The Pen

Midweek Pick-Me-Up #1

The pen hadn't been worth stealing. It barely cried ink. And ink was what she needed the most, not one tear but an ocean of tears. She put the pen aside and watched it and wondered if it was cursed. Nothing in her life was going according to what the book said. Miserable. Depressed. Hurting. Midnight. Suicide. She was fighting indestructible shadows who yielded squeamish words, faces without flesh, burrowed deep inside her marrow.

But she possessed the most powerful pen! The one to rule them all, the one pen to find them, to bring them all and in the darkness bind them. The pen had once belonged to Shakespeare, though dressed in a feather. Dickens had found the pen in the gutter. The Brothers Strugatski had passed the pen between each other. (And for them Monday always started on Saturday). The pen had howled in the hand of Jack London; built Kafka’s castle; and had Bradbury for a lover; the one, the same pen Hans Christian Anderson finally relinquished to the Snow Queen. 

Then, why was the pen so stubborn in her hand? It screamed and pulled away from her as if she was a demon who wished to abuse it, and run with it to a paper mill, and jam it in a keyhole, and puncture the paper with the cursed pen, and write on every tree that ever birthed paper until pine needles turned into pens and started to write their own story. Her story.

In her anguish, she admitted the pen wasn’t worth stealing. She must craft another, out of her own bone and blood. She would compose a story, a tale for the ages, and she would use her skin for paper. She unburdened herself and cast the pen in the volcano and there stood J.R. Tolkien who said, You can now go back home and write about whatever your heart desires.

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You have just read the series Midweek Pick-Me-Up. Always on Wednesdays. Always written to a prompt (in bold), in 5 minutes or else the screen goes blurry. An edit here, an edit there, and now it’s yours to share.

Follow the pen,

Bogdan