He loved running on the backcountry roads around their cottage. They were usually dirt, usually without cars, and always full of great scenery. He started at one of his favorite places, a small lagoon a mile from the lake. As he ran past, a loon swooped down on the bank, scattering a pair of bullfrogs that croaked as they splashed down. He ran past a field of sunflowers, a field of corn, a field of wheat, and another field of corn. He waved to a woman rocking on a screened porch, and a yellow Labrador came bounding up a hill as he ran by. He got back to his cottage an hour and a half later, dripping with sweat but completely refreshed. He grilled a couple burgers, chowed down with Michael Jackson playing in the background, and sat in front of the TV, picking his teeth with a toothpick. Then he remembered he had to write still.

Wink.

It was hopeless. He paced the room, went into different rooms, went outside, changed his music, put on the TV, put on a movie, but nothing helped. He climbed into bed at quarter past midnight, groggy and muttering to himself. He dreamed the whole night of one thing: a single, fiery eye, filling his entire field of vision, constantly and methodically winking.

The next morning he opened the computer, but only to play games until he got hungry. He ate some crackers and drank three beers at 11:17. He took his small johnboat out and fished for a while, but only caught seaweed. He swam to an island close to his dock and back, and he did it again, and again. He thought of nothing. He didn't even seem to be in control of his body, just acting on instinct, as if he were sleepwalking. When he climbed onto the dock after the third swim, he heard a chime off in the distance. He thought it was the wind chime that his wife had bought at a garage sale five years ago and then hung next to the front door to their cottage, but the wind was hardly blowing, certainly not hard enough to make the wooden clacker strike the chimes hard enough to hear all the way to the lake. It was his cell phone.

He ran inside to answer it, missing the call from his wife. He dried himself off, and called her back.

"Hey sweetie," he said. "Did you call me for something?"

"Oh, yea, we were just wondering where you were, baby," she returned in a chipper voice that broke through his dead-to-this-world demeanor. "You were supposed to call when you were on the road, and we thought you would be home by now."

"Oh, what time is it?"

"It's about five-ish."

Shit, he thought. "Oh, well, I guess I've been keeping busy, I just lost track of time," he said, trying to convince himself he wasn't lying.

"Oh yea? How much do you think you got?"

Now he had to lie. "Oh, I don't know. I have a lot of ideas floating around up there. I've gotten some of them down, but its more the thinking process. You know how relaxed I get out here. This weekend has been real good for me, babe."

"Oh, that's great. So, when do you think your gonna get home. Your kids miss you."

"Umm, not too much longer I hope. You know, I'm on such a roll right now, it might be late tonight. Are you gonna be okay on your own?"

"I've been okay on my own for the last two days. I don't know how much trouble I'll run into in the next six hours."

She laughed hard into the receiver, and he could feel the warmth of it on the other end. He wanted to pack up and leave now, to go home to his wife, to abandon his dreams of accomplishment. But he needed to get something done, something for the books, so he could not write the weekend off as a waste of time.

"Well, if you're sure ... I love ya babe."

"I love you, too. Hurry home!"

"Yea, yea, will do. Talk to ya later." He hung up.

Wink.

He turned and saw the laptop sitting on the table, mocking him in silence. The Mexican standoff ended quickly, as he pounced on the table, and he quickly began typing. Time didn't mean anything, there was no cabin; he was simply writing, and that's all there was. He wrote a bit, connected a few dots, and read back over his work. Well, it was definitely an improvement, but it needed a lot of fine-tuning. It seemed to still be in the idea stage, and he needed to translate the idea into something coherent and readable. His eyes began to blur, and he tried rubbing them, and he blinked them repeatedly.

Blink.

Blink.

Blink.

He stood up with a start. He thought he was getting tired, he wasn't thinking clearly. He walked over to the stove and turned it on; it was one of those old ranges you had to light with a lighter, and he placed a pot over the flame to boil some water. He went back to the table, and stared at the screen for God-knows how long. He could not write; all he saw was the damned cursor.

Wink.

He woke suddenly feeling an intense heat on the back of his neck. He turned to see flames coming slowly across the wooden floor, moving from the kitchen and the stove and the unused pot of water. He heard a window break somewhere deep in his house, and he stood and ran out the door. His cell phone was somehow in his pocket; he must have put it there after talking to his wife. He pulled it out and dialed the fire department. He pocketed the phone and stood back and stared at his beloved cottage, his family's getaway, going up in flames. All the memories and pictures and good times yet to come. Gone. Sure, they would rebuild, but it wouldn't be the same. All because of some damn writer's block. And some winking cursor.

He debated about going back for the laptop. He could see that the flames had not yet hit the table, and it was close to the door. He could get it. But was it worth it? He still had the ideas in his head, did he need what he had written? There was nothing on the computer he didn't have backed up, except for what he had written this weekend, and so it all came down to those few strained words. He groaned and shuffled towards the door.

As he moved on the doorknob, he stopped. He looked to the right, at a window in the kitchen, and he could see the flames flicker up and down, up and down. They were a bright orange, with a splash of red around the edges. He looked closer, drawn for some unknown reason, but then it dawned on him: the fire was blinking at him. No, not blinking, winking.

Wink.

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