I’ve been writing quite a bit the past two months, which is good. Since late December, I have been trying to think of ways I could shoehorn my own creative material into the blog. That way, the site has even more utility for me. It’s a great way to share my thoughts on a variety of things, and maybe, just maybe it could be used to help in my creative endeavors. I’m not really expecting a whole lot, but an update is an update.

This story began back in late December, when the incident described began, but I really didn’t start seriously kicking around a story idea until early January. The document presented here is just about the first thing I wrote concerning this story, and it is more of a proposal for a story. A kind of meandering, stream-of-consciousness type of thing where I explore the possibilities of turning an idea into a story. From here, I booted things around for a day and then started toying with outlines. Towards the end of outlining, I started work on the actual story.

Two notes to keep in mind as you read this:

1) I’ve cleaned up the document, including the removal of some pure textual junk. This has not been done out of embarrassment, but because I would like people to actually read this, and you don’t need to see me do the journaling equivalent of Godard’s bizarre sound editing in Alphaville.
2) The story has already expanded significantly on what is presented in the document. Still, nearly everything that is covered in the document happens in the story, in some form or another.

So here you go. Please excuse any writing snafus, because this is largely unfiltered:

Over the past several weeks, I have noticed a pile of newspapers gathering in front of the apartment across the hall from my own. Towards the end of the first week, the pile disappeared, though for all I know, it may have been the landlord removing clutter. Since then, the pile has reappeared, day by day, paper by paper, and it hasn’t picked itself up since. Although what my neighbors across the hall have been doing does not rank high on the list of things I do not generally give a toot about, the distraction of them moving out would have called my attention involuntarily. Adding to the mystery is that their paper delivery just started recently, as in it started exactly when they “disappeared.” Why would they begin having papers delivered just as they were (most plausible theory) going on vacation or something?

Being someone interested in fictions, my mind naturally started developing homages to Rear Window, and a few Saw-like scenarios, with someone trapped in the apartment, unable to get to the door. Of course, by this point, after more than a week, our distressed character would be dead from any number of causes.

The way the current paper pile is stacked indicates that the door has not opened since the pile started. They are sort of leaning against the door, and any movement would cause them to tumble, making it clear that, say, Dexter hasn’t been going in and out, stashing bodies in there, or using it as a base to hack up perps.

I mentioned before that the affairs of my neighbors are of little interest to me. I live where I live because of the peace and quiet and the privacy, and I do my best to maintain the status quo. With that said, when there is an incremental addition to the pile of papers on a daily basis, the mind naturally begins looking for more things that are not quite right. Like the lights are naturally never on in there. That was probably the very first investigation I made in regards to this. Every time I leave my apartment, I sneak a quick look across the hall to see if the light is on in that apartment. To me, now, it’s obvious that there’s nobody in there, and that they just went on vacation and forgot to put their new newspaper subscription on hold, but this is a case where I like to be willfully obtuse, if only because a growing stack of papers outside of an apartment that I know is currently occupied sounds like the start to a nice little story. Every day, when I walk past that pile, a new story runs through my head. Suicide? Familial murder-suicide?

From cursory examinations of the mail box, the one that belongs to the paper apartment is stacked full. Now I sound like a stalker. But what if it were a murder-suicide? If those people were sufficiently disconnected from other people and/or society in general, it could be a while before anyone noticed they were even missing. Extrapolating from that, what if I died in my apartment? My communication habits are crappy enough that it would be a month or more before my family even began to suspect something was wrong. Indeed, it would probably be work that would try to track me down first, and that failing, my landlord when rent was due. So let’s say that for me, there’s a maximum of, oh, four days before my boss at work tries to find out what the heck is going on. He’d be calling my cellphone and pinging me with emails nonstop, but I think he would give me a few days before he went the direct intervention route by trying to contact my landlord. Even then, there’s probably some sort of legal writ that would prevent my landlord from immediately entering my apartment. I’d imagine there would have to be some sort of police investigation or missing persons report filed first, just so it was known that everything was being done squarely. That would probably add at least another day to my count, since my boss would definitely try to reason with my landlord before going to the police.

So I would be discovered missing relatively quickly, but only because I am employed. What if the people across the hall are so off the grid that they are living off of savings? Disconnected and unemployed, they would only be discovered when rent was due. Depending on the date the disappearance occurred, and in concordance with state laws, that means there could (under worst conditions) be 35 or 36 days before anyone even knew something was wrong. Well, that is assuming that the stink of any corpses in the apartment hadn’t yet wafted out into the hallway.

Enough rambling for now. I like the story ideas that this premise brings up. It presents a somewhat simple mystery, so there’s no worry about doing research to create a believable detective or police officer. The story, simple and kind of concepty, is reminiscent of the noirs I love. There’s a definite psychological angle that can be played (see: Polanski’s underrated The Tenant). Best of all, it’s a story that started in real life. I’ve had trouble writing pieces based off of personal experience before, mainly because I feel that it puts me in the position of caricaturing people that I used to know, and rewriting (to a degree) my personal history, which is something that I am not totally comfortable doing. Maybe one simple story loosely based off a personal experience will give me the perspective to rework other stories from my past into something readable, entertaining, and something with which i could be content.

Without giving too much of my hand away, themes for this story would be isolation and paranoia, keeping them understated is a definite priority. This is a really simple premise, with simple real world-relevant symbols (piles of papers, stuffed mail boxes, no lights), and very simple themes. There’s no issue with simple story and symbols, but the simple themes, like paranoia and isolation have the habit of becoming very overbearing very quickly, so sparsity is key here.

Depending on response, maybe I’ll share more later. I have some early outlines that are (I think) shorter than this that take the premise in various different places. At this point, I’m not quite willing to share which direction the final story has taken, so if outlines do get posted, keep in mind that nothing you are seeing is where the story is going.

One of my worst traits is my constant habit of apologizing, but sorry for another unorthodox post. Fact is my head has been in the creative space lately, and as long as that is going on, I try to avoid a significant portion of narrative media out of fear of contamination. I’m not a ripoff artist or anything, but many ripoffs happen totally subconsciously.