The Writing Club

I couldn’t tell if the words I was typing were from me or borrowed from someone else. That’s how unoriginal I was; a mosaic of authors, pieces extracted from my favourite novels and forcefully injected into my own work. Never truly my own, simply a puzzle made from fragments of books I’d picked up here and there –a sentence I’d seen in a magazine, a quote from a non-fiction book I’d forced myself to read. At thirty-two, most successful authors had already been established, and those who didn’t make it had dropped into mundane nine-to-fives and typed stories on the weekends.

It came my thirty-third birthday, and I knew something had to change.

‘How’s the novel coming along, Ivy?’ Dad asked. I’d told him not to visit; afraid his frail and ageing body couldn’t handle it. But he had insisted.

‘It’s coming,’ I lied, pasting a smile on my face. ‘It’ll be done soon.’

In truth, I’d barely written twenty pages. I knew Dad wanted grandkids before he died –I was his only kid, and he was slowly being consumed by cancer. I was his only shot, but I wasn’t interested in starting a family just yet.

I sensed Dad picked up on that. He stopped asking about whatever boyfriend had drifted through my life in the last year and focused his attention on my writing –a project, like a baby I was carrying, fostering, nurturing. Spoon-feeding it words until it could stand on its own.

Dad’s frail smile made my stomach clench with guilt. I wanted to make him happy –to give him one thing before he died. But I couldn’t. I was starved of inspiration. Not a mental block, but a towering mental barricade, fortifying me in idea starvation.

That night, when I heard Dad’s peaceful whistling snore through the thin walls of my apartment, I opened Reddit and found a thread advertising a vacancy in a writing club: New writer needed! Two readers, one writer. We help each other find inspiration and enjoyment –message me privately in you’re interested.

It was sketchy, but I replied to the thread. My eyes burned from the glowing light of my laptop, and I turned to shut it. But I’d already received a message back on my comment.

Great! It’s open-ended, so you can show up when you’d like. We meet at Red Cup Café from eleven pm Tuesdays and Thursdays. Let me know if you’re interested.

I blinked. Eleven pm seemed unnaturally late.

Eleven at night?

Yes. Due to the schedule of some of our members, night works best. If it’s too late for you, please let me know.

I hesitated. The Word document containing my unfinished draft blinked. Half a paragraph had trailed off in an instant, a gaping hole of words somehow missing, never found.

No, eleven is fine. I will be there.

Great. We’ll be in the table outside, so bring a jacket. Can’t wait to see you there!

I shut my laptop. Hopefully, the club would bring me some inspiration.

And hopefully, the gnawing feeling of unease in my stomach was for nothing.

Dad left the same day as my first meet with the writing club.

‘It’s too late, I’ll take a taxi,’ he protested after I volunteered to drop him at the airport.

‘No, I don’t mind. I’ll take you.’ I said firmly.

Usually, I would have preferred to let him make his own way there. He needed to be at the airport by nine thirty, which meant I’d be home at half past ten. Late-night outings tended to eat away at my sleep, leaving me restless in bed, or provoked unsolicited nightmares where a tiny blue car collided with a massive four-wheel drive, my heart throbbing in my chest and an array of blinking lights and screaming car alarms causing me to awake with a start. In my dreams, I was the car. I had a passenger.

The passenger died every time.

I shook the thought from my mind. It was a graphic image, a mangled scene of blood and twisted metal. The stench of death. Sometimes, it showed up in my writing. I’d delete the passage before ever rereading it.

The sky was a dusty black, and the wind was nipping at my skin. I hugged my arms tighter around my chest, and laptop, beneath a thick puffer jacket. The Red Cup Café was situated on the corner of a busy intersection, facing an ice-cream parlour that was filled with screaming kids during the daytime and awkward couples with sweaty hands intertwined at night. Tall, lanky streetlights overlooked the path that was bustling with activity –people talking on the phone clutching shopping bags, teens dressed in dark, baggy clothes riding skateboards with white earbuds blasting music so loud I could hear it as they whooshed past. The activity smothered my nerves –nothing would happen to me with so many people around, would it? But I didn’t know what, or who, I was looking for. Until I saw them.

Three people, two men and one woman, wearing matching red hoodies sitting at a small table outside the café. One had a laptop, the others were slumped lazily back in their chairs, watching the world go by, occasionally muttering to themselves, which laptop-guy noticed and seemed to take note of.

I approached the table: ‘Hi, is this the writing club? I, uh, messaged one of you on Reddit.’

The guy typing, a gangly man with a stubble and scruffy brown hair paused, then smiled.

‘Yep! You’re in the right place. My name’s Braxton, I’m the one you were messaging. And this is Adrian and Valerie. Take a seat –we’ve barely started.’

Valerie smiled delicately at me, with full lips that were glossed over with a faint pink tint. Her thick, black hair was neatly swept behind her head in a bun, with large, circular glasses sitting on the bridge of her nose.

‘Forty-three-year-old male. Divorced and remarried, and his crazy ex crashed the funeral with a sniper rifle she stole from her dad. Fired, hit his wife, leaving her permanently disabled. Now takes care of her full-time.’ Valerie suddenly said. Her eyes followed something moving down the street, glazed and distant.

I smiled tentatively, ‘sorry?’

‘Ooh, that’s good. Writing that one down.’ Braxton said, fingers flying across the keyboard. ‘Sit down, uh…’

‘Ivy.’

‘Ivy. Sorry, let me get this down really quick. Not quite the introduction you were expecting, is it?’

‘Not really, no.’ I gently perched on the edge of a seat, drawing out my laptop in front of me.

‘Twenty-four years old. Accidentally burned down his neighbour’s house when he was twelve trying to make a homemade firework. Killed their cat. Denied responsibility, was ultimately ruled an accident. Now works as a firefighter and has saved a lot of lives in burning buildings.’ The other man, Adrian –wearing draggy ripped cargo pants and had curly blond hair that sat in ringlets on his forehead –murmured, his eyes misty, not addressing me but seemingly staring through me.

I spun around. There was nothing. Just the regular stream of people waltzing in waves down the busy street.

‘Uh, so, do we just write, then?’ I asked tentatively.

‘Sorry, give me one sec,’ Braxton said, his gaze sharpening on his laptop. His fingers flew across the keys, which were weirdly noisy, like a typewriter. ‘Uh, yeah, I guess. It’s not formal, really. Valerie and Adrian just give inspiration, and I just write it down. Some of it gets made into books, or some I sell to desperate writers –you know the type, can’t seem to finish a paragraph on their own. Need that shot of creativity hand-fed to them or they don’t get anything done. It’d be great if you could help with that, too. But if there’s something you’re working on you can continue with that.’

I swallowed, my mouth suddenly dry. That sounded awfully familiar. But maybe whatever ideas Adrian or Valerie would spontaneously blurt out next would help me with my own novel.

‘Right,’ I said. ‘Sure.’

‘How about someone who was accidentally locked in a freezer as a child, nearly froze to death, then was rescued by a stray dog who smelled them inside?’ Valerie said, somewhat hesitantly. Her pupils were strangely constricted, her eyes far away. ‘Doesn’t remember it, though. Completely blocked the memory.’

I felt something ignite in my mind. I turned to my own story, blocked out memories. A good concept I could include.

‘Where are you getting these ideas from?’ I asked. ‘I thought you were readers, like, reading books.’

‘We are readers,’ Valerie said. I was about to laugh, but the smile died on my lips after I saw her stone-cold face. She was dead serious.

‘What?’ I replied, a half-hearted chuckle escaping anyway. ‘Where are your books?’

Valerie said nothing. Not even a flicker of emotion crossed her face. Her eyes glazed over, her focus sharpened, not at me, but almost through me. As if I was invisible.

‘Thirty-three-year-old female,’ she began slowly. Her eyes darted as if they were sifting through information. ‘Mum died in a car crash when she was five. Blamed herself for distracting her mum. Still has nightmares about it.’

I felt my blood run cold. My mouth went dry. ‘H –how –’ I stammered. But Valerie kept talking.

‘Doesn’t know that her mum was escaping with her from her biological dad. Doesn’t know that the crash was intentional, and it was her dad who killed her mum. Doesn’t remember being saved by her mum’s boyfriend. Doesn’t know that that’s who she still calls dad.’

‘Oh, that’s good! I wonder who –’ Braxton’s face fell, like a cartoon – ‘oh.’

‘W –what are you saying?’ I mumbled. My head throbbed –she was just blurting out ideas, wasn’t she? This had nothing to do with me.

‘Valerie, stop, you’re scaring her,’ Braxton instructed. He sighed, tilting his laptop screen down. ‘Well, that’s one way to find out. Sorry, Ivy. Adrian and Valerie, well, they aren’t like you and I. They have the ability to read –not books, people. They can look into peoples’ pasts, see their stories, even if they don’t remember it, or know it. We became friends and I learned about their ability, then I decided that it would be good to write some of the lesser-told stories people carried into books, or to extract parts of them to spice up my own writing. We hoped you’d be another writer –some of these people have backstories too horrific to ever be told, but when put on paper, can be relived by millions around the world. I’m sorry we couldn’t tell you. I understand if you want to leave.’

My head spun. I could barely hear him over the pulsing in my ears –was it true? Was everything Valerie said about me true? Was the man I’d called Dad for as long as I could remember not even my real father?

‘I don’t –I don’t understand.’

‘That’s okay. Take some time to process it. You can come back on Thursday, or don’t, I don’t mind. But we’ll be here, eleven o’clock sharp.’ Braxton grinned lopsidedly at me, his eyes somehow soft but pained.

‘Your story’s worth telling, Ivy,’ Adrian said suddenly. I stood up, the chair scraping behind me. ‘Maybe not to the world, but to someone else. You can’t keep it bottled up like this.’

Maybe he was right. Maybe I did need to tell someone.

I still needed to finish my own novel –the rough draft vanishing into darkness as I slammed my laptop shut.

But first, I needed to figure out my own story.