I’ve always wanted to be a writer, ever since I was in second grade. And over the course of my life, I got pretty good at it. I even got to the point where companies were paying me large salaries to take their ideas and turn them into stories and ad campaigns. By the time I was 30, I’d generated millions of dollars, spun up a portfolio that could land me any job, and made a name for myself in professional writing circles.
But there was one thing I was missing: the ability to come up with good ideas. Now, you may think that in my position, that didn’t matter much. Companies gave me the ideas, I brought them to life, and I made a lot of money doing it. Why did my lack of ideas really matter?
They mattered because money didn’t matter to me. Ideas did. I didn’t want to be a professional writer; I wanted to be a creative one. I wanted to tell stories that chilled my readers, turned their stomachs, and broke their hearts. I wanted to create characters that men secretly cried over and women openly lusted over in their book clubs. I wanted to paint settings that kept children up at night and drove movie producers crazy. I wanted to be the best storyteller, and the only way to do that was to come up with winning ideas.
But I didn’t have any. So, I looked for them in prompt workbooks. I even stole them from other authors’ stories. I went to workshops and watched as my peers sped to work while I stared at blank papers and laptop screens. Nothing worked; my ideas were either soft and boring or unrealistic and uncompelling. Nothing that I conceived begged to be brought to life on the page, and when I forced them out, they always seemed to droop over as if they were just empty bags without skeletons or muscle. They were husks, without any of the human stuff that held a real person up. Unlike me, they didn’t even have the disappointment or self-pity to stand on their own. I was 35 when my pathetic inability to come up with ideas finally overwhelmed me. I don’t remember exactly what caused it, but I was on the way home from yet another writing workshop with the local writer’s guild when I decided that my life had grown meaningless. I was going home to craft a story, and if I couldn’t do it, I was going to take my own life. That, I decided, would at least create a story that someone would remember.
You might suspect that the ultimatum gave me a sense of fear, but for the first time in my life, something clicked. There were stakes! And I felt the strange brush of a story thread passing by, gently hitting my cheek with its tail. It was gone before I could grab it. But once again, for the first time, I knew that it would come back. It had responded to the stakes.
I sped the rest of the way home, eager and gleeful to see which way the story would unfold. Would the hero pass the test, or would he fall into darkness? I didn’t know, and I couldn’t wait to find out.
I nearly knocked down my front door in a rush to get to my desk. I didn’t even bother turning on any lights as I thundered up the stairs and down the hall to my bedroom, all the way in the back. I even tripped over my cat, who was so startled by the change in my normally lethargic state that he was caught in a panic trying to figure out which way to run.
Once I was in my bedroom, I quickly lit a candle, opened my laptop, and then felt all the momentum drain from the tips of my fingers. What was I going to write about? I hadn’t had a single idea on the way home, but I’d felt them swimming around. They’d called out to me again and again “Come to me!” “Take me!” “Expose me to the world!” For the first time, they wanted me. But they were teasing little things, and now that it was time to get to business, they were hiding. It didn’t bother me though; I’d heard the whole spiel before. You just had to start writing and the stories would come.
So that’s what I did, and they did start to come. I could feel them again, little threads brushing my cheeks, arms, and hands. But I couldn’t see them, and they kept hiding just beyond the veil of reality. I could almost hear them laughing at me like little sprites, making childish bets among themselves about how long I would keep trying until I gave up for the last time. Well, I wasn’t going to give up, I decided with a huff. But suddenly the stakes didn’t feel so thrilling anymore. Instead, the reality of what I’d promised inflated in front of me, and I realized that I was going to tell a story one way or another, and I didn’t want to tell the story I’d leveraged as collateral. But I didn’t have a different story to tell. And I wasn’t sure how long it would take to make one if I was even capable. But that didn’t really matter, did it? This was going to end one of two ways.
I drummed my fingers on the desk for a while, then I typed in random keys until I had a page full of J34349s and other random characters. But that didn’t turn into a story, so I opted for a classic: “Once upon a time…” What comes after that? I wasn’t sure.
I kept fidgeting with different things on my desk until my candle started to sputter and I looked up to find that the wick was drowning in melted wax. I’d been sitting here wrestling with my ideas for hours and all I had on the paper was a random collection of letters and numbers. I put my hands on my knees, preparing to stand up, when I remembered my ultimatum. I wasn’t ready for that yet. I’d felt the ideas swim by just hours earlier in the car. This was my chance to pin them down, and I wasn’t about to get up, no matter how bored, hungry, thirsty, or hopeless I felt. Plus, I didn’t particularly want to die. I’d just said it because it felt story-like, and I hoped it would kickstart my creativity.
With that in mind, I settled back down and tried to start my first sentence. I wrote, deleted, and wrote again until I lost count. Finally, I had a first sentence when my eyes were starting to seriously droop, and yawns became more and more frequent. I looked at my watch; it was 2:03 am, far past my normal bedtime, but I was starting to feel it again—the whisp of a story thread brushing my cheek. I had a first sentence, and it was time to get to work.
I kept writing. The progress was faster than ever before. By 4 am, I had two pages, by 5 I had half of another! But by 5:15 I was starting to slow down. My head was bobbing back and forth and every few moments I would wake up, surprised that I’d fallen asleep. I tried my best to look at the screen, but it was blurry, so blurry that I couldn’t even read the words. It was time to go to sleep.
I stood up and my legs gave out, sending me elbow-first into my desk. But I didn’t feel it; the only thing I felt was joy. I’d done it! I had an idea. By this time, I didn’t even know what it was about anymore, but I had an idea.
I stumbled back down the hallway to the kitchen to get a glass of water. My cat protested loudly; he might have been hungry, but I couldn’t really tell. I’d kept my door closed the entire time I’d been writing so I hadn’t seen him much. In the kitchen, I filled up a glass of water and was halfway through gulping it down when I froze, letting the rest dump down my chest.
“Peek a boo,” slithered a dark, playful voice from the shape that had frozen me mid-gulp. “Giving up so soon, are you?”
I stared back at the two shining eyes, the only indication that something had been sitting on the couch in the first place.
The shape stood and walked towards me with a slow, deliberately elegant pace. “The next great American author, standing in his kitchen, a brilliant book sitting on his screen, just waiting to be finished. But he’s ready to call it quits.”
By now, the figure was on the edge of the shadowed, carpeted square that made up my living room. He took another step, exposing a long, thin, suited leg.
“Ah,” the voice said with a thick layer of breathless hurt. “It’s because you don’t remember me, do you?”
With that, the figure stepped out into the slats of grey morning light making their way in from the kitchen window. I stumbled backwards at the sight, but there wasn’t far to go; my back was already at the sink. The thing that stepped out was no man, though that was the closest description anyone would have given it. It was tall and skinny, almost to a sickly point. It wore a suit that was at least one size too big so that the shoulders were too wide, the jacket was too baggy, the sleeves were too long, and the pants fell in rolls of fabric at his shoes. The only thing remotely normal about it was its face, which had the uncanny look of someone who could only be human, but on the very verge of being called so. It had a sharply contrasted jaw, high cheekbones, overly tight lips, and sharp, bright eyes. Besides the thin, stringy hair that fell over its shoulders in unkept, flat locks, the smile was the most memorable feature. It was a smart smile, naturally devious and genuinely malicious, the kind of smile you’d see before someone completely innocent gets unfixably hurt.
“How are you going to do it, Nathan? I’ve been sitting here on the couch brimming with ideas. Oh, I’m sorry. Was that insensitive? What I mean is that you have options, and you’re clearly ready to exercise them since you’re in here. Come, sit down with me and we’ll talk them out. I’m thinking grand,” it gestured with a long, outstretched arm, motioning as if it wanted to put its arm around me and guide me like a friend. “Remember, this is your story moment.”
By this point, I had nearly backed myself onto the counter without realizing it and now I must have looked like I was trying to pack myself into one of the cabinets.
“Nathan,” it started again, taking another step forward. “Forgive me, forgive me, forgive me. My manners astound me sometimes. I didn’t introduce myself.” It bit its bottom lip and flashed that same grin. “My name is Promise.”
I leaped down from the counter and sprinted back down the hallway where I threw my door closed and jumped onto my bed. Promise’s chuckle echoed down the hallway.
“I guess you’re going to keep working on that story then?” he called after me with a giggle.
I was nearly hyperventilating when I sat down at my desk, but at least my eyes weren’t blurry anymore. My mind and body were wide awake, although I wasn’t entirely sure if what had just happened was real. But what else can it be? I asked myself sharply. Something was in my house; something had been sitting on my couch mocking me. Something that wasn’t entirely human had just introduced itself to me. And it knew. It knew about my ultimatum, my-
“Promise,” I breathed out, putting my face in my palms. It knew about my promise. I sat there with my head in my hands for a few minutes before I calmed down enough to think. I had two options: finish my story or run. I wasn’t sure that running would help, so I slid off the bed and walked back over to my desk. I scrolled back up to the top of my page and started to read so I could get back on track. But as soon as I started, a gutting emptiness spread from my stomach to my throat. The story that I’d worked on for nearly 12 hours was awful. The core idea—exploring the daily life of a man who’s haunted by his childhood emotional neglect—was boring. The entire three pages were nothing but me spinning my wheels writing about a man whose life was so dull that no one would want to read about him anyways.
I wanted to cry, but the tears wouldn’t come. Instead, I felt the breathless weight of fear. Promise was waiting. Promise was eager for me to come out again. Because he must know. He must know that my story was flat. He must know that my characters were lifeless. He must know that I had no story kernels or any of that other shit that the other writers always seemed to have. He could probably read my story right now, I thought with wild certainty.
And it was no longer curiosity or creativity that drove me to my keyboard. Instead, it was wild desperation. In one move I selected all the text and deleted it. Then I tried to settle in, but my breathing was too heavy, and I could feel him. I knew he was there, whether he was sitting on the couch or leaning against the door I knew he was there. And I knew he could hear the click clack of my keys and the bang bang of my heart. I was sure he could even hear my thoughts and so I screamed as loud as I could in my head NOT DONE NOT DONE NOT DONE! until my inner ear felt like was bleeding and blunted. And then I was exhausted again. No energy, no ideas. Just an ever-dulling knowledge that I had to finish this story. And that’s when I saw them.
I had looked down at the clock in the corner of my screen to check the time before getting back to work. It was 7:42. Morning sunlight was dancing through my window, and it caught something and sent a dazzling rainbow all around the room. It was gone in a moment, but I turned all around to look for it, and I found it circling my head in wispy motion—a translucent butterfly with long threads hanging off the ends of its wings. As it flew around my head, the threads tickled my cheek and I gasped. For the first time all night, it was my turn to smile. I’d made it through the night and been rewarded. An idea had graced me. A sacred muse in the form of a butterfly. My smile grew, and suddenly there were more flashes of light, more and more swimming in the air, catching the sunlight and sending dazzling refracted rainbow light all around the room and directly into my eyes.
So, this is what it was like? So many of them at once, at least 50 ideas kissing my head with their threads. I’d waited my entire life. I’d prayed for this, sacrificed for this, but clearly, I’d never sacrificed enough. Whoever had been listening had needed more to send me a muse. And my life in the balance had been enough.
I was ready, so I reached out and cupped my hands around a random butterfly, breathing deeply of its golden light, ready for the idea to flow through my nostrils and into my soul. But the moment I touched it, the butterfly disappeared as if it had never been there. I sat back, shocked, then I inched my hands towards another, ready to cup it and breathe it in. But it also disappeared as if it had never existed. I tried a third, and then, getting desperate, I tried to pluck a fourth out of the air. Both disappeared as soon as I touched them. Hot, heavy rage rose into my stomach. I plucked at another, and it was gone. I swung my head forward and tried to breath in a group, but I was met by empty air. I slammed my hands together over a solitary tenth and opened them to find nothing but stinging, red skin.
Every time they disappeared in front of me, the butterflies would appear again in my peripheral vision, and they would multiply. Eventually, it became more detrimental to try and catch them, and I dropped into my chair and looked at my screen. By now, I could barely look at it for all the bright butterflies circling my head. But I had to. I hadn’t forgotten who was out there, waiting in the shadows of the curtains I’d left drawn over the window.
I went on working like this for hours. I had to squint at my screen just to see, and I wrote and deleted more times than I could count. Eventually I started drifting again, and by 12 p.m. my eyes were screaming for a break, my bladder was crying for relief, and my parched throat felt like it cracked with every breath. But I couldn’t step outside this room until I was done. So, I stood up and danced with the butterflies. I couldn’t touch them, but at least dancing would show them I cared. I stumbled back and forth across the floor, falling into the vase I kept by my desk and sending it shattering to the floor. It made an incredible, deep shattering noise as pieces of porcelain rocketed across the room.
My eyes must have grown as wide as windows, at least that’s how they felt to me, because it was perfect. It was perfect for my story. I rushed through the broken mess, back to my desk and slammed myself into my seat. I pressed enter on my keyboard and started typing my next line. I wasn’t sure exactly what this story was about, but I was certain this was the one.
I opened my eyes, and the butterflies were gone. I sat up straight, drawing in breath sharply as I looked at the clock. 12:07. I’d accidentally slept for 7 minutes. Incensed, I balled up my first and hit myself on the head. Stupid! I had to stay awake. If I went for long enough without working, he would-
I saw his eyes looking in through the cracked door and watched as his emotionless face erupted into a grin.
“Quitting time?” he asked, poking a finger through the door. I pushed myself out of the side of my chair and fell, tailbone first onto the wooden floor.
“Oh, don’t worry Nathan. I’m just checking on you. I heard that awful crash and then silence. I was beginning to think something might have happened to you,” he said, raising both eyebrows knowingly. “I couldn’t let that happen. That’s my job,” he continued in a gravelly voice. “But you have to make the call. Though, guessing by how long you’ve been at this I don’t think there’s much time left. Maybe I should wait close by.”
He pushed the door the rest of the way open with his pointed finger and strolled into the room, crunching the remaining vase shards under his shoeless feet. He sat down on the bed, sat with his feet crossed like a child, and winked before the emotionless look returned to his face.
I couldn’t take it anymore. Promise or not, this wasn’t the story I’d wanted. Suddenly I was aware of the bulge of car keys in my left pocket and the mass of my wallet in my right. In what felt like one movement I stood, yanked the door open, and tore down the hall, down the steps, out the front door, and into my car. I’d left my shoes, kicked off under my desk, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t even bring myself to look up to see if he was following me; I just put my car in reverse and backed out of the driveway as fast as I could. I even nearly dropped the transmission out of the car slamming it into drive.
I made it to a hotel on the other side of town. I must have scared the receptionist with my bloody feet and bloodshot eyes, but she gave me a room, so I didn’t care. Inside I shuffled to the bed, closed my eyes, and fell onto the sheets face first.
Click.
I squeezed my eyes shut, racing towards sleep.
Squeeak.
I was almost there; I could feel reality falling and twisting away. But I wasn’t fast enough.
“All out of ideas?” he crooned.
I reluctantly opened my eyes to find his mere inches away.