Fearful Things

Stories

It started out as a light buzzing in my head. A quickening of my heart beat. It was exciting, the thought of creating something new. To take what I love from the stories around me and roll it into an amalgamation greater than the sum of its parts. When the thought took root, all I could do was let it bloom. My eagerness seemed to fuel me, becoming the energy I needed to turn on my computer and realize my dreams. They had always been there, at times consuming me to the point of losing sight of what's around me. But now I could make them real.

I typed away, letting the images that plagued me melt into words on a screen. I wrote of hope and happiness. My heart trembled at the plot's climax as the characters struggled, and it soared when they overcame it and reached their happily ever after. The story was short, but it was full of love. I couldn't be happier when I finished it.

The buzzing came back. Another story, more characters to fall in love with. It felt as if I'd explode if I didn't get them out. New ideas distracted me in my daily life and kept me up at night. I was at my screen any chance I got in order to properly express the feelings and people inside of me. They became realer and realer each time—I'd come to a roadblock in the story only to find my fingers deftly typing out the perfect solution. As if it was writing itself. Dialogue and decisions came naturally like the characters knew exactly who they should be before I did. I marveled at the wonder of inspiration.

I didn't notice when love turned into obsession. I tapped the keys hard enough for my fingers to ache. The plastic letters cracked under the pressure, and my keyboard became rows of indistinguishable buttons. My hands never slowed, as if they no longer needed my mind to keep up. Writing became a thrill that the most hardened adrenaline junky would kill for. Finishing a plot was a religious euphoria. I lost count of the pages I wrote, the number of endings that flowed into new beginnings. But it wasn't enough.

It wasn't real enough.

I turned to paper and pen. I scratched out line after line until my hands were permanently stained black with ink. Each scrawling word was another breath of life, another heart beat for my characters. They would die if I stopped, I didn't want them to die, I needed them—

The words snapped something in me. What was happening to me? This wasn't normal. How had things gotten to this point? How long ago had I written that first story? What had it been about again? I couldn't remember. And that scared me.

So I tried to stop. I put the pen down and pushed my chair back from my desk. It didn't take long for the buzzing to return. It was warm and enticing, my love for creation. Still, I tried to ignore it. But the buzzing turned to an itching, turned to a scratching, turned to clawing. Not writing became painful. The stories beat against my skull in desperation, and an intense pressure built up behind my eyes until I thought they'd balloon from their sockets. I could hear them screaming, gasping for the breath of existence. I realized I no longer had a choice. I picked up my pen.

I stopped working, sleeping, eating, my eyes bloodshot and blurry from the light of a single lamp in my pitch black room that reeked of death. The words flooding from my hands and mouth turned dark. I wrote about fear and anxiety, monsters breathing down your neck, shadows that crept from the corners of your room and welled up from your throat so that you were suffocating, filling your mouth and nose, bleeding from your eyes—

I hated these new stories. They came from within me, but they weren't me. Something different, using my love and twisting it. Maybe they didn't have a choice either. They couldn't stop, and neither could I. They spilled from my brain and invaded whatever part of me they could find. I felt fingers tearing at the back of my throat, legs bulging at my stomach, teeth sinking into my heart. Words gave them shape, shape gave them meaning, and without it they fought for escape from inside me. I wrote to give them that form, but there were too many. I ran out of money. Then I ran out of paper.

Now I carve my stories into the walls. My pens and pencils broke, so I use a knife. Paper could never compare—this is physical, an actuality, an undeniable fact chiseled directly into our reality. It forces the characters out, and I achieve a moment of solace before a dozen more replace them. I slam my head against the wall, but it only makes the wailing worse. I write until every inch of my room is covered in fantastical scripts of unthinkable evil. Sometimes I don't even recognize the languages my hands create.

When the very last word fits into the smallest corner, I stop. The stories scream, and beat, and claw, and rip. I puke. A black, oily goo pours from my mouth and splatters onto the ground. The slime moves, collecting together to form an undulating, breathing mass of living matter. I bring my foot down on it with all of the strength left in my body. It feels like stomping on a rat. The thing shrieks and falls still. I turn the blade against myself, hoping that flesh and blood are real enough. But it's too late. They've found a way out.

And the writhing beneath my skin tells me they're no longer satisfied with words.