The Silver String

The package sat on the porch for an hour before Jack bothered to retrieve it. He eyed the box warily, like it might bite.

It had been a drunk purchase, made in the dead of night after his fourth glass of whiskey and a failed attempt at writing Chapter One of his latest book. He didn’t even remember ordering the damn thing, only waking up the next morning to an email confirmation.

“Antique typewriter, circa 1932. Guaranteed to inspire creativity.”

The guarantee had felt like a taunt. But desperate men do desperate things, and Jack Price was nothing if not desperate.

The box was heavier than he expected. Inside, nestled in a bed of shredded newspaper, was the typewriter: black lacquered metal, sleek and somehow menacing. The keys gleamed like tiny, waiting teeth.

Jack lifted it out, grunting at the unexpected weight, and set it on the scarred wooden desk by the window. He ran his fingers over the keys. They felt cool and smooth, almost alive.

“Well,” he muttered, pouring himself a fresh glass of whiskey. “Let’s see if you’re worth it.”

At first, nothing happened. Jack stared at the typewriter for an hour, the blank sheet of paper mocking him. He tried to start his novel again, but the words dried up before they reached his fingers.

Another whiskey. Another failure.

He almost gave up. But as he stood to leave, his fingers brushed the keys, and the typewriter let out a soft click. The key hadn’t moved, but it felt as though the machine had shivered beneath his touch.

Jack sat back down, staring. Something about the typewriter felt… expectant.

“Fine,” he said, rolling his shoulders. “Let’s try again.”

He placed his fingers on the keys and began to type.

And the words came.

They poured out of him like water bursting through a dam, flooding the page. The characters, the setting, the plot twists—it all flowed effortlessly, as though the story had been lying in wait, just waiting for him to find it.

By the time Jack stopped typing, it was dawn. A stack of perfectly written pages sat beside the typewriter.

For the first time in years, Jack felt alive.

It wasn’t until the third day that Jack noticed the strings.

He had been typing for hours, lost in the story, when a sharp pain in his wrist pulled him out of his trance. He rubbed at the spot absentmindedly, then froze.

Thin silver threads extended from his wrists, trailing down into the keys of the typewriter. They gleamed in the lamplight, taut and vibrating slightly, as if they were alive.

“What the hell?” Jack whispered.

He tried to pull away, but the strings tightened, biting into his skin. Panic clawed at his chest. He yanked harder, and one of the strings snapped with a sharp twang.

The pain was blinding. It shot up his arm like fire, and Jack screamed, collapsing onto the floor.

When he opened his eyes, the strings were gone. But the pain lingered, a dull ache in his wrists.

The typewriter sat silently on the desk, its keys gleaming like teeth.

Jack tried to stop using the typewriter, but the urge to write became unbearable. It gnawed at him, a constant itch just beneath his skin. He would find himself sitting at the desk without remembering how he got there, his fingers flying over the keys.

And the stories were brilliant. Better than anything he’d ever written before. His agent called him a genius, the comeback kid of the literary world. The first book sold out before it even hit the shelves.

But Jack was changing.

He slept less, ate almost nothing. His reflection in the mirror grew gaunt, his skin stretched tight over his cheekbones. The silver strings returned, more of them now, snaking from his wrists and forearms into the typewriter. They pulsed in time with his heartbeat.

One night, he woke to find himself standing at the desk, typing furiously. The paper in the carriage wasn’t blank anymore.

It wasn’t his book, either.

The words on the page were foreign, written in a language he didn’t recognize. The letters seemed to shift and writhe when he tried to focus on them.

Jack ripped the page free and threw it into the fireplace. The flames flared blue as the paper burned, and the silver strings tightened around his wrists, cutting deep.

He screamed, but the typewriter didn’t let go.

Jack stopped fighting the typewriter after that. He wrote what it wanted, filling page after page with those strange, alien words.

The strings grew thicker, stronger. They wrapped around his arms, his chest, his neck, until he was more string than man.

One night, the typewriter stopped typing. Jack sat at the desk, staring at the blank page, waiting.

The silver strings twitched once, twice. Then they pulled him forward, into the typewriter, into the waiting, gleaming teeth of the keys.

When the typewriter began to type again, it was no longer Jack’s hands pressing the keys.

It was something else entirely.

Credit: Don Campbell

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