Bloodscribe

A macabre case of writer's block torments a man of letters.

They would not give the man a pen.

He banged on walls, stomped on floor, shrieked at roof, wept on chair and still they did not come. The man wished only for a pen, a quill with which to write what he knew, a tool by which he might release the phantoms in his mind. They had grown stronger in the past few hours. At least, he thought it was hours; perhaps it had been days, months, years. There was no telling.

The man sucked his thumb and fantasised that it was a pen, that he was whetting its nib prior to setting his prose to page. A page. What a marvel it would be, white and wide and waiting for his scintillating rhetoric. To have one, to have a sheet of plain white pulp before him: What ecstasies would be his? He dribbled with manic excitement, reflexively wiped his lips, spittle running freely down his thumb.

‘I have no nails,’ he said aloud. His voice, his words, drifted round the small, narrow room; he could see them hovering uncertainly in the air, seeking a page onto which they might…