The topic I had to write about was simply "The Unknown."
I'm looking for some feedback because I'm an amateur writer and I am an inherently alone when it comes to writing. I found this sub last week and I wanted to see what people thought!
The Id
You sit alone tapping in your room. You’ve noticed that the keyboard clacking you make has begun to keep tempo with your clock. You stop. It hangs on the wall. They synchronicity bothers you. You decide to take a break. You've been typing all night on something that will never get done. Hopeless. Take a breath. Stop what you're doing and notice the light has been peeking from behind your curtain for some time now. You can tell because the beams of light have reached the corner of your face. It keeps patches of your cheek warm as you have been still for quite some time now. The rest of the house is cold. That is the best way to describe it. Not a nail biting event in which you require every blanket in your household. It is a raw type of cold. Your skin is chapped as you look around your room. Bottles of things, books, cups, a blanket on the floor. Pants strewn on chairs. The phone rings.
“Hey, I have an idea” You ask what it is. “Come outside and I'll show you.”
You pull on some clothes and wander down into your house. You open your refrigerator. It doesn't have much in it. A bottle of mustard, milk, various types of alcohol that you like to keep refrigerated, a half dozen eggs, and some bread (because your mother always told you that the bread would last longer in the fridge) You grab some alcohol and an egg. Breakfast of champions.
You walk outside with a glass and a hard boiled egg some minutes later. Your friend has been waiting for you. He seems different some how. But you don't know exactly how he is different. It's definitely something though.
“Hey, looks like you had a good night.” You explain to him how you were working all night on a book. “You're going to kill yourself if you keep working like this. Why don't you just take a break. It's been months.”
He's right. You just don't want to admit to him. He's always such a jerk. He always tries to help you but it's never for just you.
You ignore his last comment and ask what his idea was.
“Okay, listen. Here's the thing. You know that?” He points at it. You look and nod. Of course you know that. Who doesn't know that.
“It's been here as far back as I remember. It's ever present, always waiting. Somehow we cant avoid it no matter what, right?” He doesn't wait for you to nod this time.
You are perfectly aware of it. It is there at every second. It waits and does nothing. It has for your entire life. Before your parents, before their parents. Before everyone. It has slipped through the cracks of time and space to remain there and wait for you. For you. It bothers you sometimes. Most of the time. It's there though. When it doesn't bother you, it's only because you forget it's there. You've lived with it so long, you're only ever aware of it when people point it out now.
“I found a way to get rid of it.” You laugh at him and tell him he's full of it. You begin to walk away. He's usually right. He's right about everything. You don't want to know what happens when it goes away. You've never wanted to know. “I know you want it to go away, everyone does!” he calls after you. You know. You turn around on your doorstep. He is twenty feet away from you. You ask him to tell you how. You notice once again that there is something different about him.
“You can kill it.”
Realization.
It's gone.
Well, his is. You look around to the people walking down your street. Theirs are there. Yours is here. His is gone. There is nothing there where it usually is or, was. Why. How. You ask him these things.
“You think about killing it.” Everyone has thought about killing it. If they didn't, they were dead early. You live with it. It is yours forever. Much like a best friend, you think about killing it and the consequences. Would you miss it? “It's much better without it.”
You ask if you can write it.
“Yes. Just focus everything on the urge to kill it and it will die. You will never have it again. It'll be gone for the rest of your life.”
It sits there close to you. You don't know if it can hear him. If it does, wouldn't it do something? It never does anything. It just waits for you. And follows you, like a sad red balloon held by a little girl. But the string is stapled to your mind. Someone, something put it there when you woke. You know it couldn’t be just you. You thank your friend and go inside.
You go back into your house and sit back down on your computer and begin typing. You forget.
The next morning you call your friend. It's still there in the morning, waiting. You get frustrated at him and tell him that it's impossible to think about killing it.
“Fine, alright, maybe I'm asking too much. It took me a while. Okay, stay inside tonight and just look at it. Try to focus as much as possible toward it.” He hangs up. You look at the thing all the time, you could draw it right now if you wanted to. You try thinking about what it looks like.
You can't remember what it looks like.
It was black. This is the only thing you can remember without looking at it. You turn around and it's there. It takes a while to try and focus on it as though it's translucent. It is shapeless, you think, but you are unsure because you try to trace the shape of it with your eyes but each movement of your corneas moves it to your peripherals and you lose focus with it once again. Staring at the middle of it makes the rest of it disappear. You discover how terribly hard it is to look it head on without losing it.
After a few hours of sitting on your bed staring at it, you begin to sort out the best way to follow it.
As you look in the middle, the edges disappear so look at the top of it. It will drop down so you can only feel it hovering below your nose. Watch it from below but look ahead. Just as you just now became suddenly aware of the sides of your nose, you become aware of it resting there too. It tries to swerve and wobble its way around but you have your eyes ahead and moving back and forth so you it balances right below you. You stare at it for who knows how long but it starts to move back into your vision and none of it disappears. It is entirely in your vision. The black translucent shapeless thing that sits in front of you is the most terrifying thing you've ever set eyes on now that it exists in the forefront of your mind. Your entire life has felt this ever present thing hover behind you just in your peripherals waiting for you. As you look to it, I looks into you, or it feels like that. It is morning. Maybe it was already morning but something in the back of your head made you realize it was morning. Maybe you could see that too eventually.
You call your friend and tell him that you can see it now. It's always in your vision now. “Now kill it”
You forgot that that was the goal. You have grown awfully fond of it as it is in your vision now. You hang up without a goodbye.
It comes closer to you. It has never moved before now but yet it always has moved. It always moved closer but you never remembered it. Soon, it is so close that the only thing you see is the shade of it. The translucent black. The shapeless horror. It encapsulates you. Holds you close. It is cold but comfortable. It is natural, it is present. It is company. You realize that you could never kill it as it has always been there. It always will be there.
Then it scratches you. You only feel a small pain at first but soon, each of it's countless fingers dig into your skin. You try your hardest to push it away, to kill it. You cant move as it sinks into you, an infinite number of tiny daggers peeking into the id, where it used to be. Where it was before all this. It looks into you one last time as it disappears, the shapeless id seems to turn to smoke as the last whips of it fall down your throat.
Even though it fills you, you feel hollow. It is where it has always belonged.
You call your friend and explain what happened.
“I know,” he says, “I'm sorry. It happened to me too.”
You realize why. After it leaves the sides of your eyes, your awareness and into you, the only way to describe how you feel is hollow and alone.
You sit on the phone in silence with him. Then you have an idea. Simply tell everyone about it.
You hang up and open your computer, go to the internet, you start to write in the text box of a forum.
The Id
You sit alone tapping in your room. You’ve noticed that the keyboard clacking you make has begun to keep tempo with your clock. You stop.
Submitted February 02, 2015 at 02:18AM by map4u2b http://ift.tt/1LAA7OV WritersGroup
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