Short Stories

Ink

Ruby Taylor awoke five minutes before her alarm went off as she had done every morning before. She sat herself up on her bed and looked around to study her room. Everything was still there. The alarm clock was still on the nightstand. The computer was still resting in sleep mode on the desk across the room. The filing cabinet still sat in the corner next to it, with a stack of papers sitting in the tray ready for retrieval. On the other side, a bookshelf sat as it always did, lined with books and magazines accumulated over the years. On the top shelf was an organized collection of hundreds of assorted pens of varying style, function and quality in individually labeled, clear pencil boxes. To the right, in a black leather carrying case, was a recent purchase of hers and of her most prized possessions, a custom-ordered fountainpen. What had started out as a gentle exploration of the other aspects of penmanship had transformed into a collection bordering on obsession.

Although any writing utensil would functionally suffice for most purposes, Ruby's earlier schooling years emphasized practicality of thought and behavior alongside the more traditional subjects and life lessons, and as such, she spent many years pondering and reevaluating her opinions on the various tools available for the job. Crayons were for children. Markers made her skin crawl when she dragged their felt tips against the surface of her paper, and that's setting aside the fact that they bleed through most paper and sometimes even ruin the surfaces beneath the paper. Pencil, though quite cheap and long-lasting, fades rather quickly on the sheet and coats the hands of its wielder with the granular paint of graphite that only the Tin Man wouldn't notice. Blood's a painful biohazard. Paint not only takes forever to dry, but it also costs too much. And then there were pens.

Ink pens as a whole were the peak of practical in Ruby's eyes. They lacked the smear and dust of pencils while maintaining all of the benefits of it. Your average pen was cheap, effective, fast-drying and long-lasting. There had to be a reason why everyone on the planet except for your math teacher preferred pens for everything. And Ruby thought she could circumvent the whole problem with pens by simply not making mistakes. Or at least not admitting to them. Having come to that conclusion, she kept all of her forms and assignments in the filing cabinet in the corner so she could file the original copies of her work in an organized manner, pull them out when they became relevant and nearly due, and make as many copies of them as she figured she would need and produce draft after draft of her assignments until a complete and flawless final product was produced and ready to submitted. It was thanks to this meticulous editing and redrafting that she recently transitioned to completing every attempt at her math homework in pen.

Ruby stood up from the bed, put on her clothes, brushed her teeth and hair and moved over to the book shelf to select some pens and reading material for the day.

"A black one, a blue one, a red and a green one. And..." She looked over at the leather case on the right. She proceeded to grab it, wrap it in a towel and put it in her backpack.

Ruby held the object of her greatest desire between the tips of her thumb and middle fingers on her righthand every time she wrote. Whether it was print or cursive, any writing was an act of great and enduring pleasure for Ruby as long as she was able to gently grip the ergonomic barrel of the black and gold laser-etched fountain pen that bore her name in cursive on the cap. She had gotten a temporary job as a life guard after graduating from high school, and although she intended to learn as many life lessons as she could while saving for college, she spent over half of her first paycheck on this pen. She put it gently back into its box after each use, and she always relished the next time they could work together afterward.

"I never write with anything else, "Ruby declared proudly as she ran her fingers across the leather-bound carrying case that held her pen before putting it away in her purple backpack.