Inside the box where imagination dies, through a window, his eyes met with the Vast — with its stagnating white sands and a sky void of color — and he could not keep his eyes away from his boring creation. Like a straight line in the middle of a blank canvas, the gray tower, The Tower of Short Stories, mocked him. He knows that, no matter how tall it is, it will never hold anything significant. He asks himself a very simple question, “Why did I create this?” For most creators, it was because they wanted to create something. For him, no answer could satisfy him. Days, months, and possibly years have already passed, and he still looks at the tower with dull, sunken eyes. He was no longer the creator of this world; he was now a spectator of blank ideas and infinite towers. He wanted to do something, so he stopped staring at the tower through the window of his box home and treaded the long walk through the Vast. 

The sand of the Vast is soft and light, and it could be easily molded into anything if a person took the time. But the man’s steps did not have any weight to them. However, that could be because the man looked frailer than a skeleton. With every step, his mind raced with him, finishing before he could process his thoughts. His thoughts were nothing remarkable and didn’t help answer his burning question. But one question, in the background of many, popped out, “Where are we going?” asked the simple child-like mind. The man walked with that question in his head and worded it out with his mouth but didn’t say it. As he stumbled slower than a zombie, he concluded that answer, “I don’t know anymore,” his answer rang loud in his crowded mind and the empty Vast. The man was a few feet away from the tower.

The door was as impressive as the tower; they were gray wooden slabs with knobs attached to the stone with hinges. When the man first created the doors, he thought he would have many people come into his tower, so he made the doors able to open both ways. However, when it was built, the door didn’t close right and swung a lot. The man looked at the door and was impressed that his improvised rope tie around the door knob worked and held the door shut. But it still left a crack in the door, which you can easily see inside. If one does look inside, one can see papers across the floor and empty bookshelves. Above the door has a label that says, “The Tower of Short Stories.” He smiles and remembers when he was obsessed with acronyms when he was a little writer and still uses a bit today as a joke. However, the joke will never see anyone appreciate it, and it will most likely die with the man never telling anyone. The smile quickly fades as nostalgia turns into regrets. “All this time passed, and I still haven’t made anything,” the man says out loud, disappointed to hear those words even more.

The tower mocked the definition of creation and should have never existed. Shelves that will never see a story, chairs that will never seat a reader, and halls that will never crowd with people. “What was the point of this whole thing?” The man never really knows what he is doing, and sometimes his thoughts get confusing. He can hear his thoughts clearly; with the graphite slowly pouring from out of his jacket’s sleeves onto the white sandy ground, they start to take form. But they never take shape the way he wants them to because, in reality, he never had any hands. Now he watches as the black dust tries to mold into one.

He hates himself. No, even more, he hates anything he has created if he did make anything worthy of being called a creation. The graphite dust swarms around the tower and slowly eats away the walls of the gray stone. The man understood what it means to destroy; it’s the only thing he knows how to do well. Even when the tower cracks and bends, nothing can stop the man. He seemed determined to end the pointless circling around that he does. And then, for whatever reason, he stopped. He just stopped. The swarm is still around the tower waiting for commands. He was so confident in his actions that he didn’t notice that he stopped himself mid-way. “Why?” He asked. His face looked at the floor with more frustration in his eyes; the graphite dust followed him and covered his face, forming multiple hands and arms. It pulled his hair and his face; there was no reason for him to stop. He made up his mind. Who is he stopping for? Why is he continuing to struggle? Why can’t he just die? His thoughts were everywhere all at once. He yelled, “fuck!” and stomped on the sand, which made the still ground move for the first time. The tower shook, the rope tied on the doors dropped to the floor, and the doors swung open. His aura was solemn. And he stood there with a blank face looking at the door. He then got tired and said, “I’m heading home.”

He had enough motivation to carry himself home, but when he thinks about it, why couldn’t he just use it for something else? Anything else would have been better. But the man was a seething pile of flesh and loathing; he only thought he was living to die. Even he doesn’t know why. So he just drags his feet home. He opens the door of his box, which is empty except for a bed and a window, locking himself inside. He sealed the coffin, and the universe would stop witnessing him. Nothing came out of the box after that…

However, some things came out of the tower…