house of 1000 stories

hmm. story two of one thousand, here goes.

Ruby Thinks

totally uninspired, Ruby sits at her computer. Sighing heavily, she ears her eyes away from the hotmail window she has been fruitlessly staring at for the past fifteen minutes. no new messages, as usual. clicking on microsoft word, she opens up a new document and stares blankly at the white screen before her.
five minutes and still nothing. ten, fifteen. the clock ticks by. she shivers and pulls her jacket tighter around her.
"i wonder if they keep the learning centre so cold so that we don't fall asleep when we should be working"
Ruby thinks. she suspects that the real reason for the temperature is actually the fact that it's below freezing outside. through the window she can just pick out sparkles of ice and frostreflected in the neon glow of the street lamps. the ice decorates the bleak december street outside, as if the weather knows that christmas is on it's way. it's dark outside by now, and ruby thinks of walking home alone at night.
"not a great idea, not to mention a dangerous one"
her mother's warnings about getting mugged/raped/maimed by vampires ringing in her ears she resloves to walk the long way home, avoiding her noraml risky short cuts through the park and various avenues and alleyways.
"Alleyways"
she thinks. that reminds her of a punk song by rancid, and makes her thoughts swing to the night before, when she had been jumping around drunkenly to the sounds of the aforementioned band with her friends. she wishes she was there now, not stuck in this dreary computer room buried deep in the heart of the university's learning centre. surrounded by a few other students who've actually decided to do some work, ruby glances around from behind her thick red hair. (some people call it ginger, ruby prefers to think of it as red. but never strawberry blonde, that's just lame). considering it 'research', she lets her eyes and thoughts slide over the other students, hoping that one of them will act as a muse to hr and suddenly fill her mind with inspiration and good ideas for a story. this would have been great research a few weeks ago, but not now with the assignment deadline being so close. ruby decides that people watching maybe isn't the best way to write an assignment.
a tall, gangly guy walks in and greets the mouse-like girl to her left. they seem pretty tense. maybe they have to work together on an assignment ad don't really know each other and are having to make poilte conversation.
"i hate having to do that. all the 'hello, how are you, what course are you on' seems pretty pointless"
ruby thinks to herself.
she likes making friends though, she just prefers a different route. more like 'hi, i'm ruby, wanna come do things we shouldn't?' there have been a lotof introductions over the last month or so. being a fresher at university is one long introduction. and one long party. again, ruby's thoughts slide onto the subject of going out on the town, this sets her thinking about her birthday, which is just a week away.
"twenty years old. overwhelming"
she still has no idea what she's going to do on her birthday. quite possibly a party would work. lots of cheap red wine and fairylights. she contemplates making a list of guests, but then vetoes the idea. frustrated, she stares at the computer screen, willing it to write a story for her. sighing, ruby rests her head on one hand and to her dismay her fingers seek out a zit that is starting to develop.
"damn it, it must be the stress of working too hard"
thinks ruby.
then, shaking her head she corrects herself, as she has done no work yet. the page still sits, redundant and blank on the flickering screen in front of her. looking past her screen, ruby tries to have a nosey at what the guy across from her is doing. it's just some boring website that he's browsing.
"maybe i should have a browse for inspiration"
ruby thinks.
she then decides firmly against it. she needs to get this story done. the more work she can do now, the less work she'll have to do in a huge rush at the end of term.that's probably how it's going to end up anyway. she's already done a couple of short stories, butnone of them have really been up to scratch. she knows that she can knock out something really good if she can just motivate herself. but she can't. she went home at the weekend and left her mobile phone there so she can't get in contact with anyone. there's a couple of people she'd like to speak to right now; a friend to give some advice as to whether or not she was going okay with this assignment. well, actually she meant that she'd like to speak to someone and hang out, watching videos and reading comics. this was all that ever came of so-called 'study dates'.
ruby thinks of a weird dream she had the other night, about the coffee shop that she worked in: it had flooded...
"dreams are strange...but they make you think"
muses ruby.
ah, so she's getting somewhere. at least some things are making her think, even if she's not thinking along totally academic lines.
"if only i could think of something to write, if i could be more motivated, maybe my mind would be such a shambles"
ruby thinks.
a bloke has sat down next to her, and is making rather loud, annoying noises in his throat.
"maybe i shouldn't be so neurotic about these things"
she thinks.
"oh god, now he's picking his nose then typing. why can't i concentrate?"
ruby adjusts her chair and tries to sit up straight, blocking out the noise of the room. that was the only problem, there's too much distraction to get any real work done. if ruby is in the learning centre, it's too bustlingto concentrate, but if she's at home, she can't use a computer.
"it's a catch 21 situation"
ruby thinks and smiles. of course, she knows the real saying is 'catch 22 situation', but last year, when working in a call centre, a man had called up, ranting and raving with complaints and he'd referred to himself as being in a 'catch 21 situation'. ruby had got a fit of the giggles at this point and the man had hung up the phone. rolling her eyes at the memory of the man's ignorance, ruby tries in vain to turn her thoughts back to the story she is meant to be writing. this doesn't work too well, ruby's mind is like a shopping trolly with dodgy wheels, it won't go where you want it to.
a thought pops into her head. she's never read this kid's book called 'gobelina the witch's cat'. ruby puts that thought in her 'to do box' in her mind and ploughs on through the rubble of her subconcious.
"maybe i should start a mind filing system"
thinks ruby.
"i culd have a box in my head for good ideas, one for bad ones, one for naughty thougts, one for productive ones...i really could do with a nice large hot chocolate"
thinks ruby.
her mind doesn't just wander, it seems to run away in the opposite direction to te one which ruby wants to go. there are a lot of good ideas in there, but they don't seem to want to go down on paper.
she makes a mental list of a few things that she could write about, and checks down it. love? too complicated. war? too complicated. religion? too complicated. these topics would be fine for a long novel or maybe even a poem, but for a short story, they're not subjects that ruby particularly wants to tackle. she needs something fresh in her mind, something that she can open up about. her mind itself? too complicated...
"maybe i could write about being at university, trying to write an essay"
she ponders.
"nah, that would never work.i know, i'll write some kind of nice romantic tale that's easy reading. the tutor will like that. i bet she'd never want to read a few pages of drivelabout the thougths i'm having whilst attempting to write a story. yeah, that's it; i'll stick to the norm and write a bridget jones type fiasco. that'll do the trick"
ruby takes a deep breath and pushes her hair out of her eyes. fingers clicking slowly on the keyboard, she begins to type...