The old man hunched over an antique desk beneath the dim light of a small lamp. An open notebook stared up at him, empty though he’d been sitting there for hours.
Once, when he was young, he’d enjoyed a vibrant career. Back then, the words had flowed like wine. He’d brought stories into the world the likes of which had never been told before. But now in his old age, the well had run dry.
Of course, his books had never been his own. That was his dirty little secret, the thing he kept from his readers whenever they asked him where he got his ideas. He’d always offer the standard bullshit, that he’d been a reclusive child, that it was his retreat into fiction that changed the way he saw and thought about the world.
But the truth was that he was a fraud, for while the writing had been his own, the stories had come from someone else.
When he was only a teenager, a visitor came during the night. A woman, garbed in flowing silk that glowed in the dark.
“Wake up,” she whispered.
He almost screamed when he saw her, but she placed a hand over his mouth and assured him she meant no harm. She said her name was Selina, that she’d wandered the world in search of someone to tell her story. She placed a finger to her lips. Then she covered his eyes.
What followed was a supernova of sights and sounds, streaming before his eyes like a cosmic newsreel. An excerpt from a life outside the universe.
When he finally came back to himself, she was gone.
A notebook and pen had been left beside him. An open invitation, he thought, and he stayed up until dawn, trying to capture some small part of what he’d glimpsed in the mysterious vision.
She came to him the following night, and the night after that. Each time, he would sit down after she’d left to search out words that might do justice to the otherworldly snapshots of her life.
The books that resulted propelled him to unheard of heights. Nobody had read anything like them. People fawned over his work. Even the sharpest critics seemed at a loss.
But five years ago, Selina stopped visiting.
He flailed, struggled to recall something of her supernal sojourn through the stars so he’d have something new to write about.
But without those constant visions to guide his work, his writing became derivative, stale and uninteresting. People stopped buying his books. Eventually, he locked himself inside his house and never went out again.
Now, he gazed up at the lamp, still at a loss after five years. He closed his eyes, and he wondered if Selina would ever visit him again.
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I expect anytime someone feels abandoned by their muse, as artists must from time to time, it is like this. A sort of vacant grieving process, a hole in your life. Even worse perhaps, those not chosen with creative instincts which never receive the light of inspiration. I enjoyed the story.
Hi Judy, I think you’re right. I’ve been there myself. While not intentional, I think that this story is at least in part an exploration of that idea.