Writer's Block by Dylanna Fisher for Story Inkorporated
There's a curse that comes for the inspired and has come for the inspired since any of us can remember. Ever since the moment a word was spoken with passion, instead of necessity or desperation, they've hungered for us. We were something new and they grew a taste for the passionate word. The words dripping with even the most subtle of emotions brought them from the deepest corners of the universe with gnawing hunger. Buried in dark crevices, these demons hid in this world's infancy as imagination grew and inhibitions lessened. They waited in the shadows. The inspiration had come and it was time to feed.
These creatures of sorrow haunt those with stories running in their veins, with narrations choking their throats until they're released out their tongue. Their inspired victims run with ink in their veins, with letters pressed against their wrists, with pens and keyboards in weapon hilts, with sentences draped around their neck like gothic diamonds. With tales streaming behind them wherever they go, there is no way to run from them. The words trail behind us like a shooting star.
Feasting on all that brings life to the storyteller, these parasitic demons feel no remorse only vindictive gluttony. Nobody is safe from the plague, for there is no warning, no glimmer of premonition, no sense of foreboding. Not until it is too late. You don't notice it as it starts to spread, subtle like a sprinkling rain amongst chalk. It comes in silent, dark, and indifferent. It arrives unannounced and leaves its prey ignorant, and blissful in their focus until it is too late. They stalk in the shadows. Waiting for the right time, for the right prey; We call it writer's block and it's the killer of ideas, the stagnation of creators, the ruin of all that it could be.
An ecstatic writer sits unknowingly staring at the screen waiting for the words to flow. She feels words begin to pour toward her fingertips, arriving from her muse, a kind of fairy godmother if you will of literature and inspiration, of prose and creativity. She steadies her fingers bracing for the words, but it's already come. She's already cursed. The potential of what could be lured it here to feed upon her inspiration. It’s here. As the hair on her neck stands on end, she strains to try to understand the reason for the lack of focus.
A cool breeze flows down her back.
She trembles feeling it behind her.
She can barely feel it but it’s there.
Its claws slowly pressing in below her shoulders and dragging down her back. Its breath gets heavier on her spine. Heavy and wet. Reaching deep past her arms, she feels the ideas being ripped from her very fingertips. The words right on the tip of her tongue are stolen. The demonic curse has staked its claim on all that belongs to her muse, draining the mana from its source.
More and more and more it takes and takes and takes.
It overpowers the writer's inspiration making it cower until finally retreating to a muse that has abandoned her patron.
The lights start to flicker, on and off, switching inspiration from a bright orb to a mere glow and then to shadowy dust. The light gets snuffed out by something that she can't quite see but can still feel. She can feel it feeding, feeding on the words, feeding on her story, feeding on her.
Darkness engulfs the room as it digs its claws in. The shadows dance against the wall, silhouetted by the glow of the computer screen.
With shadowy tendrils, they reach toward the wordless document as if mocking it showing the shifting and feeding of the creature. They move and moan around the room ooohing and ahhing at the empty word document on the screen, mocking the lack of words.
The demonic voice whispers, you could say it’s almost indescribable.
"it's okay, shhh, it's okay to merely be an audience,” The writer's block whispers in her ear, Voyeurism is overrated. It's just going to be bad anyway because you rushed it. Just stop trying. procrastination is intoxicating, isn't it?".
Then in tongues, it laughs and laughs.
They stared at each other before her eyes faded to grey. She stands up and stares toward the demon. She turns off her computer screen and walks out of the room. The demon laughs and laughs, all the while licking the inspiration of its stained claws.
It won another one.
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