That Book I've Been Writing

So anyone who kinda sorta knows me knows I write. I don't want to say a lot--it's definitely not as often as it should be--but fairly regularly. At least in an on-and-off sort of regularity.
A few people who know me a little bit better than that, know that it's been a life goal of mine for a long time to write a book. Though I've never really said it, I think most people assume I meant novel, or maybe collection of short stories when I said that. I haven't been particularly productive, though. Nothing I write really sticks. It doesn't stick to me. It doesn't stick to anything else I write.

To fight this little problem, I've made some rules for myself:

This book I've always wanted to write will be twenty-one chapters long.

Each chapter will be in two parts. The first part will discuss a game. The second will discuss a character in the main character's life.

The chapters will be titled with numbers. The first section will be titled with the name of the game discussed. The second will be titled after a phobia, mostly for an illusion of connectivity with the first chapter I already have.

This main character will not have a name. He will serve as an excuse to explore other characters.

Every other character must have a name.

I will complete this within a year.

I've had the 2nd part of the first chapter for a long time. In fact, it would probably be the exception to what I said about nothing I write sticking to me. Hopefully it sticks to the rest of what I write. Here's the first chapter:

The Game

The rules to the game are simple. When you think of the game, you lose. Whenever you lose the game, you must announce that you've lost the game. That's really it.
You can't win the game. Nor can you reasonably not lose.

Bibliophobia

He lied last night. I envisioned his brown eyes locked on my green ones, and read aloud his text message. I was waiting for him.
“You’ll have to go in the morning.”
Not so much a warning, as a reminder. Not so much thoughts as words. I hate text messages, especially his. They’re always just empty words. I didn’t go in the morning, so what do I do now? I could sit here, and just wait for him. I could write him a love letter on the back of his note telling me to lock the door, like I’m some sort of idiot. I could just up and leave, and refuse to lock the door. I could leave the door wide open, and tape his note to the front of it.
I woke up at 10:27, and haven’t left his bed. It’s 11:02. I’ve been staring up at his plain white room; down at his plain white walls. The carpets are grey-yellow, but were probably white once, long before he lived here. This place is old. My mother lived here.
Not this place exactly, but this building. She was one of the first tenants. I can’t put a year on it, but she was a little older than me. Now she’s a lot older than me, and this building is still here, and desperately needs to be recarpeted.
My mom was the one who recommended the building to him. She told him the rooms are small and quiet, and as long as he’s quiet, living here will be fine. When she lived here, most of the other tenants were teachers and students, people who couldn’t afford more than these closets of rooms.
That’s what these apartments are really like. Closets within closets within closets. Down any given hall, there are four or five identical doors. Open up any of those doors, and you’ll find a fifteen by twenty foot living room, with a sink and stove against one wall, and two more doors along the opposite one. One of those doors opens to a bedroom, and the other to a bathroom. The bedroom’s just a box, and the bathroom a box with a sink, shower and toilet. There’s one more door between the bedroom and the bath; it opens into the shower.
The funny part is they forgot to put in trash shoots. This building should have been torn down years ago, but somehow, no one’s filed any complaints. I guess my mother was right about quiet people.
I stepped out of Mark’s bed, and pulled on a pair of jeans, lying next to his bed. I didn’t really check, but assumed they were mine, because they were at the top of the pile of clothes. I knew they were mine when I didn’t find any underwear in them. Mark pulls off his pants and underwear in one motion, leaving everything bunched together in a wrinkled figure eight of fabric.
I sorted through the pile. Found his jeans and boxers, just as I thought they’d be. My boxers were just to the left of the main pile, and my shirt drooped over the crotch of the figure eight, my right sleeve leaning into one of the leg holes. His shirt was underneath all of that.
I pulled off my jeans to dress myself completely, and folded his clothes. He kept clean clothes in a dresser, and just piled dirty ones on the ground. He must have done laundry recently, because all I could find on the ground was a pair of boxers, and a jacket.
I made his bed. I folded the jacket and boxers, and piled them with the other clothes I folded.
Searching the top of his dresser for the note he always leaves, I noticed something. He had one of those page-a-day calendars sitting on his dresser. June 5th. For some reason, my first thought was not to peel off the top page, but to throw away the entire calendar. It wasn’t my calendar, and I couldn’t really take that liberty, so I just pulled off bibliophobia, to uncover June 6th and agoraphobia. Calendar of fears, I guess.
Then I realized something. The year. The calendar said 2006. This was 2007.
I sat on the bed I just made, creating a tornado of wrinkles in the comforter, with myself in the eye, and considered the date. Maybe I should have just thrown the thing away. Something about the date seemed eerie, almost evil.
I held the calendar in my hands, and tried to look it in the eye. I tilted it back and forth, catching different angles of light, trying to find some vestige of a face. I think its eyes were closed, because no matter where I looked, nothing looked back up at me.
I couldn’t trust this calendar. Dead for over a year, but still it sits, proclaiming the date mindlessly. Something about it though, something was inspiring. It’s tenacity of spirit. Holding it in my hands, it felt like a ghost, wanting some sort of revenge.
I peeled off another day. Necrophobia.
I felt a strange closeness to this calendar. It must have been the way we were both discarded. Both just left here, sitting alone in the morning. I peeled off another page. Amaxophobia.
I had that page half off, when something struck me. There must be a reason this thing was sitting there untouched for over a year. I thought back. I tried to focus on the date. June 5th. Nothing stirred me. The date seemed arbitrary. Then the page was off completely. Didaskaleinophobia.
Words and dates blurred together. Nothing really made sense. All I knew was this calendar wanted something. I considered and decided that there was really only one thing to give it.
I looked over Mark’s makeshift desk, the top of his drawers. I couldn’t find a single pen. I knew there were pens somewhere. He was a student. He must have at least a single pen floating around this apartment somewhere, and the place is too small to justify not finding it. I dragged the calendar with me, out of his bedroom, away from Mark’s smell.
There was a pen on his living room table. Snuggled up close to a notepad. I picked it up, and sat down, holding the calendar close to my chest, bibliophobia, amaxophobia, didaskaleinophobia, all ripped away, in my hand. I dropped half a year on the table.
I pulled one of the loose days close to me. Necrophobia. I flipped it over and began to write. “A couple of people wore black. . .”
This was all I could give the calendar. I hope this is what it wants. There will be false starts. There will be lots of errors, but I’m going to give it great stories with lots of blood. With suffering and pain. I think that’s what it wants.
If I were a calendar, that’s what I’d want. They just sit there, expecting nothing of us. We abuse them. Use them as markers to keep track of all of our problems, our concerns.
Do they have any problems or concerns of their own? No. I’d breath life into this calendar, and give every day it’s own special pain. It’s own life. Loneliness. Derision. Isolation.
There’s really nothing special about these emotions, yet we still mark them down. We give them fancier names like Christmas or June 5th, but really, that’s all they represent. Schadenfreude. The occasional laugh. Glimmers of hope.
This calendar was made of fear. It had plenty of fears to work with already, but I’d add more. It only knows fear of words. I’ll breath true, living fear into it. Starting with fear of death. “. . . but more or less, everyone . . .”
Hopefully I understood the calendar.