It started with a pen.
A gift.
Unmarked.
Found, not bought.
No logo, no brand.
Just cold metal and endless ink.
Rami didn't remember who gave it to him.
Only that it felt right in his hand.
Heavy.
Balanced.
Like it had been waiting.
The first words he wrote with it weren't his.
They looked like his handwriting.
Curved like his thoughts.
But when he read them back, they said:
"I remember you.
You just forgot how we met."
He laughed.
Then blinked.
Then read it again.
The sentence had changed:
"Don't laugh. It wakes the others."
He dropped the pen.
It rolled across the table, paused mid-spin…
and pointed at him.
Over the next few days,
Rami couldn't stop writing.
Not because he wanted to —
but because the pen wouldn't let him go.
Every time he held it,
his hand moved on its own.
Letters formed.
Sentences bled.
He tried writing nonsense —
but the ink corrected itself.
Twisted his loops.
Adjusted the curves.
Restructured his madness into meaning.
The texts that emerged weren't stories.
They were instructions.
"Write it on walls.""Slip it into library books.""Leave notes in café napkins.""Sign your name at the end. Even if it's not yours."
Rami tried burning the pages.
They screamed.
Ink bubbled and spat — not smoke, but syllables.
He drowned them.
They floated back up, dry.
One night, his notebook flipped itself open.
A single sentence filled the page:
"You're not the only hand I use."
He didn't sleep.
Now, people find strange messages on receipts.
On bathroom stalls.
On chalkboards just before they're erased.
Words that weren't there a second ago…
written in ink that never dries.
Some say if you write back,
you'll get an answer.
Some say you're not supposed to read the full sentence aloud.
Some say the ink doesn't stain paper.
It stains you.
And once it knows your voice?
It starts writing in your sleep.