Writing Scraps

Appendix. Write or Die! | Aborted Draft

In my despair that night, I rose from the seat and was about to chuck it to the devils. I determined to leave the office, push the story and the deadline and the sheer futility of the struggle from my mind and go to sleep. Then at the last moments before I went to sleep in my bed, when I was about to drift into the lala land of dreams, I had a premonition.

I thought about the stipulation attached to the failure to complete and submit the story before the deadline, the thing about meeting personally with the Creeper. What does that mean? At this point, I considered the possibilities and tried to make sense of it. Then it just popped in there—write a warning to keep others like myself from falling victim to this horrendous scam.

That night, I knew what to write to complete the challenge. I'd write a horror story warning people about a certain challenge that went around to unsuspecting online writers to steal their souls. The idea worked, crazy as it sounded. When the creative juices got flowing again, I knew I had at least that much to start with.

Then, as my vision clouded over at the brink of sleep, my mom appeared in shadow at the foot of my bed and told me that I had a dentist's appointment on October 31, the same day as the deadline! Her exact words escaped me, but the general meaning had a profound effect on my mind. This must've shaken me more than I knew, because I woke up not remembering anything about the nightmare accept what my parents told me. That I was flailing about, rumpling the bedsheets, and screaming not to go to the dentist.

That morning, I woke up to my parents shaking me out of sleep, asking me if I was okay. I told them I was all right, but they didn't seem to believe me. They looked shaken about something I said during the night, something that had escaped me till they reminded me about it, something about a dentist's appointment.

"Yeah, I think you told me about that, Mom," I said. "But does it have to be on October 31? I mean, come on, on Halloween of all the days in the year to pick a dentist's appointment?"

My parents looked at each other, perplexed.

Mom said, "Corey, what are you talking about? I never told you about a dentist's appointment."

"Wait, what?" At first I was relieved, but then I was confused. "I could have sworn you were telling me I had one."

"I would've remembered telling you about that, but I don't. If you had a dentist's appointment, I would've told you about it during your writing session last night and made sure you wrote down the time and date."

Her words left me silent, stuck between relief and confusion and a little of something else that I later found out to be dread. If my mom never told me about a dentist's appointment, who did? Was that shadow my mom telling me I had an appointment? Or was it someone else?

"Corey," Mom said, looking worried this time, "are you feeling okay?"

At that moment, I couldn't answer her. Dark thoughts ran through my head, as I tried to grapple with the circumstances around that night just before I went to sleep. In the end, I couldn't do it. Thought left me wanting in brain power at the moment.

Either way, my mom's words had the same effect on my mind; it obliterated all thought of what I was gonna write the next day. Without even knowing it, my mom had given me the bombshell of my life! And without comprehending the full extent of this bombshell, her words screwed me over like nobody's business!

* * *

Days passed, and nights lingered, while the writing suffered, because my thoughts were absorbed in the circumstances of that Saturday night. Why was I was due for a dentist's appointment when I didn't have one in waking life? Why would I see someone impersonating my mom? Most important, why was that appointment on the spookiest night of the year? I hadn't the slightest clue beyond a nervous sense of confusion. But on further reflection through the ensuing nights of writer's block, I noticed some coincidences about my parents' actions that hinted at the horrors to come.