I apologize in advance, this is not a typical blog entry. I felt the need to write something aside from the book I have been working on and while trying to think of a blog, this just started to come out. It is a very rough and not entirely complete story, but the idea is sound. As always feel free to read, but make note that this is a short story, not a typical blog entry.
The room was well lit, but very quiet. Only the fan of his laptop and the subtle striking of keys broke through the silence of the still air. He paused for a moment and stared at his socks, they had lots of fuzzy little tendrils climbing off of them, the sort of thing you only find on new or nearly new pairs of socks. He desperately wished he had a lighter, something to start the tendrils aflame. It was an activity he often did with new socks, sort of a rite of passage for them. There was no lighter however and his attention was again resumed to the striking sound of the keys. It was an almost seductive sound, the way each individual key groaned as it was pressed, not a groan of pain, no, they were happy to be used, to be chosen.
His fingers moved deftly from keystroke to keystroke, losing himself in the intricate ballet of typing. It was creation, he was creating worlds with his fingertips and doing so was addicting. He imagined it was the same way artists felt when they painted worlds and places out of their imaginations, bringing something to life, almost in a literal sense and who's to say there isn't some life held with a story or a painting? A piece of the creator goes into it and so perhaps goes the essence of life itself. He became so caught up in his creation and in these magnificent thoughts, he didn't hear the door opening behind him.
The room was still silent, still well lit, but it could have been a bustling city street or pitch darkness, he would not have noticed anymore. He was entirely entranced. Perhaps that was the point, the goal all along, but whether it was meant to be or not, it changed nothing and he did not here the darkness creeping up behind him.
It was not a single thing, no, it was an amalgamation of hundreds of different ideas, half finished, half brought to fruition, all manifested into one shapeless entity. The man typing away had often wondered if all the stories, all the characters, all the worlds he had left unfinished, left to rot, ever felt abandoned or resentful. He wonder if the small sparks of life he gave those creations would ever find their own way into the world without his help. On this night they had. Life always finds a way.
The shapeless form drifted silently behind him, seeing with unrecognizable eyes that the man was again typing away. No doubt he was creating yet another life, another existence that he would leave alone and helpless just like the others. The being had great capacity for emotion seeing as nearly all of its' creator's unfinished projects were written through fits of strong emotion. The entity began to feel anger, wanting nothing more than to stop this man from leaving more work unfinished.
The man, the writer, never turned to see what it was, nor did he ever hear it, but in a flash, it consumed him. A hateful darkness that poured over him like a heavy fog, wrapping his body and stealing the very life from him. The souls countless half-realized lives all intertwined now, feeding off the life force of the very man who had made them this way.
His death was quick, he barely comprehended what was happening before all that made him who he was had been sucked from his body. The hateful darkness slinked away from the now lifeless body of its' creator. Still unfinished, never to be truly whole, especially now, but feeding off the lives of others seemed sustainable enough. It carried on its' journey, looking for more life to steal, needing nothing but to feed on thoughts and the things that make us human, trying desperately to become so itself.
You cannot kill an idea, stop a creation from the depths of imagination. Even after the creator is no more, their thoughts and ideas remain, skulking through the ether, looking to become whole. Manifestations of the best and worst of us and now one lingers about, hungry and eager. It is raw and heartless, wanting only to be alive, to be realized in entirety and it will continue taking the lives of others until that happens. It never will. . .That is why we are all doomed.
Death itself is nothing more than the combination of all our unfinished works finally catching up to us. Why else would it be that so many infinitely creative people perish at such early stages of their lives? Because it is not about what we finish and create, it is all the things we leave unfinished and unsaid that eventually become our undoing.
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