Man ... the Elements by Dan Bieger

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SUMMARY: A submission for the October flash fiction contest.

Harry sat at the end of the now abandoned pier, his lawn chair continuously creaking from the breeze and the wood rotting beneath him. He had only a few more days to indulge this whimsy as the signs at the other end announced the imminent destruction of this place.
In his hands, the final draft of his great 21st century novel, the one that would make his name a household word, the one that examined the nature of civilization, the pros and cons associated with the various institutions societies use to organize themselves, the multitude of bureaucracies already tested in the history of people, the explanations for the ineffable presences suspected to exist by folk here and then throughout history, and last but not least, why it is that you always must make at least three trips to the hardware store no matter the scope or breadth of a home improvement/repair project. At forty-two pages, it was the most ambitious project of his life.
His purpose this morning was a final edit. Once completed, he intended to head for the nearest commercial mailing shop, have it copied a hundred times, stuffed into the mailers he'd already prepared, and then send his hope-for-life off to 97 publishers, editors, and reviewers, intentionally ignoring all their prescriptions for successful submissions. He reasoned that one of the ninety-seven would not adhere to their guidelines, sample his effort, and be so enthralled by the beauty of his prose, the seminal ideas of his theses, and the sheer efficacy of the wisdom the novel represented that immediate contract and publication must inevitably ensue.
Due to the morning breeze he'd anticipated, he'd punched holes in the document and confined it in a 3-ring binder assuring him protection from blowing pages. True, the edges tended to flap, but every form of refuge has its price, right?
Thirty pages in, contentment spreading from the lack of required corrections, the man began to revel in a certain amount of pride in what he had wrought. Turns of phrase such as "man needs to feel grand feelings in order to think grand thoughts, generate grand works, achieve grand results.." seemed to him to catch the tenor of his times. He was certain they would resonate with the talking heads on the cable news channels. What higher recognition can a writer aspire to?
Then, after clamping down on an errant page 31, things began to happen. At first, he was simply annoyed but as the events continued, even escalated, he became angry. A short distance from anger he discovered absolute terror. All that he dreamed, all that he had planned, all that he written seemed about to crash upon him crushing his spirit, perhaps even crushing the life from his frame.
It was a duplicated comma that began the assault, nothing unusual, a common peril of self-taught hunt-and-crunch typing skills. He marked it for elimination, a little blue circle drawn around the offending punctuation. The unease increased two lines later with a split infinitive. He'd been educated to believe that splitting infinity was a task best left to the gods.