to see what he'd written. He didn't want to disappoint her or waste her time, it just didn't seem right to do that. In any case, he couldn't think of anything else to write, so he turned off his computer and headed to the kitchen.

Author's Note: If it wasn't obvious, this story is very much just me writing words that have thoughts attached. The ending is pretty abrupt, yes, but that's fine. It hopefully shows that he has writer's block properly, or at least that he can't think of anything.
A few additional notes, mostly just about my writing style, strengths, and weaknesses. I'm not great at description, that's why I don't do it a lot. When I do, the descriptions are rather long.
The only time I note a character's skin tone is when I see the character's physical appearance a specific way, in the case of animals it would be breeds, I guess—or fur patterns, I don't know. I also usually decide the skin tone or breed on a whim or because of story precedent. For instance, I chose 'tabby cat' because I live with a tabby cat in real life—not one that goes on walks, though.

That's all for the Author's Note this chapter. I'm going to edit the draft tomorrow. It's the 3rd of July, 2022, 02:21 and I need to get some sleep. Plus, Tired MAB is also known as Horrible Editor MAB—and writer most of the time, we'll see how many words I missed later.

I've just decided that for this chapter, and possibly others, the edits that I have to make that are simply adding words or letters to a word will be noted with []. Goodnight. So, for this chapter, at least, I've chosen not to do this, therefore I placed the strikethrough. I may do it for future chapters, but I forgot to start doing it with this one while editing, thus I'm making this extra note.

Anyway, I hope anyone reading this has a wonderful day :)