Scary Story: Pen and Ink

Light a new Marlboro. Put pen to paper and stop. The idea, the fragile eggshell that is thought,
is like spit up. If you force it, it hurts. So don’t do it like that. I catch the bottom of my lip between my
teeth and rethink my rethought thoughts. Hash it up a couple of times and sling it out like-knock-like-knock-
like hash.The beginning of a good story begins with being afraid to continue, and that I am. Knock. Knock.

The knock is real. I stand and smooth my dress with a soft tug. Sweaty palms cling to fabric,
cling to legs that step with a swish-swish to the door. Bare feet grip wood but prepare to leap back as I
nearly tear the door off the hinges—goddamnit!

There is no one there. There never is.

Paranoia. The hair on the back of my neck salutes it while I peer into the hall; back, forth, eyes
absorbing the empty dark of an open hall. The wood cries as I set the door back in place.
There is no Boogeyman going, “Boo!” There is no one but me and an undone thought inside the
dank 2nd story room of 120 Wren Street, and there is no one that could’ve knocked. I take my seat.
Pen fills the cavity of a bloody mouth, tongue bitten in fear. The pen itself is dented into the
pattern of a row of bottom teeth.
I reach past my desk and turn the radio on. With a static groan, the tin box jolts to life with a
jaunty pop tune that puts my nerves on edge, and I rip the plug from the wall with a snap as I stand,
satisfied.

Thank God, the night is done.

What time is it? Heat, heat everywhere. I toss the jersey sheets aside and swing bare legs from
the steel frame, making the springs scream. Oppressive warmth forms a wall around me; hands groping
my body. It is yet morning, no sign of dawn. I expect nothing more than the worst: that the world will
spiral around me into a dark abyss like a toilet and be gone. I hold back that fear. My fingers creak as they stretch from one key to the next, and I am word sick, I am plotblocked as I try to write today. There comes a cool breeze at the back of my neck where the hair has risen and is twisted in a bun, so I stop.

Don’t stop for me. He’s syrupy sweet, spinning a sticky Southern drawl between the walls and
me. I’ll just look over your shoulder…I like what you do. Who are you? I know damn well, but still I ask, a rhetorical curiosity.

I am a purveyor, investor in such works as fine as yours. He spread, sprawled like wet ink along
the frame of my bed, a sobering stare penned across his face dotted with two eyes that lay pensive in
his skull. I stop my pen and took a breath, prepared myself for what I thought this conversation would go: a back and forth tug of war for my immortal soul. It was cliché’, it was a tired tale, but I assumed it would happen.And how may I help you?

It’s not helping me, it’s helping yourself. Or even better, the world. He stood, walking in lazy
circles from wall to wall. As you may know, I have it all. I need nothing from you. But what I want is
your words.

In my mind, I thumbed through all the things I had written. Pages and pages of diaries and
notes, short stories and thoughts, sketched into tattered napkins or opened books. I thought of the
words, the characters and symbols. They all would be his. You could rewrite the world from its preface
to epilogue. And you’d be a hero for doing it. History would become your story and your story could
become life.

Pleased with his pitch, he sat back in the bed, crossed his ankles and waited for me.
I waited for myself, my mind to catch up with my mouth so I could speak. I stammered, scared.
There was a word in my mind, but not enough of a response to tell how I felt. I opened my mouth and
turned to the side. The click of my jaw was the only sound inside the dank 2nd story room of 120 Wren
Street.

Isn’t it about class? Education? Spreading the word?Class, perhaps. Education, certainly. Spreading the word? He tapped his chin. I guess you could say that’s already been done,” He stopped to stoop over my shoulder with a spreading, liquid sneer. Because you know who I am, you know how am. But I guess all propaganda could use a reboot.

My pen is scratching, scribbling, drawling words across the paper as I struggle not to notice the
literal devil on my shoulder.

So what am I writing?

I looked back down at the notebook and watched my hand move, watched words form. My head
ached and my mouth went dry as I did it. The heat had became humid, lazy, drowsy, and wrapped
around me like a blanket as I slumped against the desk.
I was more inspired than I had ever been, granted, beyond the physical discomfort.
Sweat wound its way down my forehead, steaming in droplets on the page. I drew in a long
sniff, a cry caught in my throat as I began to cook from the inside out.

What do I call you? I trembled. Lucifer? Lucy? Beelzebub?
Names, formalities, unimportant.
I caught his eye once, a constellation of glittering stars in an empty socket. He curled his lip in
what I assumed to be a smile, craning over me to catch a glimpse of my sodden writing.
It’s been said the devil himself is not a man with a red cape and sharpened horns. Additionally,
I’ve read that he could be anything that I would want him to be. I guess since I didn’t know what I
wanted, I didn’t know what I thought, he had appeared as all of the above. His charred black flesh left
ash crumbled among the artifacts of my bed. His voice was sweet and Southern, something I’d clearly
heard before. I couldn’t help but find comfort in the familiar sense of not knowing anything at all. I held
his gaze.

Write, write! He crowed. The world can’t wait to hear your story.
My story or yours, I mused, returning my pen back to its place.
I glanced up at the clock. The bedroom had been dark for hours, the candle by the bed spread
across the wooden table. At my place, a book sat wrapped in parchment paper, bound in cut string. A
novel, fresh off the butcher’s block and penned in blood. I’d address it in the morning.
It wasn’t where I left it by the morning. The sun cut across the floor, bathing me in heat once
again, but nothing as searing as the fire I had come to know. The tiny apartment had come cold. I wiped
my hands across the wood a couple of times, searching the room for my visitor. He had come and gone,
and the words with him.

I thought no one head read it, until the words became the subject of debate. I heard the book
often quoted as a justification for murder of someone’s brother.
I can’t say anyone knows what words are mine, what words are his. But I see people reading
them in the streets, murmuring to one another about their clever sins that they’d kept under wraps for so
long. And every once in a while, while they read the book in church, I’d catch his curious eyes,
following mine as I glanced up and tucked our stories away.

The Bible still sells well to this day

Sabrina Nicole is a writer, student, and entrepreneur, born and raised in Nashville, TN. She can generally be found creating with her laptop, Macbook Miller

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