THE CORRECTIONS

Jonas Peel had been staring at the screen for hours, cursing each blinking cursor beat like a metronome counting down his worthlessness. The manuscript was overdue, rent was overdue, and his life felt overdue. He closed his laptop and pressed his palms to his eyes, hoping to rub away the nausea of failure.

Then he saw it.

On the table beside him lay the cheap composition notebook he used for scattered thoughts and useless lines he’d never finish. Only now, it was open to a page he didn’t remember writing:

“The neighbor's dog barked until its throat split open, spraying hot blood over the sunflowers.”

He blinked. The words blurred under sweat dripping from his brow. What was this, a horror line for later? A fever scribble from last night’s whiskey blackout?

As if to answer, a scream rose from outside. Jonas leapt to his feet and peered through the grimy blinds. The neighbor, Mrs. Cartwright, was kneeling in her flowerbed, shrieking at her convulsing golden retriever. Blood sprayed in ragged coughs from its ruined neck, painting petals crimson before it collapsed, twitching once and lying still.

Jonas stumbled back, knocking over his chair. His ears rang with her sobs. He looked at the notebook again. His heart thundered. A thought, vile but warm, pulsed through him: I wrote that.

Hands trembling, he picked up a pen.

The next morning, unable to sleep, eat, or think of anything else, he tested it again:

“Jonas Peel’s landlord, Mr. Brewster, had a heart attack and died alone in his office.”

That afternoon, he heard the paramedics arrive. Two neighbor's spoke in hushed voices on the landing: Brewster had been dead for hours before anyone noticed.

Jonas felt a sick, giddy relief. No landlord meant no eviction. No eviction meant he could write in peace. For the first time in months, he slept. Dreams came, thick with shadows that whispered sweet promises in a language he almost understood.

The third test was bolder:

“Jonas Peel’s bank account received a deposit of fifty thousand dollars from an anonymous donor.”

When he checked his online banking, there it was. Fifty thousand. Cleared. Real.

He laughed until he cried, then cried until he laughed again, clutching his chest as if he might explode from the sudden permission to exist without hunger gnawing at his gut.

That night, he sat in the low light of his room, the glow spread over the notebook’s pages as he wrote a new story. The main character was an author who discovered his words shaped reality. Each sentence was a command. Each paragraph rewrote the world.

But as he reached the end, his pen froze. An idea gnawed at him: Where does the power come from? In the story, he wrote:

“The author finally learned that each change required a trade. For every blessing he gave himself, someone else lost something dear.”

His phone buzzed with a news alert. Wild-eyed, Jonas grabbed it.

MULTI-CAR PILEUP ON I-70. SEVERAL DEAD, MORE INJURED. INVESTIGATION UNDERWAY.

He checked the time. It matched his bank deposit transfer exactly. His mind reeled. He flipped back to the line about Brewster’s heart attack. A toddler had drowned in a bathtub that morning, a story trending just an hour later. The dog’s death coincided with a teen’s fatal fall off scaffolding downtown.

Each blessing, each correction, required death.

Jonas slammed the notebook shut, heart pounding so hard he thought it might break his ribs. He crawled into bed and clutched his chest in the dark, whispering to himself, “No more. No more.”

But morning came, and hunger returned, black and bottomless. Fifty thousand was nothing. He needed millions. He needed fame, power, and the immortality of words etched into generations.

The candlelight flickered again that evening. Shadows quivered against his cramped walls, writhing like eels in the dim glow. He opened the notebook and pressed pen to paper, shaking with adrenaline and dread.

“Jonas Peel published a novel that topped every bestseller list in the world. Movie rights were bought within the week.”

He set down the pen, weeping in relief, though bile burned in his throat. He tried not to think of the price.

The next day, it happened. His inbox exploded with offers. Agents begged to represent him. His phone buzzed with interview requests. A streaming platform pre-ordered the adaptation for an eight-figure sum.

But the news… oh, the news.

Three coordinated mass shootings in three cities. Hundreds dead. The footage burned his eyes like acid. The price was rising, he realized. His dreams demanded more blood each time.

He tried writing reversals: “Bring them back. Undo it.”

But nothing changed. The dead remained dead. There was no undo. Only the blank page, waiting for the next line.

His hair grew thin with stress. He stopped eating. He watched the world warp with every greedy scribble. Fame. Women. Youthful skin. Wealth. Each came dripping with horror on the news: bridges collapsing, hospital wards burning, children crushed under falling ceilings. He saw his reflection in the dark window and thought he saw shadows moving behind his eyes.

He tried writing lines to free himself:

“Jonas Peel forgot about the notebook.”

“Jonas Peel never found the notebook.”

But the ink faded before his eyes. The letters wriggled, refusing his command. His hand cramped with pain as if invisible teeth gnawed the bones. He dropped the pen and gasped, seeing faint bite marks blooming on his skin.

That night, the shadows spoke to him from corners beyond the candlelight:

“There is no freedom from the story now, Jonas. You wrote the rules. We are the corrections.”

He tried to scream, but his voice was stolen. He tried to flee, but his legs dissolved to black mist. The shadows poured over him like tar, filling his mouth, eyes, ears, and every screaming synapse. The darkness swallowed his thoughts until only one remained, circling like a dying insect in a jar: I did this. I wrote this.

Days later, when the landlord’s son came to claim the apartment, they found Jonas sitting at his desk, face slack and eyes milky. The notebook lay before him, open to a fresh page. The words written there were smeared with dried blood:

“Jonas Peel was finally free.”

They buried him without ceremony. The world moved on, as it always did. But the notebook remained.

Waiting.

On a dusty desk in a silent apartment, dust collecting over the wood like tiny tears. The shadows flickered and listened, patient and endless.

Waiting for the next correction.