The Hungry Ghosts

I want to choke him with a belt until his head will turn purple and his eyes pop out of their sockets. My mind wanders to the sound popping boba pearls make when you suck them. Do eyes pop out like that? No matter. Another clickety-clack of keyboards on my left. My right. A scribble of pen on paper. I want to break fingers, one by one. All of their fingers. Crack, scream, snap. Grab her stupid lucky pen from her mangled fingers and stab the palm of her hand. I want to smash the laptops until all the keyboards will fall apart, shove them in one of their throats until I could see the angular shapes pushing through the neck. Just stop typing. Just stop scrawling. Just st

‘Are you okay?’ Veronica flutters her eyelashes, which frames her doe-like brown eyes, at me. I can only look at her stupid signature red lipstick and the mascara goo that is sticking the lashes into pointed lumps.  Fucking Venomica, just leave me be. 

‘Oh, I’m perfect.’ Smile. No, not like that. You look like a psycho. ‘Taking in the atmosphere.’ I inhale deeply as if I’m soaking all of the creative energy which flows through the room. In reality, it’s only the scent of a stuffy room in a university’s library. Old books, smelly students and packaged snacks. Hardly inspiring. 

She hums. ‘You sure hun? We’ll understand if you want to take a break or leave the session. Sometimes the muse just doesn’t strike.’ I can feel poisonous honey dripping with every other word she lilts. We’ll. Cunt. I can hear the unspoken words: You seem to be doing that a lot lately. Taking in the atmosphere. Do you even write anymore? 

Imposter. Imposter. Imposter. Imposter. Imposter. 

‘How’s your story going, Veronica?’ I deserve a well-done star-sticker for this. A golden one. Her designated nickname was ready to roll from my lips. The restraint took real effort. 

‘Brilliant. I’m really getting into the body of it, you know?’

I nod with an expression I hope mimicks excitement. The body. I have no idea what she’s talking about.   

I put my headphones on. Venomica is saying something I don’t care about. I vaguely move my hands to gesture that inspiration has struck me and that I really, really, need to let the words take over now. She smiles, exposing her pearly whites like a rabid predator and raises her thumbs up to me like I’m a small child. She then goes back to her embossed notebook and my shoulders drop. God, I know that I don’t tend to pray and honestly, I don’t even know if I believe in your existence. I am aware that in concept, one should only pray for positive things and without context, this request will sound horrible of me. But trust me, this is for the greater good. I wish that sometime in the near future, someone will punch Venomica’s face so hard her teeth will fall off and her jaw will be beyond rectifying. Amen.  

I open YouTube and type in the search bar: Writing music. Classical Instrumental Music for Writing. Nope, not in the mood for that. POV: You Fall in Love With the Villain. I don’t think so. Dark Academia Music. I roll my eyes at that one. You Can Feel the Composer’s Pain. I bet Venomica would love that one. Scroll, scroll, scroll. 

Stop procrastinating, Eleanor’s voice chastises me in my head. I glance at her crouched form, deep in writing. Or the process, as everybody loves to call it here. I’m happy for her, I really do, but a part of me wishes she was struggling like me right now. 

You are procrastinating. 

I can almost see the frown she always pulls when she says it to me. 

Clack, clack, scribble, tap.   

I settle for a generic playlist just so I can drown in the sounds of others' creativity at work. I click F12 over and over until the music is so loud I can only hear it and my thoughts. I wonder if pressing more would make it impossible to think. 

I hover my fingers over the keyboard, tipper tapper the letters gently as if I were writing. I can’t help but notice the other hands in the room. How fast they work with their weapon of choice. In the corner of my eye, I can see how words have accumulated in Edgar’s word document. My heart clenches. I look back at my bare screen and notice that I have dug my thumb into my forefinger. I let go and unclench my jaw. My eyes are fixated on the redness of the skin. I did that. I want to do more than that. Write. Yes, that’s right. 

The

Backspace, backspace, backspace. 

I

Backspace.

I can’t write. I don’t know what to write. Just write something.

Baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaackspaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaceeee.

The page is blank again. I’m not sure how many tracks have changed since it started playing. Five? Seven? I don’t know what’s the opposite of progress. But this is what is happening today. It’s like the more I try, the more words are added to the document, the farther away I get. 

Maybe coffee is the answer. I’ll just grab a drink. Walking will help clear my head, for sure. Yes. Coffee. Good plan. I take off my headphones and slightly flinch when the barrier between me and the world is removed. I can still hear music coming out of my headphones. It’s so tempting to just put it back and ignore everything. 

‘Anyone in need of coffee?’

Heads turn sharply to the word coffee. They gravitate towards caffeine. We all do. Caffeine straight to the veins. They all want something. Edgar uses this opportunity to ask not just for coffee, but also for sparkling water and a pastry. Oh, oh and can you ask for extra cream? I try not to break my smile and nod as I type it all on my phone. 

‘I’ll join you,’ Ava stretches her arms and gets up from her cushioned spot by the corner of the room. Her long dark curls bob with each movement. I’m happy for the company but also kind of… not. I don’t know what I want today.  

As we walk, Ava is telling me about her new novel. She has already finished writing her first chapters. Of course she has. She also finished the two upcoming assignments for Writing the Short Story and The Begining of a Novel modules. I think about the other day when we exchanged family war stories. My narcissistic mother. Her drunkard father. Losing childhood to parent our parents. The way my mum snooped in closed drawers. How my dad just left the room whenever I cried in front of him. We laughed so hard it hurt when I told her about that time he literally handed me over to my mum as if I was a package. Here is your emotional support, daughter. Cry to your mum. We talked and had tea and hot chocolate. And we laughed until we didn’t. I won the sad girl competition that time. 

‘...Did your mum do that to you too?’ I asked.

I saw her smile half frozen, fading away. A trail of choked laughter dying down. No. No, it didn’t. It never happened to her. Just me. I laughed that time because there was nothing else to do. What? Should we have just sat there in complete silence? That would have been terrible. Whenever I recall that conversation, it sounds forced or maniacal. The kind of laugh that said this is okay. Let’s dismiss the depth of our trauma. 

‘...I wanted to show with that the difference in mental health for different people. The range of visibility, if you wish to call it that way.’

‘Yeah, I think it’s good.’

‘I wanted to draw things from my experience but also keep it strictly fiction, you know?’

I nod and she keeps going, explaining in detail the different conflicts she wants to explore in her novel. She only stops once to take a breath. A second time, to order her extra hot cappuccino. She is going to include poetry in her novel, sort of epigraphs, she explains. She will use her own blood as ink. For the message. I lose her at this point, but I keep nodding and throwing agreeable words. At least she’s writing. I bite the inside of my cheek. So pathetic. I envy her and her sad girl story, even though I never wanted to write these kinds of stories. The TikTok Hot Girl Books. That Girl Books. Books you want to be seen with. Books that are more of a vibe rather than anything else. Women Versus the Void.  Endure the void, that’s what she said, right? Fucking Weil. How much more void can I endure? Is ‘more void’ an oxymoron? I mentally shake my head. Anyway, I can’t tap into my trauma anymore, not since my BA. It sucked it all out of me with a straw. Greedy. Somehow the lack of ability to write even that is making it oh so much more pathetic and sad.  

We hand over the drinks and snacks to everyone. They sigh when the scent of caffeine hits their noses. We devour our drinks in long gulps. No finger clicking or angry pen scribbling. We drink like we drank so many hot beverages until the insides of our throats can’t feel anything anymore. Collective sigh. Ahh.

I like to think I’m better than them. I also like to pity myself. I like to think I’m special but also not. Not talented. A loser. The next best thing. It’s my secret shame. But I think they’re all the same, in a way. Secretly, of course. Vile and self-loathing. Just admitting this to myself makes me want to run to the bathroom and hurl all I’ve consumed today. For a second, a thought flashes through my head. I vomit right here, right now. It’s so gross that everyone starts to vomit too. Shoes, hair, computers and notebooks. Nothing gets away until the room is flooded and we choke on it. Another long gulp of coffee. Why am I like this today?

I look at the computer’s screen and realise that I don’t want to write. Well, I do. I don’t want to write for that unfed vampire as if I’m handing over a sacrifice or an offering. The first day we had a class with Mrs Jones, I was sure she was going to burst out in flames when she rolled up the curtains. She didn’t and in every session since, I hoped it is just a delayed reaction. She will turn into dust anytime soon, wait and see. It will happen this time. It will happen this time. The next. Yes. Like a stupid little mantra. 

Several times I found myself fantasising about writing the great anti-Mrs-Jones story and submitting it as an assignment. I joked about it with Eleanor now and then and we tried to compile a list of pet peeves the unfed vampire had. We ended up agreeing it would start with a date at the top of the page. The location will never be disclosed in the story. That’s important. No hints either. The protagonist will wake up in a white room (the vampire had apparently made a guy run away with tears from her class for using a white room as a setting) only to discover in the end that too was a dream. As many comma splices as possible. Lots of alliteration. Barely any description of actions. And many, many cliches. The protagonist will release a breath she didn’t know she was holding. The characters will smirk smugly, chuckle, murmur and shiver, but not from the cold. Tears will stream down their faces in rivers. Oh and purple prose. So much purple prose. So flowery it will give any reader hay fever. 

I half-heartedly contemplate the temptation to write this. I know I won’t do it. I like to think I am some sort of an imaginative rebel. Or more like, reminisce about the girl I was at times in my life. But I won’t do it, because I am a coward. I am afraid I won’t be able to pull it off. I am afraid of the beginning, the process. The blankness.

I don’t know exactly when I stopped imagining. Propper imagining, not what I’m doing right now. Imagining how I bring a garlic necklace to class and Mrs Jones hisses, exposing her retractable fangs to the horror of the rest of the students… It just doesn’t count. I want to go back to when conjuring stories and plot ideas from thin air was a given. I used to talk to trees as a child. Make birthday mud cakes to celebrate their birthdays. For god's sake, I used to think I could harness the wind and tame it like a mountain dog. What happened to that little girl? At what stage did I stop? Is that what happens to adults eventually? Even fake adults, like me? The ones that just wing it but have no clue?

I want to eat junk, binge on a stupid show, go on a shopping spree, throw up, dive from a cliff. Anything other than this. There is something unspoken, a sinister underline my mind refuses to disclose. Eat. Run. Masturbate. Scream. Die. Watch. Sleep. Masturbate. Drink. Smoke. Eat. Throw up. Run. Scream. Watch. Sleep. Fuck. 

The series I wanted to watch was released today on Netflix, no? My feet itch to take the bloody bus home and curl in bed with that idiotic, mindless show. I eye the window. It’s so dark outside but I can’t possibly tell the time. Winter swallowed every bit of daylight around four or three o'clock. No dots of stars. A heavy cloak of clouds surrounds the sky.

I’m glad that the library is open twenty-four seven. But like most things, I also resent it. I don’t want to be the first person to leave. To quit. To lose. I’m so tired and I achieved nothing but more anxiety. My eyes burn from staring too much at the blue light emanating through screens and a shitty restless sleep from the night before. 

Someone once told me you can die from consuming too much caffeine. Headache, nervousness, insomnia, irritability, frequent urination, fast heartbeats, muscle tremors, cardiac arrest, death. I think about it now and then. I drink one cup of coffee in the evening and think… What if I’ll have another one? And then that conversation flashes through my head. I look sadly at the instant coffee container and shelve it away. Instead, I snack. I watch essay videos on YouTube. I doodle. I avoid my tasks as much as possible. I try to answer a hunger of sorts. The cafe should be closed by now, but fortunately, the vending machine is always happy to take students’ money. This time, I drink more coffee.

I start to type. I try to avoid thinking of mediocrity, cheap paperbacks and that agents accept less than two per cent of manuscripts. First drafts are always shitty. First drafts are always shitty. First drafts are always shitty. Just keep writing. Don’t think. I look at my hands hitting the keyboards and it’s like I’m watching someone else's hands. Near but far away.  A weird, new kind of dissociation of the mind from the body. If the extremely simplified difference between meditation and dissociation is consent, this one is a mixture of both. I’m in a tunnel, it’s dizzy, too bright. I’m so tired and not tired. I push through, force the words out. My chest is tight. People with anxiety should never touch coffee. 

I write, and write, and write. And no, I don’t care about all of my Oxford commas. I don’t know what I’m writing, or where I’m going with it. It’s like diving into a cave. Free-falling to no end. Maybe that’s just it. All the falling. Little Alice in a never-ending tunnel. Always sinking deeper, never knowing what’s waiting at the bottom. Never knowing if it will give any meaning or sense, or whether it will fill all of the emptiness or finally give some relief to the constant hunger. The thought is almost petrifying. I don’t want to know what is waiting in the end, if there is any end. Clickity clack, clickity clack. 

I keep writing.