Its source, its power

You've been speaking for a long time under the fluorescent lights. You can hear their buzz braiding with your voice.

But the people in the folding chairs around you don’t seem to mind. In fact, some of them lean in.

“I guess I always felt like I had this little bit of magic. I dunno. It sounds childish.”

“But I felt like if I wanted something bad enough, believed it would happen, and wrote it down, it usually happened the way I wanted.”

It was more than that. You could charm your way out of a hostage situation. You could land a first class upgrade with pleasantries at the ticket counter.

Writing down what you wanted just evoked the most powerful magic of all, you tell them. A scrawl of a name in your journal had Jason Miller offering you his letterman jacket the next chilly day. As you got older, you wrote your way into university, scholarships, a studio apartment that wasn’t even for rent before the owners got your note.

“It was like I knew the exact word — like a spell — that would make things happen.”

“At some point, it all just stopped. Now I forget what I’m trying to say halfway through a sentence and then… I just give up on it.”

Worse than that, you could tell when your magic was failing mid-conversation. Hostesses didn’t find a little back corner table for you anymore; they waited for you to leave. Your cover letters fluttered into the ether and your car broke down despite your pleas.

“I’m sorry, I’m acting like this is group therapy, not writing group. I’m hogging all the time,” you say with a laugh, a poor facsimile of the charm that used to bring people under your thrall.

No one else in the room laughs. That’s how you know you’ve lost your touch. You glance at the clock on the far wall, dismayed to learn that the meeting is not even half over.

The leader of the group, the tall, hairless host who had welcomed you, tents his fingers under his long nose.

“It’s difficult to feel like we’ve lost our gift,” he says. “I think we’ve all felt this way before.”

A keen hum of agreement sweeps through the group. The woman in all black next to him nods.

“But tell us, what work have you done anyway?”

Well, that was the problem, and why you had sought the group. You had written pages of unfinished sentences, and notebooks of abandoned ideas. And now, you couldn't even do that. Futility had seized up your fingers like bitter wind.

Shamefully, you had bought tokens promising to reclaim your magic, little things like keychains with lone blue eyes and green crystals that were very likely marbles.

“Well, I’m actually kind of stuck. I was hoping to get some help.”

You duck under your seat to take some of your notebooks out of your bag. Should you have made copies to hand out? You realize with a shudder that you'll probably be expected to read something aloud.

“We can absolutely help you,” says the woman in black with such intensity that you stop your shuffling to look at her.

Suddenly you can’t remember how you heard about this group. Was it on the library’s calendar? A flyer in your apartment foyer? Writer’s Club, first Wednesday of every month, 7 p.m. Now that you think about it, that apostrophe was in the wrong place.

Why, you slowly realize, does no one else have so much as a backpack with them?

“Oh. Oh, well thank you. Really, I was just hoping…”

Hoping to write your ticket out of stagnation.

“I was just hoping to finish this story.”

You rise with a stack of papers. It isn't a bad story, but it isn't yours — just the one you thought would catch someone's eye. Except every word felt like a stranger's, and the magic didn't come.

“With our help, you can do so much more than that,” the woman says with a serene smile. “You can regain your influence, your words, your power.”

“I don't really think that. It was just something I believed as a child —”

“Many of us believed we had this power as children,” the group leader says. “But we realized too late we had lost it. But you, so young, so talented. We can help you reclaim it, and then you can help us in return.”

You're pretty sure now that you've wandered into some kind of cult. At least they're not all in uniform. But standing at the far side of the circle from the door, you'd have to get through a lot of them to get to the exit.

You try to stall, to give yourself time to think.

“How would I need to help you?”

The group leader spreads his open palms.

“Simple. You would grant some of our wishes as well.”

Now, they're all smiling at you expectantly. Panic blurs the edges of your vision.

“It doesn't really work that way… I'm not a genie. I mean, it doesn't really work at all. It's not real.”

“We're getting ahead of ourselves,” the leader says. “Let's start with your story. Perhaps you would do us the honor of reading a few pages.”

“Okay.” Your voice floats high and full of tension, a balloon about to pop.

You flip your binder open and catch the haphazard pages before they fall.

“It's kind of about the place I'm from — a valley. It, well. I'll read.”

You read. Your first lines are catching. Your turns of phrase clever. As you read, you start to believe that you could be — will be — so influential the world will literally turn around your pen.

You glance at your audience. But they're far from enraptured. Some are listening without expression; others have reverted to studying their fingernails. A hot, red embarrassment fills your cheeks — you feel the sudden need to stay and prove to them that you can do better than this, even if you're not really sure that you can.

Your story trails off. Do you even want to finish it?

In a single motion, you hurl the binder into the air.

A million bad ideas fall like snow.

And you sprint through the flurry, through the middle of the circle, crash through the door and into the hallway where the public art exhibition spins in your vision, and you don't stop even when you're out on the moonlit street.

You've lost it for good. Your notebooks of ideas you were planning to finish and the promise of your youth. But what fills the space where expectations lay is finally your own voice, which just wants to go home.

As you fly around the corner, a beacon bursts through the darkness. The 17 crosstown waits at its stop, all doors thrown open to catch you.

You collapse into your usual seat just before the doors slide shut. You try to calm your breathing.

“I was about to leave, but the damn front doors wouldn't close,” comes the gravelly voice of the driver. “You got lucky.”

You smile, and close your eyes.