| "Blast it!" shouted Edgar the Yellow Blumaroo. His frustrated yell of annoyance was accompanied by the sound of his pen soar across the room of his small Neovian home and land on the floor with a thud. Edgar placed his head in his hands, his ears drooping over them rather fittingly.
"Why can't I think of anything? How will I get my next novel out on time?" Edgar's voice trembled, staring forlornly at his notebook filled with nothing but blank and pristine pages of nothing. He let out a sigh as he got up from his seat and shuffled towards his pen that he foolishly threw. Looking out the window of his small home, Edgar gazed out into the night sky holding the small pen in his hands.
"If only this pen could write for me...then I'd make my deadline..."
Suddenly, the pen in Edgar's hand began to shake and glow a strange but beautiful hue of white. It escaped Edgar's hands to his own surprise before hovering in the air above Edgar's notebook.
"My word...! Could it be?" He hustled back to his chair and took hold of the pen once more as it began to scribble something quite peculiar...
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Author: scratch0
Date: Aug 30th
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Trembling with anticipation, Edgar read the words aloud as they were scrawled onto the page: "Your... stories... are... rubbish!?" His voice squeaked up an octave with shock and indignation. He watched, stunned, as the pen continued to write: I’ll write this one. Go to bed, you lazy hack.
The Blumaroo could scarcely believe his eyes. He released the pen to grip the armrests of his chair, suddenly feeling faint. "How dare you!" he gasped. "I am a published novelist!" He stared at the pen with a growing sense of dread. Was this what he’d wished for? Surely, he was just delirious from lack of sleep. Edgar snatched the pen from the air, tossed it into his stationery box, and snapped the lid shut. He turned the small brass key to lock the box for good measure.
He would just have to ask his editor for an extension on the deadline, he decided, shakily drawing the curtain and straightening up his desk. Edgar changed into his pyjamas and crawled into bed. He turned down the oil lamp on his bedside table, turned over and pulled the covers up to his nose like a child afraid of the dark, determined to forget about the pen locked inside his stationery box.
The small brass key slowly turned in its lock.
| Author: missbeasty
Date: Aug 31st |
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The next morning, Edgar awoke and immediately sprang to his desk. He had to let his editor know that he needed more time. He dialled the number on his desk phone and waited, tapping his foot.
“Greg speaking.”
“H-hi, Greg,” Edgar began, “It’s Edgar. I wanted-“
“Ah, Edgar!” Greg exclaimed with a warmth in his voice Edgar had never heard before. “Our star author. The manuscript you sent in last night is shaping up to be just exquisite! Good work.”
Edgar’s blood ran cold. He looked over at his stationery box, and sure enough, the key was out of the lock, on the floor.
As the horror of what had happened dawned on him, Edgar tried to explain. “Greg, you don’t understand-“
“Oh, don’t be modest. You’ve outdone yourself!”
I don’t even know what ‘I’ wrote! Edgar wanted to yell, but all he could muster was a string of thankful noises before hanging up the phone.
As soon as the receiver hit the cradle Edgar flung the stationery box open. The pen was gone, and there was no sign of what it wrote either.
He could look for the pen, but the damage was done. He doubted he could make the pen take it back.
A lightbulb turned on in Edgar’s head. That’s it! He had to take the false manuscript back before it went to print. That’s what he was going to do.
| Author: nurnurnur199
Date: Sep 1st |
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"Why are we doing this, again?" Asked Mabel, the red Aisha, as they approached the building in Neopia Central where Edgar's editor worked.
"I told you - because my pen came to life and wrote a story for me, and now Greg wants to publish it, and I can't let that happen!"
"Okay, but *why* can't that happen?"
The pair had entered the foyer by now, and Edgar flashed his ID at the Ixi working security. He shot Mabel an exasperated look as the elevator doors slid shut. "It isn't my work, Mabel. I'm not taking credit for someone else's writing. Especially when I don't actually know what they wrote!"
Mabel shrugged. They'd reached the tenth floor where Greg's office was. Taking a deep breath, Edgar knocked on the door. "Enter!" a throaty voice called from inside - but when Greg opened the door he and Mabel were shocked to see not Edgar, but... How will this story end?
| Author: tandavi
Date: Sep 2nd |
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Nothing. It wasn't as if the room was empty, but there was just... nothing. There wasn't even a hole, or an empty space, but literally nothing. The pair stood on the precipice, the void seemingly calling them onwards.
A small fly buzzed past Mabel's ears, the sound shocking her to her senses. Stepping back, she closed the door, the sudden movement knocking Edgar out of his trance as well.
In all her years as a- as anything really, Mabel had never seen anything like that. Back in college, she had a Dark Faerie roommate who would often cause pranks with magical darkness, but this was something different. That emptiness felt unnatural, felt unworldly. It felt wrong.
Edgar reached towards the door, but Mabel gently stopped him with an outstretched paw.
"What are you doing? I need to get in there, I need to read my manuscript!" Edgar pushed against his colleague's arm and reached for the door handle. "It was just sitting there, I need to see what it actually says!"
"What do you mean? How could you see anything-" Mabel was interrupted by Edgar pushing her to the ground.
"I need to read it!" Edgar growled at her. "And I won't let YOU stop me!" He was angry, truly angry. Mabel had seen Edgar get frustrated, annoyed, and even temperamental, but this was different.
Mabel scrambled upright, but by then Edgar was already walking through the door. His body quickly disappeared into the nothingness.
Mabel searched around, looking for something, anything, that could be used to help. On the opposite wall, there was an old-style fire-hose, a remnant from when the building was a fire station. Mabel could tie it around her waist, and use it like a tether as she jum-
The door slammed with a bang.
Cautiously, Mabel crept to the door. Slowly, carefully, she opened the door. And the office was back. There was no one in the office. No sign of Greg, Edgar, or anything. There was just a pen, sitting alone on the desk, next to a stack of blank paper. The End,
| Author: theawedude
Date: Sep 13th |
