Ghostwriter

• Sachi Petrohilos, Grade 11, Distance Education Centre Victoria
• Short Story
• 2011

Excellence Award in the 'Step Write Up 2011' competition

Cool as a cucumber, burning as molten silver, the sun burst from its long imprisonment in the arms of night, shattering the darkness, and alighting to its chariot like a god from the machine. I then stopped typing and pressed backspace. No more sunrise. Just a dusty room in a dusty house in a dusty life.

I looked outside the window, and words swirled around my head as I tried to describe the feelings in my heart while reconciling them with the logic in my head. As I turned back to the keyboard, I felt something stir inside me. A yearning?

No. Only characters in my stories have yearnings. Not me. I don’t care if my life has been ruined by the strange world we live in and the strange way it works. Strange, I think, that a 16-year-old millionaire should be stuck at his computer, ignoring messages from one of the most famous authors in the world, while trying to create a sunset.

Leaves rustled here and there, were picked up as if by an unseen child and strewn all around. She thought she saw a face here, a face there, nothing definite. At least not as definite as the sun himself, rising from his slumbers to meet her at last, as though he was the god Apollo in all his glory.

Nope. Too vague. Backspace. I looked out the window again, wondering if there maybe was more to life than....No. I don’t have yearnings. I can’t have yearnings. Phone ringing. It’s one of the other most famous authors in the world, who so far actually hasn’t done a thing but sit around and get fat while I do all the real work.

“No. It’s not done yet.” (Just leave me alone)“I’m sorry, but I don’t give a damn whether or not you give me $15grand or ten billion grand. This sunset isn’t done and it might not be for a while.””ok, I’ll keep that in mind.” “Goodbye”

Birds rustled, breezes blew, people laughed, and it was the world but not the world. Only the Light. And the dawn of a new era.

Too much like a nuclear bomb exploding. Backspace. Why am I writing this? I don’t know. Maybe it’s just life getting too much under my skin. I wonder what it be like to be dead. Could have thought to write some interesting stories about that. I can’t though. No feeling for the idea. It might pass time easier though. But I can’t. I have to write sunrises for my stories that aren’t mine and that I do not really care about.

All I care about is words. The way they roll of one’s tongue, like water, or flow like the force from one’s fingers. They are my life, my love. I never know what to say to them. To the fake writers who pretend to know so much about the plot lines, the climaxes and the artistic quality of my work.

They have no idea. They do not know what it feels like, to have your story so set to travel in a direction, and then have the characters, your characters, turn it around, make it go completely awry. And you cannot change it, because that’s the story. It travels its own way.

What do they know of this? All those clever wits and shallow minds. They know nothing. They cannot feel the power in every word that ever passes tongue or fingers. They cannot feel the passion a writer must pour into his work. They can never know any of it. They have shut themselves from that world.

They do not know of any of this. They have lost it. Somewhere in their murky childhood, they lost the gift they were given. They still find it sometimes, hidden under years of shallowness and despair for all that is real, but never often and never long enough to uncover it properly.

Still, sometimes I wonder what it’s like, to be one of them, “friends” and suchlike. But NO. I do not feel yearning. It is hidden deep in my psyche, and I will not bring it out now, not ever.

Gold. Glistening like the cool water of a mountain stream, smooth as a balmy tropical breeze, and as seductive as the full moon on a moonless night. It Shattered the world, bringing with it a new era.

Backspace.


Note to Readers: The protagonist in this story has Aspergers Syndrome. The thought patterns described are intended to be representative of the intelligence and lack of social skills that is typical of the condition.