Lonely

(Short Story Writing class assignment #4)

generated by Gemini

Write about a character with a grandiose skill.

I know what it looks like. I’m living in this huge mess of a home, practically a hoarder. But it’s not what it seems. Each item, each piece of clothing, each piece of furniture on the floor are puzzle pieces, and where they are is exactly where I want them to be. They are part of the bigger puzzle that is my apartment.

Every item in my home is part of a collection, something I meticulously picked out to satisfy the scavenger hunt that I’ve been living in my whole life. You know I like puzzles, all kinds of puzzles. But what you may not have known is how much I like them.

It’s been hard for me to make friends. I’m just not interested in engaging with anyone who can’t solve puzzles like I can. People also tend not to like my emails and texts. Each email or text I write is a word puzzle. I can’t help myself! I thought it would be fun for whoever read it. They were easy puzzles, and shouldn’t take more than a minute to solve. But I don’t always get responses, and if I do, it’s them telling me they don’t appreciate having to decipher any code to read an email.

If I go out with someone on a first date, I suggest we go to an escape room. If they can’t figure out the room puzzles as fast as I can, well, I know there’s no future with us. I can’t imagine having to be the only person who can actually think in the relationship. I mean, life is full of puzzles. I can’t be expected to solve everything.

So, yeah, I’m lonely, and it really sucks. But I keep myself busy with puzzle competitions, and I win them all.

Once, I created the world’s largest crossword puzzle, and even got into the Guinness Book of World Records for it! You hang it on the wall to solve it — all 26,000 clues. It’s now being mass-produced, and the target age is 12+ years.

Obviously I made the crossword puzzle too easy, if a 12-year-old could solve it. So, I had this idea to create a puzzle contest, something much more difficult. There would be a huge jigsaw puzzle, 30,000 pieces — a cartoon map of the US — but the pieces would be scattered in multiple places around the country. A bundle of pieces would be in this state, and another bundle in another state, and so on — and contestants would need to find the pieces, like a scavenger hunt. Oh, and the clues for the scavenger hunt would also be word puzzles and riddles!

It took me almost a whole year to get everything set up. I had to find someone to design the puzzle, and then someone to print the pieces. That was the easy part. Coming up with the scavenger hunt and clues was probably the most difficult, along with finding places to hide the puzzle pieces. But then I got to travel around the country to place the pieces, which is something I like doing anyway. And it was all worth it, because I was creating the ultimate puzzle, and if people tried to solve it, maybe I would meet others like me! The award for completing the jigsaw puzzle would be $1 million dollars.

I announced my contest in all the puzzle communities and organizations, and the media quickly picked it up. I was amazed at how many people signed up to attempt to solve the puzzle and win the prize. Competitors were talking about it on social media, complaining about how time-consuming and difficult it was, how much work it was, and how much money they spent traveling. After the first initial months, the furor seemed to die down, and as far as I could tell, everyone had given up.

In fact, I had pretty much forgotten about it when, more than two years after I had announced the puzzle contest, I was contacted by someone who completed the jigsaw puzzle. By himself. Teams of puzzlers had given up long ago, but this person — this incredibly tenacious and clever person — had completed the puzzle. I was shocked…and impressed!

I was also horrified.

The funny thing is, I didn’t have the money. I had planned to get it somehow, but as I said, when it looked like no one was going to be able to solve it…I had pretty much forgotten about it.

So, now I’m being sued in civil court for setting up a fraudulent contest. And even though this suit is probably going to cost me quite a bit, and my reputation will take a hit, that doesn’t really bother me.

Because, I’m not alone anymore. I finally found someone — this beautiful and amazing puzzler — just like me!

Do you think…after the suit is done and everything’s settled, I can ask him out?

[embed]The Interview (Short Story Writing class assignment #3)medium.com