Young Writers Society

Adam stared at a piece of lined notebook paper through dry, reddened eyes. The pen he held in his right hand was coated in a generous layer of sweat. It felt like he had been sitting there, staring at the blank paper for hours. His eyes didn’t dare abandon the paper on his desk, for he could see the shadows crawling in the outer limits of his vision. Blackened shapes illuminated by his small, dim, desktop lamp. His body yearned for sleep, but his mind begged for stimulation. Sleeping wasn’t an option. The shadows ordered him to write a story. They told him that if he stood from his chair and went to sleep before writing them a story he would never wake up again. Ideas and topics hung stagnant in his head. Eyelids forced open by desperation. The room, he noticed, had an orange tint emitted by the lamp. The bookshelves and drawers were weathered and worn. The wood surfaces visibly aged and rough with gaps between the wood grains. 

The lamp served as the one source of light in the center of the room, sitting on the corner of his desk. He could see the dark shapes all around him. Moving around with an eerie saunter, swarming him. The longer they waited, the more noticeably agitated they became. Adam could feel them screaming at him, telling him to put words on the paper as if a sentence would set them free from purgatory. As if they were all cursed souls begging for mercy. There were a number of shadows running in circles around Adam. They weren’t all the same. One of them was bigger, and darker than the rest. This shadow was also the angriest of the group. It growled in frustration and the sound made Adam cringe in fear every time he heard it. Fear pulsated through Adam, from his very deepest core, all the way to the outer surface of his being. Sweat collected as anxiety boiled higher and higher.

Eventually, Adam found a way to turn the fear and agony into courage out of desperation. He stood from the chair and screamed at the shadows. “Stop doing this!” An instant later the growling shadow shoved him back down into the chair and said, “Write it!” in a furious yell. Adam’s elbows hit his desk and his head landed in his arms, sobbing. “Stop doing this to me.” The shadow turned his back and limped away as if in agreement. Adam looked again at the once blank sheet of paper through clouded eyes. The paper now read “Shadow Story” in crudely drawn cursive on the top of the page. Not a topic Adam had chosen, but rather, the shadow’s doing. They wanted him to write a poem about them. How they were indefinitely real, and only operated in order to spread their own misery among the living. “I wont!” Adam shot in rebellion. A loud boom thundered in the room, as if every stationery item had been shoved with massive force all at once. Adam knew that the shadows were upset and getting angrier but he couldn’t let them win. Not yet. He knew very well that this would be his ultimate demise, but desperation forced him to grasp scraps of false hope. He stood from his chair in a calm manner, and approached one of the bookshelves. Adam felt the shadows staring at him with malice from all directions. He grabbed an old bible with a worn, leather cover and sat back down at his place by the desk. He set the book down and whispered a prayer in his thoughts. The growling shadow’s eyes glowed a fiery red, filled with pure hatred. Adam finished his prayer with a vocalized, “Amen”, and wrote two words on the paper. “THE END”. His trembling hands ruined his penmanship, giving it a font of fear. Adam reached into his desk drawer, retrieving his old .45 pistol, and with a hollow point slug, his story of fear, anger, misery, desperation and suffering was ended.