Sinister Tales

Inspiration

Inspiration

2016 © All Rights Reserved

When a writer feels low on inspiration, he must find a way to get it back.

It's been a few months. Ninety seven days to be exact. My pen hadn't met the paper, leaving behind a trail of ink for close to a hundred days. Not a thought or motivation had crossed my blocked mind. It felt like it was a chore to push the words through my brain, like I was dragging my legs through cement and I could feel the material hardening, soon making it impossible to leave the place I had been put in. The decline in my mental stability had been teetering, swaying from sane to complete bat shit crazy. There was soon to be no middle ground, only black and white, the small gray that had been spared fading by the second.

"When's the last time you wrote?" My therapist would ask me, the question infuriating in itself. She didn't know the frustration she put me through as the quiet madness would take over in my mind from the simple inquiry.

I'd mumble out the same few words "I don't know" before changing the subject all the while imagining taking the pens that sat neatly in the cup holder on her perfectly disorganized mess of a desk then stabbing them into her body. Her arms, legs, neck, cheeks. I didn't hate her, far from it. She was the only person to understand where I was coming from, but she could see my decline over the months, making me want to hurt her. For the fear of her knowing too much.

It all started from the day she told me, "You're hiding behind a mask but that mask is fading. You can't hide who you are." She cared and I would picture killing her for it, for caring so much to notice my change. The therapy session was clear as day. My focus would fade in and out, but the only thing to keep my full attention was that damn clock. Oh god, that stupid clock. The constant ticks of every second made me want to rip it off the wall, smashing it into the smallest pieces. I could then make someone swallow the broken shards. My eyes wandered up to my therapist's eyes at the thought, I didn't like to have direct eye contact, afraid she'd see through me, see me for the monster I was becoming. The fear washed away as I thought about her washing down the glass of the clock that made me feel like I was coming closer to losing my sanity down her throat.

It has been ninety seven days. Today I'm breaking my silence.

Sighing, Wallace dropped the pen he was writing with. It was the first time in a long time he had the courage to even write, even if it was just a journal entry. His index finger and thumb rubbed both of his eyes, the weariness from the day starting to get to him.

Closing the book, he left the pen next to it and laid in bed expecting for sleep to come easily. I wrote! Inside his mind he would scream, the words echoing as if he yelled from the top of a mountain. I should be able to sleep, I wrote. What else am I to do? The last words sounding pathetic and depressing instead of angry inside of his mind; his empty non-motivated mind. His body was tired, while the mind was awake like an excited child. Only, he wasn't in any way, shape, or form happy. All of the jitters he felt inside of his body came from the anxiety of not being able to hide who he truly was. The thought of showing the deep, dark desires he held inside for so long to the people he cared about was sickening; making him want to vomit into the bin next to his work station.

The warmness of the blanket shielded the coldness that begged to come in, his body relaxed as he focused for the first time in a long time. Tears welled in his eyes as he could think clearly about the nasty thoughts that crawled throughout his body like a worm tearing it's way through an apple. Only in his mind, the apple was discolored and rotten while the worm was a mere skeleton of what it used to be.

Images passed through his head, he could see each one vividly as if he was watching it in front of him. A movie of the darkest parts of his brain, a part he wish could take out himself. If it was possible Wallace knew he'd take the sharpest object he could find, sharpen it even more then cut into his head and slice the evil out of his poor brain. It was a memory of him cooking for his family while they all laughed and joked together in the living room, only the memory was changed. He served the food neatly on plates and placed them on the glass table. Before announcing dinner was ready, he sprinkled a powder substance into the food they would eat. In his mind, he couldn't control what he thought and the feeling filled him with even more anxiety than he was already experiencing. "No!" Wallace screamed at himself but it felt like a nightmare that spiraled out of control and there was nothing he could do about it, "What are you doing, man?" His screaming turned into a cry. Back in the memory, he mixed in the powder on everyone's plates except for his own. Then he announced to his family the food was ready. And like hungry wolves they demolished the food in front of their faces while he took his time, his piercing eyes not looking away from the family he loved and cared about swallowing what would soon kill them.