The Horror Writers Tale


As I stare at the typewriter, the normal dead in the shell feeling I have melts, starting in my stomach. The impotent rage, at failing at that which had once come so easy, starts in the pit of my stomach, and ends in the tips of my fingers. Those fingers grab the hunk of metal sitting at the desk in front of me and throw it against the wall. I walk to a mirror and look inside the atramentous eyes of my unkempt face countenance and see a lack of spark, that flicker which had been driven my need to write and flourish.

I’m a horror writer. But I don’t know what to write anymore. All those stories which had made me millions and made me famous had started with my early family life: A maniacal father, a dead mother, a tormenting older brother, and comforting eldest brother. But the stories died with the people, they died one by one, leaving only memories. I should take a walk.

I tread outside into Kingslot, Maine; a town that influenced my writing almost as much as my family, yet this town too had failed to inspire now. I step up onto the curb across the street, walking downtown towards a certain bar, where a certain bartender knows which whiskey a certain writer favors these days. But a wind sweeps behind my back, followed by a deep thud, which resonates in the ground beneath my feet.

As I turn, the images I see shift like looking into a multiple mirrors face each other; I wonder if I’ve left this world. The world is a different place than the one I walked through. The sky is obscure and filled with absurd shapes of abominable elements, with corners, edges, and planes that shouldn’t exist. I walk through the street, in utter disbelief of the situation. Entities are roaming the streets, some loathsome to the point of physical illness, some so angelic and graceful that you weep at their brilliance.
Tall anthropomorphous figures similar to humans walk the streets, only these are easily 9 feet tall, and are in every color of the rainbow. Ashen and stern archangels streak across the sky, holding ancient weapons which I’ve not seen anywhere else, sabers with thousands of sharp edges, axes bigger than their owners, and fist sized spheres lined with points. “How can they be?” I wonder. Looking into their eyes was like experiencing that first day of summer, an exhale of relief so quiet, yet so great that it almost carried you away; this sigh seemed to irresistibly course through my lungs.
And then my eyes, which had drawn to the figures of fairness and wonder, now involuntarily creep towards the monsters of the oblivion. These creatures ranged in size and shape. Some crawl on 8 legs like a deranged evolution of an arachnid, their many eyes darting to and fro. Some are nebulous monstrosities not fit to be alive. As I observe one such monstrosity, I am horrified as I watch it roll over a rat like creatures with a beak, and absorb it!
I finally drag my eyes away from these characters and observe the settings in which I was in. I wasn’t where I had started; my feet had carried me. I am in a large labyrinth, walls so soaring; I cannot see the sky. I decide it is too dangerous to remain, and I set off to find where I had started. I witness many bloodcurdling sights as I run through the halls; degenerate Neanderthals teaching their young to club one another, decaying androids selling diminished humans for consumption. I pause to catch my breath after a minute, and glance through a doorway. In it lies a single rose of radiance standing in the middle of an empty, barren garden. I watch, sorrowful, as a petal falls off the rose, taking what seems centuries to drift, and float, and settle. I see that it only has a few petals left, some lay dead on the ground.
I can’t waste time though, I must continue, I must. I finally reach the place and there stands a wall with a door on it. I throw open the door with a picture of the earth on it. And I’m there, sitting in the middle of the street. I stroll home quietly, seeing no one. I walk in my house, pick up my typewriter gently, and sit typing for hours.