Samuel sat frozen at his desk, the screen's glow pressing against his eyes.
The last line he had typed blinked at him in patient rhythm, as if mocking his hesitation. His fingers hovered over the keyboard, unwilling to land.
Just write, he told himself. It's only words. Only a story.
But it didn't feel like only a story anymore. Not after the call. Not after that voice.
He reached for the laptop, then stopped. His hand trembled not out of fear exactly, but from something heavier, something like standing at the edge of a drop and knowing one wrong step would send him falling.
The apartment hummed around him. The fridge clicked. A neighbor's footsteps moved faintly through the ceiling. Ordinary sounds, all of them yet each felt stretched, like an echo carried from too far away.
He closed the laptop. The snap of it shutting was sharper than it should've been, cutting the silence in two.
For a long while, he just sat there.
But the words didn't stop. They crowded his head in thick, looping threads, phrases he hadn't formed yet pressing against the edges of thought. He could almost see them, crowding behind his eyes, restless.
With a shiver, Samuel stood and moved to the window. Outside, the morning light was thin, gray, and heavy with the smell of rain. Cars passed, people moved normal, safe. And yet…
The thought came uninvited: You disturbed something.
He shook his head hard, trying to scatter it. Nonsense. Just nerves. Just lack of sleep.
Still, his gaze drifted back to the desk. The laptop sat there, quiet, waiting.
And then
A sound.
Soft. Not the harsh intrusion of the whisper on the phone. This was subtler, like a breath drawn against glass. Faint enough that he might've dismissed it as his own imagination if not for the fact that it came again, steady and slow.
He spun, heart hammering. The apartment was still. No one was there.
But his laptop… was open.
Samuel blinked. He was certain he had shut it. Certain.
The screen glowed faintly with a single line typed across the page:
If you must… keep writing.
His chest tightened.
The words didn't look like his. The font was the same, the placement normal but the rhythm was wrong, the cadence too deliberate.
He reached for the delete key, struck it once, twice.
The line vanished.
For half a heartbeat, relief stirred
Until the cursor slid back across the page, moving without his touch.
Letter by letter, the sentence returned.
If you must… keep writing.
The words pulsed against him, quiet and patient. Not a threat. Not a command. Something worse. A weary allowance.
Like an ancient thing stirring just enough to mutter. You woke me. Do as you will. But know the cost.
Samuel's throat was dry. He stepped back from the desk, every instinct urging him to leave the apartment, to put space between himself and that screen.
But he didn't move.
Because deep down, he knew the truth:
The writing wasn't finished.
And if he didn't put the words down. They would find their way back on their own.