I need to write a short story right now and I have no idea where to even start. I love writing but this project, to create a five page short story has easily been the hardest part of my writing career. I enjoy the challenge but I can't even begin to think of how I'm going to create my storyline when I don't know who I'm going to create and how I'm going to interweave these complex storylines and the tangles of the timeline in my mind. I am looking forward to finishing this but first I need to take the first step. Now, where to begin?

Satan has a heated blanket for you, and a turkey sandwich with potatoes and gravy. He is lowering his blanket over your fatigued head and it is melting down around your shoulders. Stop typing. Stop working. Throw yourself onto his cushy couch. Sip the...
No!
Throw that blanket in the fire! Toss that plate of death to the dogs! You are tired and cold, and what's it to you? Step into the discomfort. Embrace the hate. Shake the fatigue. Your tasks are righteous and authentic. Your journey is important. People may be waiting for you. People may not remember you at all. But when you are finished with your task thing they will all remember your grandiose Lord. They will brush clean a space on the street and kneel their legs, lowering their torsos to the appropriate height for a long needed prayer. People are thirsty for devotion and they don't even know it. The work you are doing will remind them of their thirst. But it is cold and hungry work. So what's it to you?

Splashes start to appear in my cereal bowl. Its 7 AM, I have a tumbler half filled with vintage scotch whiskey, on the rocks, in one hand. A knife in the other. The tears start to cloud my vision now. I push the whiskey to my lips and savour the harsh taste. I hold the knife to my face and shave away the weakness my eyes are showing to the world. A rouge, bold colour seeps and swirls around my breakfast milk like an infection. What is the point of living? What is there to live for? In a rage of anger and disappointment the glass crushes in my palm and carves new scars to remind me of the painful memories. Still clutching the knife I stagger towards the mirror, watch it as I lift it to my throat. This is it. I gouge the knife into the reflection I have studied for so long. Change is imminent. Change is my only option for survival.

To know your strength requires introspection and honest analysis. You must lower your periscope to the deepest depths and congregate your accountants and cluster your preachers. You must rub ointment on your cult leaders. The point is, there is so much noise and so many insane people with ridiculous beliefs that our self analysis gets skewed. Puked. To know your strength is to know your limits. But you have to really know it. You can't guess. You can't have inflated assumptions of what your strengths are. To know your strengths is to know your limits and to know your limits is to know what your potential is. To know what you are capable of. To know what this machine can really do. We are cyborgs in a strange and unhappy place. We are walking clusters of software and hardware and complicated programming. We fight as we are designed to fight. We laugh, though that is not part of the plan. Laughter is a bug in our software, but we have uncovered it and now use it to our advantage. It is now a strength we can leverage to counteract the unhappiness of this slowly rotating battle arena.

Every time I write a fable here, I feel great. I can think about topics and subjects for them, I can write whatever I like. No one cares if I write a poem, story or fact file. I feel elated that I found 420fables, I can choose an idea and write about it freely. I have always enjoyed creating stories and freewrites. I've never realised how much fun it is to test the waters and be imaginative. I am free like a bird, I can fly wherever I want-in my dreams and fantasies. Paris, London, Washington DC, Bangkok...I can visit capital cities, countries that I've never seen before. Life surprises me every day but in the end, I choose my path.