Hillsborough Writer's Circle

A gross pink banner hung above six heads, all sitting in a circle on the floor a few feet apart from each other. Not in complete silence; anticipation buzzed in everyone’s thoughts as Veronica prepared her notes for the day. Anticipation, or maybe excitement, or maybe anxiety.

Whatever it was, Janet fidgeted out of it, and almost disturbed the salt ring they were all sat inside. Everyone looked at her as she yelped in the fear that she might have ruined the ritual, and seeing that she did not this time, she gave a sheepish grin.

“All right,” Veronica said, interrupting the none-olog. “I need you all to remember that ink is getting expensive, and weather forecasts remain unpredictable. Not easy to schedule our meetings on dark and stormy nights or beautiful sunny days, especially with everyone’s increasingly packed schedules.

“Nonetheless, and without further ado, I think we can begin now.”

They all expected an interjection, but nobody fulfilled it. Everyone stood up, and Lisbeth stepped forward into the middle of the circle. She dipped her finger into the open bottle of black ink and drew a quill on the floor, six strokes sprouting from the feather’s spine to represent each member.

The rest of them began chanting, “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit…”

Olivia, the youngest of the group, was always bothered by the factually incorrect quill that was part of the ceremony. The rest of them were mostly bothered by the strong winds that picked up in the room that sent books flying, chairs falling, and ink upsetting. The rest of the ink was splattered over the drawing, and it all started glowing a pinkish-blue.

Everyone grimaced, and fell to the floor somewhat unconscious. The room heard only six thuds and the sound of paper rustling to the floor; it deadened.

Six unseeable figures stood over their bodies, unsettled, reeling from the sensation of having their muses ripped out from their beings. The feeling was overcome by the inspiration flooding their minds from just the room itself, flowing into their psyches as a sudden wave of a new outlook into their raw and unbridled creative minds. Their past memories, the ones they never reconsidered before, shone in colours they never fathomed existing. The more stubborn few of the circle grabbed the nearest pens and papers and furiously scribbled what they felt, filled with the mania of new found inspiration.                                                             

They wrote violently; even the meek and quiet Alice was uncharacteristically erratic. They would have torn all the paper to shreds were they not limited in their non-physical forms. Their pens just barely wanted to collide with their hands. Existing became a mental effort with no body to do it naturally. The rest of them have gotten to work too, desperately clawing sheets upon sheets of ideas onto whatever was strewn about that ink would take to.

Katherine shrieked and her pen fell gratefully out of her hand. Every nerve in her wrist felt shot as she grit her teeth through the writers’ cramp. Everyone looked at her, alarmed, but they were quickly overtaken by ideas, Katherine’s agony only elevating their creative energy. They turned empathy into character development, like machines, and as the pain began to subside, so did Katherine.

Nobody could place their finger on how much time has passed, but eventually every pen was dropped in fatigue. The ink-light burned out, and they were all enshrouded in a tranquilised darkness.

Janet was the first to panic.

“W-Wait. It should be over by now. The light had never gone out like that before, right?”

Tenuous murmurs filled the room.

“Yeah, Janet is right. By now, we should have all returned,” Alice piped up, less monotonous than usual.

Veronica searched for her notes. It was under a pile of writings, and she flipped through to the part titled “Troubleshoot”. A blueish-pink ambiance congregated in the air.

Lisbeth seemed to choke on some of it. “Egh, what are these? It feels like I’m breathing in a ghost.”

Olivia squinted. “Says you.”

Veronica cleared her throat. “Burn out. I don’t think we’ve written this hard before. Simply put, we’ve overexerted ourselves, and we’ve gotten too weak to recalibrate with our bodies.”

”And?” Katherine asked, eyebrows furrowed into a tight knit.

“According to procedure we have to recuperate. Rest until we’ve rebuilt enough energy to go back on our own.”

A hush.

Olivia looked at the floor. “...That means our ideas might fade.” She traced her finger on the papers by her side.

“They’ll still exist,” Alice said in her muted tone. “We just can’t read them.”

“Yeah, we know,” snapped Olivia.

“How long is it gonna take?” asked Lisbeth.

”This session will be for nothing!” continued Olivia. “I just wanna go back. Can’t we find a way around this?

Everyone looked at Veronica, who looked up from her notes and simply shook her head.

“There’s no way around taking a break, Livvie,” said Janet slowly.

“But, my darling ideas-”

”You’ll have to kill them.”

Olivia ran her hands through her hair. “I don’t want to. I can’t.”

She reached for her body and concentrated, all the while clutching the sheets of her ideas. Katherine grabbed her shoulder. Olivia shoved her off. Olivia’s body winced, and she fell back in surprise.

“I-” Olivia was breathing heavily, both in spirit and form. “I can’t move. I'm drained.”

Katherine held her. “You’re gonna fade if you do that. You already are, probably. What’s your problem?”

Tears pricked Olivia’s eyes. Lisbeth pulled Katherine away from her.

Katherine exhaled. “I’m sorry. But you all saw me get hurt earlier. We can get hurt. Who knows if we could die in the middle of the ritual?”

Veronica pursed her lips. “It doesn’t say,” she said curtly.

“...So, what sort of stuff did you get out of this session?” asked Lisbeth to Alice, trying to ebb the tension in the air. Everyone else joined or started their own conversations.

Olivia resigned, laying on the stained vinyl floor and idly flipping through her writing. Her mood dampened, her musings didn’t seem so worthwhile anymore. Still, there was some decent prose fodder in there, and she tried her best to burn them into her thoughts. Her mind was racing. It was a limp compared to before, but still…

Maybe hours or a day had passed; either way, Olivia bolted up, flesh and blood, realising mournfully that she could not understand what she wrote anymore.

“Oh, you’re back,” said Katherine, “Everyone else woke up already.”

Olivia began to cry.

Janet went to her side and rubbed her shoulder. “Hey now. It’s not the end of the world if something doesn’t work out. If it was, I’d be the harbinger of destruction.”

A chuckle arose among her sobs. “Did you guys get anything out of it?”

Lisbeth looked at her papers. “I can’t make heads or tails of any of this anymore, but I still remember what I told Alice, and what she told me.”

Alice nodded.

“Damn, who knew stressing over things wouldn’t help me relax?” Olivia sighed.

Veronica fixed her shirt. “Let’s go home. I’ll e-mail everyone again once the opportunity comes.”

They all put books back on the shelf and replaced the stained vinyl carpet. Lisbeth took down the banner, relieved. Alice had made it and brought it on the second meeting, and while she appreciated the effort, “Hillsborough Writer's Circle” in gross blue Comic Sans was just too much.