The Editors entered the grey interrogation room to whisk her away to a place where she could write. For she had to write. She had no ideas, so they were provided for her. A computer generated a random premise. An intern created an outline and character profiles.

Wordless was slung into a prison cell with nothing but a Word Processor and irony. Her knees smacked the floor as her legs gave out in despair. The pain was physical. Her skin ached. Her chest felt constricted, and her bones hurt beneath the weight of losing him. They were deleting him for the crime of not allowing her to write her own story. Yet, they were forcing her to write a story that was not her own.

She had three hundred days. The first seven months of her sentence, she grieved. After that, she had nothing left within her but the memories, and she had to get them out.

***

The straw cot on the floor beneath the narrow high window in the cinderblock room had been her bed, sofa, chair and grave for over half a year. Wordless rolled onto her back and stared at the grey ceiling as the odor of sweat, nightmares and despair permeated the four-by-four cell. She threw an arm across her eyes to block out the light.

Her stomach churned and she felt sick, but she forced herself to get up. To sit at the rickety plastic table and stare at the Registry provided Word Processor. The guards no longer watched her as closely because they all knew her fate. She wouldn't have an entire novel completed in time for her twenty-first birthday. It was pointless to try.

She turned on the computer out of habit. When the blue screen illuminated, she was surprised to see a message.

"For the services rendered by our faithful member, Strange Luz, we offer you this advice. Art is everywhere, in everything. Unleash it. --BRR."

The screen filled with random words, highlighted to create a picture of a flower, and suddenly Wordless knew what she had to do. She wrote the story of Strange. His image slowly came into being with page after page of words tediously highlighted and colored. She understood that the reward for her labor of love would be death, but so be it. As she finished the final word, her fingers were cramped.

"I told you I had stories," she whispered. "But, you cannot force them from me."

She hit the print button on the processor and watched the sheets pour from the device. Was this the end? 

****************************************************

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