The Art of Writing

“Write it.” 

“I’m…trying…”

Your voice is hoarse and weak. You don’t remember when you last drank. Or ate. Or slept. But adrenaline propels your fingers against the keyboard. You suspect the sun has set, but you daren’t look up and check.

They will be waiting if you do.

“He isn’t going fast enough,” one of them whines. “I’m hungry!”

“We have waited too long. We must be released.”

“He will finish soon,” you feel her icy glare on the back of your neck, and suppress a shudder, “if he knows what’s good for him.”

If you look out of the corner of your eye, you can almost see them. They are vague shapes – now, at least, although you don’t know what they may become – and more like ghosts than people, seething in the shadowy corners of the room. It is hard to believe you used to spend hours sketching their faces, imagining how they would walk – how they would speak. Now you wish you had never lifted your pen.

You try to thrust these thoughts away, to focus on your craft and not them. She walked purposefully towards the…what was the word you were looking for again? You pause, fingers tensing above the keys, bone-white with fear.

“Write!”

“I have to think! Please – just for a minute!”

Claw-like nails rake across your face – not entirely corporeal, but a wound begins to grow all the same. A solitary drop of blood falls onto the keyboard, blooming like a rose. The shadowy hand swipes it away with disgust.

“We will not wait. We need to come out – now!”

They are growing restless, even more so than usual. She leans over the cluttered desk – your protagonist, the one who once made you so proud. Her voice is so close to your ear you feel the hairs on the back of your neck rise.

“Free us. Bring us to life, and we will haunt you no more.”

It all seemed easy once, didn’t it? Writing was not a chore, but a reward. Crafting a new character seemed so exciting back then. You remember what it was like – the novelty, the giddy thrill. The book became your world from the moment you woke up, to the way it lingered in your dreams. Every time you saw your friends, you found yourself chatting away about the latest plot twist. What would they think of you now? You stopped seeing any friends weeks ago. You had to focus on your writing, didn’t you? 

When they started to appear. 

At first you thought you were going mad. You tried to distance yourself from the book, keeping the library door locked and staying away. They liked that even less. They began to follow you everywhere, whispering in your ear, scratching at your skin, pulling on your clothes, until eventually, you gave them what they craved. Then there was nothing else left: just you and the book. Once, this was what you dreamt of.

But now the very thought makes you weak. So weak…

Hours pass. Somewhere outside of the library, your phone rings. You ignore it. Whoever it is will call back. Of course, you will ignore it then as well. 

The words are slowing down. The story needs to end, but you cannot work out how. You don’t know the characters anymore; their minds are closed to you. It is as though the more solid they become in the outside world, the further they drift from the figures on the page. You read the sentence you have just written. 

Distantly, she heard the sound of footsteps, with every moment coming closer…and closer…

You read it again. And again. Your vision blurs at the sight of it.

Eventually, your fingers stop. This time, they do not restart.

“I cannot continue.” Your voice is thick with tears. “I – I do not know what to write.”

There is a deadly pause. You would flinch if you had the energy. Then they whisper amongst themselves, in voices more like a storm wind than words.

“Well then,” she purrs, “it seems we no longer require your services.”

You open your mouth to speak, but there is no time for you to speak. You feel those sharp nails pierce your neck.

And when you slump down onto the keyboard, you feel nothing at all.

Still, they stand there, watching you, as your blood seeps across the desk.