Artwork by trisis and
plushieowner
A wannabe author sat in the basement of his home in
the Haunted Woods. He gaped at the padded walls and at the stack of personal
rejection letters printed from this computer in ‘Times New Roman’.
He fiddled with the quill he was writing with
and started to doodle on his article submission. His pen scribbled freely across
the page, perfectly in sync with his flowing thoughts. One that lay in the back
of his mind that really worried him was the fact he might never get into the
times. Never. Ever.
“Curse this stupid quill! Doesn’t work anymore!”
he shook the nib of the quill.
The basement had a permanent foul, decaying
smell to it. The walls seemed to move, the vents seemed to shuffle in the wind
like a deck of cards being dealt. There was also the faint sound of Lupes howling
under a full moon could be heard. Voices from the outside echoed off the cracked,
stone walls. Talk about eerie! For this author, though the eeriness was a bizarre
comfort. For you and I, a bad nightmare.
A sudden breeze swept up his feet from nowhere.
No door was open. He glanced around the room and felt like he was been watched.
“I’m alone, or am I?” he pondered.
“Nah, that’s ridiculous, of course I’m alone.
“Eep!!” he shrieked in fright and jumped out
of his chair as something ran across his foot. Something hairy.
He kneeled under the table and picked up the
furry, black Spyder. “Aren’t you cute?” he patted the little critter and put
it on the floor.
“You are my only friend here, little Spyder,
I’m so small and insignificant just like you,” he sighed.
At that time, he took a seat back down and rolled
his chair back in, making sure he didn’t flattened the little thing by accident.
His posture back went to being the usual cramped
over position. He had been at the same writing desk that he has sitting at for
the last 2 years. Sitting there, writing day and night. His fingers of his hands
hunched over automatically. The black hood hung over his face, just like the
frown that replaced his once happy smile.
Had we lost the spark to write? Writing was
a chore. It just wasn’t fun anymore. Something such as destiny made him do it
even though negativity had eaten him alive though.
He swiveled his crystal goblet that contained
an elixir of knowledge. The crimson elixir had a potent and deadly power. Used
in the wrong hands, it could be deadly.
Imagine the thought of an army of chatspeakers
ruling Neopia with Nick Neopia with this elixir. It was bad enough when they
had power with no knowledge. What about knowledge and power? Chet quivered at
the thought, he didn’t want to live to see the day that happens in the future.
“Knowledge is power. Knowledge is power,” he
muttered under his breath as the green stream rose up and filled the room from
his glowing cauldron. Afterwards, he drank up the elixir and took a refill from
his cauldron blew. The aroma smelt of the Spooky Food shop, especially those
pulsating spooky jelly brains that they sell and crossed with old sneaker smell.
He opened anxiously up the latest Neopian Times
to see if it had gotten in. No sign of rejection, no sign of acceptance this
week, so he came to the conclusion he might of gotten accepted. A glass is half
full attitude.
“Tdyans, Noremac9 and all the regulars. What
a surprise! Not me!” he threw the paper across the room in a spite of jealously.
Tttmeess... Reejjeeecttiio… Sssccaarreed
oooof faiiillluree?? The voices is his head started coming back to him.
He tried to hold his head from moving uncontrollably like the whirling patterns
of a Rainbow Swirly thing.
“Stop with the voices, already!! Why, must I
strive to perfection? I’m all trying 110% and that is isn’t good enough” his
sunlight stricken skin shook nervously.
He was fed up with rejection, so very fed up
with rejection. He wasn’t always the vindictive or jealous type but ever since
his Neofriend got into The Neopian Times, he had been bitten with the green
‘Mootix’ bug. Envy. Greed. Power. Blinded in fact. His face turned a sickly
avocado-green colour.
How could he deal with it?
World domination. Unoriginal and what would
that solve? I give the whole novelty value, a week.
Revenge?
Nah, he decided he wasn’t the deceitful type.
All he wanted was his 15 minutes of Fame, an
inbox full of fanmail and a little recognition from the editor of the Neopian
Times. Was that too much to ask for?
How devoted was he into getting into the times?
One word. Very. For example if he had to be buried in the Haunted Woods tomorrow,
his one last wish would be to be buried with a gold quill in his hand. Just
like a Neopian Times trophy. His gravestone would read something along the lines
of “Submitted 100 times and still not published”.
A times legend by the name of (if you haven’t
worked it out) “Chet Flash”. Even though no one had seen him, he was still infamous
around the Deep Catacombs. His life story, I suppose, could be compared to “a
pound story published in The Neopian Times”. Tragic and cliché but unforgettable.
It involved a neopet dumping its owner (nothing
new), questioning of self worth, regrets and a lost of heaps of Neopoints. Don’t
bring out the playing violins yet. Nothing unusual here but here is where the
story gets strangely sad.
Ever since the day he stumbled across the webpage
for The Neopian Times, little voices haunted and daunted his now fragile mind.
One click, he was drawn in a trap. Stuck spending eternity writing for the times
until his wrists got sore and fell off.
Many authors and a few artists have taken pity,
and have tried to help him by adding references though various issues of the
Neopian Times to see if people would stand up and take notice of him.
He didn’t want anyone’s help, though. A stereotypical
author who liked to write alone and by himself was what he was. So any unsuspecting
journalist who tried to track him down or interview him, disappeared without
a chance to tell the tale to anyone.
Sitting at his desk, chewing on the end of his
lead pencil thinking of ideas. Why, don’t I do this? an idea sparked
on him and he started to compose something with his purple quill in red ink.
He just fell to ground like a bag of broken
bones.
Dropped abruptly.
Then all of a sudden.
He knocked over the pot of red ink over his
black robe. The quill lay fell from his hand with the red ink dripping on the
ground.
Drip, drip.
Drip.
Red. Seeing Red? Sinking in the shadows of life?
Not a scream, he fainted just like that.
The room shook and Ghostkerchiefs flew rapidly
though the wall. Then shortly afterwards filled with charcoal darkness.
A book called floated off the bookshelves of
spell books he owned and opened revealing a page to do with an ancient prophecy
of some sort. The glow of the book shone and oozed slimy green from the edges.
Then the book slammed itself shut and fell on the ground.
“Thud!!” He awoke with the noise. Dazed and
confused.
Shortly after, the purple glowing quill he was
writing with floated back to his hand and started writing on a piece of parchment
on Chet’s table.
“Dear Chet, you possess the Cursed Ink Pot,
but now you must find all the cursed items to do with The Neopian Times. They
have been scattered across Neopia.”
An iridescent light struck his body and that
revealed he was the “Chosen One”. A curse had been bestowed upon him. The NT
Curse!
“The chosen one! Hhahaha! More like ‘the rejected
one’ he laughed maniacally.
“So do you accept your mission?” the quill wrote
again on the piece of parchment.
“Quest!!?!? What a load of dung! I suppose it
involves going though mazes, dungeons, spooky forests and castles” he speculated
about what this quest would actually involve.
“Of course! I wouldn’t want this quest to be
too easy for you,” the quill continued writing.
“So what happens if I don’t do this stupid quest?”
“Without breaking the curse, you will spend
eternity being rejected and never accepted in The Neopian Times community of
authors and artists.”
“Bummer. Curse this stupid quill!….
The End
Author’s Note: So there you go, the legend of Chet Flash. I shouldn’t of
told you any of that story. I have said too much!! I might disappear like the
journalists in the story that dared to find out Chet’s story.
Then again everything I told in that story was a ball-faced lie and was
a work of fiction. Mwhahaa! Don’t tell me, I fooled you! I take no responsibility
of nightmares and disappearance of Neopian Times authors if this story gets
published.
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