Fantasy Addictions

Writer's Block

The halls were quiet as we all sat down to eat. The food was, as usual, stail. It seemed to dissolve before it even hit your tongue. What little light the two remaining flashlights provided, didn't revile much. We'd been hiking though the same musty tunnels with no light for the past four days. So, on the occasion that you could see something through the dying lights, it was nothing but a grey wall. Bricks crammed together using a rocky paste, dripping trails of slimy green moss filled in every available crack, and a small trail of dirty water ran under your feet.

The hard part was that it wasn't just the five of us. We had hundreds of refugees with us. They needed our help. We were willing to give it, but they posed a whole new set of issues. Most of the time the biggest issue was a child that needed to be calmed, or a fight over food or supplies. Occasionally they bring greater stress that we could have released. It was normal to have some kind of issue, but today they were unusually quiet. It was unnerving how calm they had been all day. Looking out into the crowd, all you could see was a mass of moving shapes as they sat peacefully, eating there food.

Screams broke out. It was hard to tell if they were screams of pain or blood lust. They grew louder every second. Every refugee turned to find the source of the commotion, but it soon revealed itself. A man stood, his shape rising above the others, and he began to sprint through the thick cloud of people. Plowing through them like an enraged bull, he continued to decrease the distance between us. Finally with no warning he took a sharp turn, leaping over a mother and child, and finally slamming head first into the slick walls. It was so fast, it was almost like it was planned.

Turning on a light reviled the man, holding back fits of anger or pain with clenched teeth, and chanting under his breath. His symptoms wriggled up and presented themselves the second he could be seen. Half of hair had been pulled out, and judging by the amounts hidden in his adrenaline filled fist, he had pulled it himself. He stared back at all of us with bloodshot eyes surrounded by dark bags of skin. Sleep was a mystery to him, yet he was not awake. Constantly mumbling he rocked back and forth in the fetal position. Occasionally he would raise a hand as if he was about to catch something, then he would lose hope or motivation, and let it fall to the floor before wrapping it around his knees again.

Walking back over to some of the refugees I attempted to calm them. "Are you okay?" I asked.

"Yes." replied an elderly man. "What was that?"

I looked down at the floor wishing that he hadn't asked that question. "That was writer's block. A terrible illness that consumes its victim interly, intel they can no longer think straight. Letting the mind take over without the owner knowing. It gives them a completely obtainable goal, and makes it seem unimaginably hard to compleet. It's a slow working and terrible fate. The more it lingers, the worse it will become. It's best to be destroyed but very few know how or have the power to do so."

"It sounds terrible." the man confessed. "Is it contagious?"

Again another question I didn't want to answer. "Yes," I muttered. "It's is spread with words, but don't be alarmed. Only the mentally insane can catch it."