Fenwick's End

Fenwick's End

Fen's fingers tapped incessantly on the keyboard. Each click of the keys sounded like music to his ears. Each word punctuated by his smile, by the music flowing through him. These words and this music merged as one, a blinding intensity of beauty capable of stunning the world. One more paragraph, he thought. Just a little more and then I achieve all that I have wanted.

His curly black hair stuck up in all directions, unkempt enough to match his mud-stained, ripped t-shirt with the words, “We could be the kings and queens of cool tonight.” Dark jeans that once would've been called black, but faded to a shade nearer gray, hung about his legs like ragged flags that have flapped too long in high winds. The most beat-up tennis shoes imaginable scrunched across his feet, stuck together by long haphazard pieces of black duct-tape. Thin, fingerless gloves fitted his hands, the material something of a mystery to the average person. Dark-rimmed glasses sunk low on his nose and he shoved them back up subconsciously. His eyes glowed with a deep internal fire, the hazel irises orbs of excitement and laughter.

He appeared to be around twenty, but Fen's child-like energy, smile and seeming innocence threw off most observers. He was not an average person, that much was certain. The air around him pulsed with the aura of a someone that cannot help but be liked by every person he met. His walls in the small office were covered with pictures of smiling people crowded around him and notes of encouragement and thanks. His desk's surface bore the 112 scratched signatures of every person he had invited inside his house since he moved in two years before. And Fen loved company.

Aside from his “music,” the small house lay silent about him like a thick comforter. The wind occasionally thwacked the apple tree's branches against his windowpane, momentary distractions in his otherwise unbroken train of thought. No one was home but him. Then again, that should not have comforted him.

His sister was late coming home from work. She was not often late. He should have noticed that she was late, but he was in his element, lost in the world that he alone could see. If someone else could see it, he would not be the subject of a very curious crime scene several hours later.

Fen's foot rhythmically tapped the floor, in time with his typing. The noise of his shoe hitting the hard wood masked the approach of his enemy. The gun raised deliberately, and paused at the level of Fen's back, aimed at his heart.

“Yes!” Fen abruptly shouted, throwing his hands in the air. He stared at the screen, at those last words, the two he had wanted to write for as long as he could remember wanting something.

The enemy pulled the trigger and Fen died happy, lying in his own blood where he fell from the chair.


So, why would a perfectly happy person like me write something so....morbid? And should I continue it, just to figure out who wanted this writer dead?