Jack Worley (18)
Conduit
“Let the world burn through you. Throw the prism light, white hot, on paper.”
I chuckled at this, my eyes darting from the paper that held the quote back to the blank screen on my computer. My paper is white hot. It’s an LED screen, I thought.
Signing the paper to mark it as mine, I then began to strike the keys in an almost drunken manner. A clack here, a click there. Eventually the rhythm came to me and I typed quicker than before, words of literary revolutions, starting fires in the minds of those who absorbed the pages of literary classics. I typed with a heated fervor, barely stopping except to fix a spelling mistake. Those began to come less and less, my eyes transfixed to the screen, lines and lines of words spouting from the tips of my fingers. I felt like a conduit, my mind a blazing inferno of ideas and words and revolutions.
“Maybe I could be one of those famous writers,” I chuckled. “That kids will have to write about years from now.”
The words felt hot in my mouth, like my voice box was overheated. I tried to swallow, but all I felt was steam, scalding my tongue. Then I looked back at the screen. Pages upon pages of words, in only a few minutes. My hands had not stopped typing, the tips of my fingers black from the paint of the keys. I tried to pull my hands away, but they would not listen. They were not my hands anymore.
Faster and faster they typed, documenting histories from civilizations never documented before. The words blazing by, I barely noticed that they were no longer in English. Each page seemed to be a different language, a different dialect, a different world. It was as if millions of lost souls were possessing my hands, beckoning them to recant the tales told to them when they were still walking this world. Smoke came from my fingertips. My blood boiled within me. I looked around for anything that could break this. That’s when I saw it. Below my name on the paper, that once blank sheet, were hundreds of scorched signatures, those who had left their mark, left their story. Let the world burn through you, I thought. I tried to scream for help. Only ash escaped my lips.
Jack Worley, eighteen, has always enjoyed reading horror and fantasy books, including authors such as Stephen King and J.R.R. Tolkien. He wrote this piece as an entry for the State BETA competition, but has been writing since he was fifteen. Jack is also interested in cartography, lore, and D&D.
Conduit
“Let the world burn through you. Throw the prism light, white hot, on paper.”
I chuckled at this, my eyes darting from the paper that held the quote back to the blank screen on my computer. My paper is white hot. It’s an LED screen, I thought.
Signing the paper to mark it as mine, I then began to strike the keys in an almost drunken manner. A clack here, a click there. Eventually the rhythm came to me and I typed quicker than before, words of literary revolutions, starting fires in the minds of those who absorbed the pages of literary classics. I typed with a heated fervor, barely stopping except to fix a spelling mistake. Those began to come less and less, my eyes transfixed to the screen, lines and lines of words spouting from the tips of my fingers. I felt like a conduit, my mind a blazing inferno of ideas and words and revolutions.
“Maybe I could be one of those famous writers,” I chuckled. “That kids will have to write about years from now.”
The words felt hot in my mouth, like my voice box was overheated. I tried to swallow, but all I felt was steam, scalding my tongue. Then I looked back at the screen. Pages upon pages of words, in only a few minutes. My hands had not stopped typing, the tips of my fingers black from the paint of the keys. I tried to pull my hands away, but they would not listen. They were not my hands anymore.
Faster and faster they typed, documenting histories from civilizations never documented before. The words blazing by, I barely noticed that they were no longer in English. Each page seemed to be a different language, a different dialect, a different world. It was as if millions of lost souls were possessing my hands, beckoning them to recant the tales told to them when they were still walking this world. Smoke came from my fingertips. My blood boiled within me. I looked around for anything that could break this. That’s when I saw it. Below my name on the paper, that once blank sheet, were hundreds of scorched signatures, those who had left their mark, left their story. Let the world burn through you, I thought. I tried to scream for help. Only ash escaped my lips.
Jack Worley, eighteen, has always enjoyed reading horror and fantasy books, including authors such as Stephen King and J.R.R. Tolkien. He wrote this piece as an entry for the State BETA competition, but has been writing since he was fifteen. Jack is also interested in cartography, lore, and D&D.