Gemotions

The publisher’s response, a form letter laced with hollow pleasantries, sat on the desk like a festering wound. John crumpled it in his hand, the paper a tiny, useless ball. The carefully constructed world of his novel, a labor of years, was worthless. He threw it across the room and it landed with a soft thud.

He felt a throbbing ache behind his eyes, a sensation of being trapped. The walls of his study seemed to close in, suffocating him. He ripped the pages from his manuscript, tearing them one by one.

He felt the tremors of a storm brewing within him. He wanted to obliterate everything, to erase the very memory of what he’d written.