The Ink-Eaters

The Ink-Eaters

The first time I tasted ink, it was warm. Not the metallic bite of fountain pen ink, nor the bitter slick of toner on your fingers—this was older. Richer. It clung to my teeth like wine, bloomed behind my eyes like a headache, and whispered a word I shouldn’t have known in a language no one should still speak.

Welcome, it said.

I hadn’t meant to eat the page, not really. It was a late November night—the kind where fog paws at the dormitory windows like something with fingers—and I was behind on three essays. The library was closing, but Special Collections’ door hadn’t locked properly, and I slipped in on impulse. The smell there was different: less mildew and more... musk. Something animal.

I pulled a book because it looked wrong. No title on the spine, only a smear that could have been wax—or blood. Its pages were brittle; one sliced my hand. I was about to curse and leave when a handwritten note fell out. Thin yellow paper, faded black ink:

Feed the page. Become the page.

I don’t remember deciding. I was staring at it one moment, tearing a corner off and pressing it to my tongue the next. It dissolved like communion. I saw flashes: bone-white cities, burning manuscripts, a child scribbling with hair dipped in ink.

When I came to, the lights were out—but a single candle had been lit across the room. Behind it, a figure in a long black coat sat where librarians once scolded us for dog-earing books.

“You’ve read,” they said—not a question.

I nodded, feeling someone else inside me rearrange.

“Then follow.”

The candlelight didn’t flicker as I walked. The figure—a woman—stood as I approached. Her coat was old-fashioned, belted at the waist, made of fabric that whispered rather than rustled. She had a librarian’s posture but a predator’s stillness.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“Eli,” I rasped.

She tilted her head. “That’s not the name the book gave you.”

I frowned. “What?”

“Never mind. You’ll remember soon.”

She led me past fragile volumes locked behind glass, down a hallway lined with oil portraits whose eyes seemed to follow us.

She knocked at a door with no handle three times, then twice more. The wood shuddered. It opened.

A domed, circular room lit by candles revealed six figures in black. Bookcases were carved into the walls. In the centre rested a thick, throbbing volume.

“You’ve tasted the page,” the woman said. “That’s the first key.”

“What is this place?” I asked.

“We are the Ink-Eaters,” she replied. “We take in what cannot be taught. We preserve what would be burned. We carry knowledge in flesh, not paper.”

One figure smiled—too white, too sharp.

She held out a sliver of parchment covered in shifting, serpentine script. “Take it. Read it with your body.”

My fingers trembled as I pressed it to my tongue. This time, knowledge came as hunger. Images, sounds, memories I never lived... I buckled, whispering, “I want more.”

She nodded slowly. “You may leave,” she said, almost gently. “But you’ll never unknow what you’ve begun.”

I looked at the book. Then back at her.

It was reckless. Maybe even madness. But I’d spent my whole life hungry for what they never taught us. This was knowledge that wouldn’t ask for permission.

“I want to know,” I said.

They applauded softly. “Welcome, Brother Ink,” she intoned. “Your mind will never be yours again.”

“Begin,” said the Curator. She lit another candle. “One page each. No more. Not yet.”

A chemistry undergrad peeled a page from the book. It sounded like flesh-tearing. He bit it, chanted something inhuman—opened his eyes rimmed with black—and returned to his seat, smiling.

Each member followed. Ink stained their lips; tears and moans escaped some.

I didn’t fold it when it was my turn—I swallowed a whole page. Salt and smoke. I envisioned bone cities, monks sewing pages into their flesh, a future me—thin, ink-stained, trapped.

A hush. Someone hissed, “Stop him!”

Nathan, the tall boy, seized the book’s spine and bit into it. Ink erupted from his mouth like a fountain. He convulsed—limbs spasming as if written upon.

“Do not touch him,” said the Curator. Nathan screamed—a sound of snapped violin strings—then fell silent. Ink retreated. His face drained of life.

“Erased,” she said. “Knowledge must be digested. Not devoured.”

She met my eyes. “That is the second key, Brother Ink: limit.”

Nathan’s finger twitched, writing letters on the floor. The stone burned beneath.

“Leave him,” she said. “He has work to do.”

We exited. I glanced back: Nathan’s finger carved glowing script into the stone.

In the corridor, she handed me a cloth-wrapped notebook bound in skin. No title. A black wet pen lay nestled at its spine. “You’re no longer a reader,” she whispered. “You’re an archive.”

That night, I awoke to find the notebook open on my lap—ink trailing from my nose. The first page read:

They eat not for hunger, but to be eaten.

The words want bodies. Yours will do.

I tried attending my Postcolonial Gothic seminar the next day. The professor’s words were shapes without meaning, and I couldn't understand her.

In my handwriting, my notes were filled with script-like crawling legs. The student beside me spoke—her voice a backwards hum.

I fled to the cold stone steps and opened the notebook. A new page appeared:

You are being written.

That night, the notebook opened itself. In thick black ink:

Tonight. You will be bound.

I returned to Special Collections. The living volume waited, surrounded by five silent figures. No Nathan—only etched script where his body once lay.

“Tonight, the book enters you,” the woman said. “You become archive. Ink-bearer. One of us.”

“And if I refuse?” I whispered.

“You won’t. The book has chosen you. Refusal is an illusion.”

She offered a golden page inked in black tar-like script. “You will carry what must not be destroyed... and in return, you will know.”

I reached for it. Something deep inside tried to scream.

The page hissed as it touched my tongue. The ink tasted like memory and regret.

I don’t remember swallowing it.

I remember burning behind my eyes. The others bowed as I convulsed, spitting ink. Then stillness.

I knew the names of stars unseen by telescopes, languages long dead, and the shape of every book I’d never read.

They called me “Brother Archive.”

We were never students. Never seekers. We were Ink-Eaters. And now, we were eaten.

But I am not a brother.

Not a name.

Not a shape.

I am text.

I am story.

And I am still being written.

I can feel the pen move.

The third key is silence.