The Form Clam's Trial

When writing, many things may happen. A writer can succeed in creating a great work. They can fail, resulting in crumpled papers. They can ponder, never quite getting the words out. Yet, something all writers are familiar with is the insidious near-typo. Near, because the misspelled word isn’t quite incorrect, it’s simply not the intended word.

“The clam before the storm,” tells a largely different story than, “the calm before the storm.”

“He battled against the enemy, form sea to sea,” suggests someone who may be drowning in paperwork, as opposed to, “from sea to sea.”

“Flying down the bike trial,” hints at a council of cycling judges, passing their ruling on the performance of the biker, instead of someone enjoying a Sunday afternoon, “flying down the bike trail.”

Such near-typo’s are a daily occurrence for the fumble-fingered writer. Is the keyboard to blame? Perhaps the urgency and enthusiasm one types with? That isn’t ours to know.

What is ours to know, is this: John C. Applebaum was one such clumsy writer. After many a near-typo and not a small bit of frustration, he slammed his keyboard and cried out from sheer annoyance.

“Oh great Form Clam I can no longer endure your trial, I relent, you win,” The half-pithy remark made John feel better about his slippery digits. Composing himself he sat back down, but his keyboard wasn’t working. Feeling himself creeping back towards a frustrated outburst John lifted the keyboard up to check that the cable.

Then out popped a small clam.

“Ha,” the clam’s mouth opened and closed as if it was the one speaking, “you have failed my trial!”

John fell out of his chair. Scrambling backward, he didn’t have the first idea how this thing had just appeared from below his keyboard.

“As the rightful victor, I claim my spoils,” the clam hopped down from his desk and slid closer towards John. “I claim,” the clam was almost touching John’s horror-stricken face now, “Free rent,” it boomed this last part.

“Free… what?”

“Rent!” The clam spoke with the air of a king, not the wayward mollusk it was, “Free rent, that is.”

“Free rent, where?” John started to think he had drank too much coffee, that maybe this was a hallucination.

The clam snapped the tip of his nose.

“Ow! What the—”

“Here, you dimwit. This place you call home,” the clam released John’s nose. “It won’t be anything like martial law, don’t worry. Think of it like we are partners, a marital agreement of sorts.”

Realization dawned on John. This clam, it must have been a manifestation of all his typos, though, he didn’t much appreciate it none too discreetly using marital and martial. He had only mistyped that once, once, and this clam mocked him for it.

“Okay, it’s a dream, John, calm down,” he said the words aloud, decidedly to himself instead of his new shell-bound companion.

“Oh, that’s good, John. Can’t mistype if you say the word aloud, can you?”

“What?” John trailed off, realizing he was still being mocked. Then, accepting he would just go along with this dream-hallucination ordeal. “What do you plan to do, while you’re here, ‘rent free’?”

“Dunno,” it looked around the cramped apartment, “but first things first.”

John raised an eyebrow quizzically.

“Desert!”