• It floated around in his mind. The idea just evaded him. It was always just beyond the reach of his mind. It was of great annoyance. It was only the beginning strand of this idea, but if he could catch this string and follow it, he was sure he could construct a wonderful tragedy.

    “Mr. Sownfap!” a stern voice startled him and he lost the string completely. Looking up, he saw his math teacher glaring at him in annoyance. “I’ve asked you repeatedly not to doze off. Now, if it pleases you.” She pointed up to the board. Her eyes seemed to drill holes in him over the rims of her glasses.

    Sighing, the boy stood and walked the short stretch of carpet to the front of the classroom. He was slightly annoyed by the snickers that followed him, but it was easy to ignore them. The problem was a simple on. He could’ve done it in his sleep. Grabbing a marker, he quickly finished it and headed back to his seat.

    It was relatively easy for the boy to slip back into his thoughts. Hope, for that was his first name, once again drowned out the lesson. The idea he’d been chasing had forever vanished, but it had been replaced by many more with just as much promise. He slowly unraveled one in his mind. He would write it down later or, maybe, never.

    When the bell rang, Hope quickly gathered his things. It was, thankfully, the last period of the day. Now he could let his stories flow with no interruptions. And so he did. They flew from his feeble mental grasps; far out into the depths of his mind, stretching his imagination farther and farther.

    Hope paused to acknowledge his little sister who had joined him on the short, but pleasant, walk. Then he was swamped by his thoughts again. They were greedy little things, his thoughts. They craved attention and each one would vanish if he chose to concentrate on just one. They were the frayed ends of thread which you had to cut to gain control of, but that was their beauty as well. How many things in the controlled world could be so wild and free nowadays? Hope often had to ponder that.

    Hope was, once again, forced to leave his thoughts in order to unlock the front door. As soon as he entered his room, however, he dived back into them. Now he had his notebook and pen. He would see how far he could follow this string; how many twists and turns and knots it would create. It would be a long project, but he was ready for it.

    His pen scratched the paper for hours. He wrote right through dinner and was still writing when the rest of his family went to sleep. When he was finished, it was nearly midnight. He picked the papers up and put it in a stack of others on his desk.

    This stack was what his mother and sister liked to call his “inspiration” pile. He stuck the barely phrased ideas in this pile. Many of these would never be looked at again, but all of them had once been considered a good idea by the seventeen year old.

    He smiled brightly. Nothing completed his day like finishing the outline of a story. He got up and readied himself for bed. When he closed his eyes, stories weaved themselves.