Writ he, Nevermore

An author becomes entangled in the quest of giving his life meaning.

  He sits alone in the corner, typing away at his typewriter. The ghosts are gathering in the darkening room behind him, but he does not turn to face them. He is resigned to the fate he deserves.

  The clickity-clack wears his nerves thin as his fingers fly across the worn letters which look up at him from the keys below. The sound of his madness drives him further into the black horror of his own consciousness. He can feel the void in his soul, as it grows and grows. But he also knows that this void is no natural occurrence, no. This gaping space in his chest is a hole he’s clawed away with his own ten fingers, he feels with one hand as the other continues its dance across the keys. He feels into the hole inside his chest and his fingers touch the sharp shards of broken ribs. Ah, so that must’ve been the crunching sound that had earlier in the night thrown off the train of his thought.

  Beyond that he feels tissues unidentifiable to an uneducated man such as himself. Muscle he guesses, the stringy noodles must be veins, perhaps tendons. Do tendons reside in a human chest? His now gory hand reaches farther into the void, nothing else really to notice besides the pulsing of his two lungs. Though they seem to be drawing in very little breath.

  His hand reaches up to his face, Ah, just as I suspected, he thinks. I haven’t been breathing at all. He’s been puffing away at the cheap cigarettes for hours and doubts he’s stopped taking drags off the cancer sticks long enough to take a gulp of oxygen.

  The same hand reaches to the pack that had been full just before he’d sat down to the typewriter and finds it empty. Damn, he thinks. Last one in the pack.

  The hand returns to join its companion in the dance that is creation, or as near to creation as the mere mortal that enjoys self-torment can achieve. The hand who has remained at its post while the other ventured off to explore now takes its leave, grabbing the mushy apple on the paper plate next to the typewriter and raises it to his face. Dexterously grabbing the cigarette long enough to take a bite, chew, and swallow before replacing everything to as it had been, sans one bite from the apple.

  The eyes wander from the paper before him and out the window to his left. It looks like the sun is setting. Setting? He thinks. Odd. Normally the sun must rise before it can again set.

  Without ceasing his creating, the writer leans down at looks at the watch attached to his wrist, Boy howdy, he thinks. I’ve missed a couple sunrises. The date has changed from the seventh to the twelfth. He’s been banging away at the typewriter for nigh on five days without ceasing.

  The cigarette in his mouth is down to the filter so the adventurous hand wanders up to it, tossing it aside in the room before reaching into the bottom drawer of his desk, though his eyes remain fixed on the page at hand. The hand reaches into the drawer, longingly searching for the boxes that should be right there. But finds space instead.

  His eyes wander from the page down to the drawer as his other hand continues typing. Where’s his stockpiled cancer?

  He looks to the desk before him, and sees four empty cartons strewn across the desktop, and more than a few empty packs lying around the typewriter and on the ground beside the desk. Damn, he thinks looking down at his hand. You think you can run to the store for me friend? I seem to be out of bullets to play Russian roulette with. He cackles with his ruined lungs and throat at his own joke. His hand ignores the joke and joins its brother in the ceaseless work.

  The writer looks back down to his work, his beautiful creation. Oh, how proud he is of this manuscript! It will be the talk of the world. The whole world will remember him for this work of art. This beautifully crafted key to knowledge.

  His grin is not fake. The world will not forget him, and he is happy, because if the world will not forget him he has not wasted his time. Wasted his life.

  He feels the ghosts behind him as he takes another bite of the sustaining apple. They peer into his decaying soul, and murmur softly to themselves. They seem sad.

  He continues to ignore them. He knows what they are, they are the accusers, here to make sure he suffers for the crimes he has committed while writing his masterpiece. His family has all starved while he’s been writing. He locked them away so that they could not distract him from his musings. He can smell them from where he is now. But then, he didn’t mean for them to starve, he had lost track of the time was all.

  The writer continues to write, ignoring the bite of guilt. Then there’s his lovely wife, so beautiful and pure. She too lies dead, putrefying on the shag carpet of his office. He’d needed ink for his typewriter, and she had been telling him it was wrong to lock the children and the dog away.

  He’d figured that blood could work as ink, and that two birds with one stone was a better deal than listening to her nag him about mere moral obligation.

  He knows he should not have killed her, but he needed the world to remember him. Needed to finish this masterpiece before him, the masterpiece that was nearly complete now. He grins again, ignoring the ghosts as they beg and plead with him.

  Damn them all, he whispers.

  His typing becomes fevered as the final words come to him like an epiphany from some dark angel passing by through the night sky. Gifting all who would listen with the knowledge to unlock doors to the afterlife and to open thought to a whole new plane of reason and being.

  He takes another bite of the apple, his eyes trailing from the page to the fruit in his hand.

  Briefly he recoils; this is no apple in his hand. It’s a human heart! His eyes widen in horror, Well, something had to sustain me, he thinks. His hand replaces the heart upon the paper plate and reaches to his chest. So that’s why he’d dug the hole.

  He is momentarily saddened about the parting of this instrument that has been with him since before birth. But the feeling passes, he no longer has a heart to contain such trivial things as emotion.

  The ghosts continue to cry out to him, but he persists in ignoring them.

  His hand replaces itself upon the keys and continues stroking the words from the machine. His grin splits his face in two, his eyes water with pride, with joy.

  The final words come easily and he stops after two simple words. The and end. Oh, how he cannot wait to show this script to the masses. Oh! How they will cherish his name forevermore.

  He sobs with joy at his work, openly and unabashedly. The world is finally right, the world can finally be at peace. He feels the ghosts closing in, but let them come, he is not afraid. They cannot touch his legacy now. Let guilt come, let death take his soul away to the lower places. The world will always remember.

  As the specters begin to grasp at him he reaches out to take the manuscript. He longs to carry it with him to the grave.

  But his hands, they clutch at nothing. He looks through the tears coating his eyes unto the typewriter, where is the book?

  He gasps, the sudden intake of breath exploding his ruined lungs. Damn, he thinks to himself. I’ve forgotten the paper.

  The world will never remember his name, and he is more terrified at this prospect than he is at the thought of the waiting apparitions who now clutch at his arms and throat.

  He tries desperately to escape their hands, but he is too weak and simply falls from his chair to the floor.   Before he can regain his feet the ghosts are upon him, tearing him to pieces.

Author's Note

Critical review is appreciated

Reviews

[Brandon]

Ooh, Poe-esque. I would be so pissed if I used blood for ink and forgot the paper. I'd let the ghosts eat me too. Otherwise I'd have to go find more blood. (Sequel? (Half-eaten writer stumbles into a gas station to buy more cigarettes and brutalizes the clerk, capturing his blood in a Route 44 cup for later...yeah.)) I really enjoyed it! It was good ol' Goosebump/Twilight Zone fun. Bravo, sir.