It was a kind of experiment. A scheme set up by an advertising company to promote a new line of site-cabins for the building industry. The promotion was portrayed as a golden opportunity to turn your dreams into fortunes; instead of which, it turned out to be a terrifying ordeal for most.
The advertising company used a link with a publishing business to set up a competition for budding novelists.
Desperate to win the chance of a lifetime, I entered and signed a declaration stating that I understood the rules and regulations. Like the rest of the hopefuls on that launch morning, I was eager to spend the next five days totally isolated from the rest of the world.
The cabins were made for endurance. So once the contestant was inside and the door locked, there was no way out. Each of the cabins had lighting and ventilation supplied by panels in the ceiling and all the plumbing was monitored by ‘touch sensors’. There was an emergency button that we were told would bring a medical team within minutes, but once pressed, the contester would face immediate disqualification.
Fair enough, I thought as I waited to be escorted to the place that would be my cell, my sanctuary for the next five days. Fair enough, I thought again. Competitions must have rules and rules must be obeyed, mustn’t they. Mustn’t they?
I don’t know what the other cabins were like but mine was painted in a soft pink with rose-scented air conditioning that reminded me of summer evenings eating Turkish delight. I had been stripped of my own clothes and given a set of lightweight leisure suits to wear and soft slip-on shoes. These were to be my prison gear. All other requirements were to be found inside the cabin, together with my choice of writing equipment.
I heard the external lock click into place as I wandered through the four rooms of what I was hoping, would be my very own luxury retreat. I was to be given five days of utter bliss and more important to me, four nights of total peace and quiet. The kitchen area was stocked with more than I needed and the bedroom equipped with essential necessities, and no more.
I turned the corner and there, placed in the middle of a desk was the object of my dreams. It was a two-toned, cream and dark chocolate Olivetti typewriter. I reached out, ran my fingertips over the keys, up the sides and along the carriage, with each caress filling my senses and taking them to dance and swirl with memories of halcyon days, then to soar onwards to the heights of pure ecstasy.
Feeling dizzy with the thrill, I had to start right away and searched each desk drawer. All were empty except the bottom one where two reams of paper waited to be torn open. Immediately the Olivetti was loaded, and the next time I remember, I had written the first chapter of my novel – all eight pages.
Without windows to announce daylight or darkness, time had no meaning inside my petal shaded domain, so I ate when I was hungry and slept when I was tired. During all other occasions I sat at the desk and allowed the typewriter to energise my imagination.
I showered and as the temperature-controlled spray hissed gently over my face and down my naked body I ran the words of my novel through my head and thoughts of the past interwove themselves into my new storyline. Flashbacks of when I had once fallen under the rhythm of an Olivetti, and allowed the Italian engineering to lull me, sweet-talk me into writing sentences so utterly exotic: they flushed my cheeks to think about them. But think about them I did.
For years I’d yearned to write with passion, with pure lust and reckless, breathless abandonment. But oh, since those heady days, I have been stifled, hemmed in and my passion for writing nothing more than a distant dream, a pleasure too impossible to contemplate.
But that was yesteryear and now I have five whole days and I’m not going to waste one moment.
The novel I wrote won, but not for its merit, more likely because nearly all the other contenders dropped out of the competition. They complained the ‘theme’ of the novel should have been a horror story not a romance. At different times during their stay, each one pressed the emergency button, saying they were in a severe state of panic, and those who completed the course, didn’t finish their work, and were eliminated, so all in all, my novel got top marks.
I continue to write, but no longer feel the need for erotica, since having witnessed and heard my fellow competitors’ horrors, I now write in that scary mode, which has proven itself to be more lucrative. One of the side-kicks of the competition was we got to keep our writing implements, so I now own that beautiful two-toned Olivetti typewriter complete with a life-time supply of inked ribbons.
Did I mention what bliss feels like? Yes? Oh good, I thought I did.
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(c) 2024 Pat Barnett.
