Itchy Fingers and the Powder of Doom

It was just a regular day. Or so I thought.

For a week, I'd been working hard, writing the book I hoped would launch my career as a writer. Things had been going well. I was productive and focused. Pleased with my progress.

Until I tried to change my writing schedule.

I had been conducting an experiment. Besides writing a book, I was developing a ritual that I hoped would help me as a writer and as an artist. I wanted to write regularly, every day waking up, making a cup of tea and then sitting down to the keyboard.

I'd heard other writers talk about Motivation Powder before. Mostly whispered confidences in the dark corners of cocktail lounges or dinner parties. Some writers had gotten hooked on the stuff, turning their lives into wastelands of failed marriages and estranged children, trading in happiness for yet-another bestseller. I didn't want to be like them, but I craved their productivity. Surely my depth of character was stronger than their weakness to addiction. How naive I was.

My curiosity got the better of me that afternoon, and I found the place, a dingy hole-in-the-wall near Chinatown. It was just past noon, but it felt as dark and frightening as midnight as I made my way to the end of the dead-end street. My steps echoed hollowly. Rivulets of greenish, fetid water trickled out of cracks in the concrete.

A man was waiting for me as I pushed through the rusted scab of a door at the end of the alley. At least I think it was a man, and not some creature culled from the muddy depths of the Scottish moors. He didn't speak, peering out from behind greasy strands of what must have once been hair. He turned suddenly and with surprising grace, slipped the powder in a paper packet and spun around to face me. He handed me the packet and as I fumbled for some cash, he shook his head. Terrified, I backed out of that horrible place, dropping a few crumpled bills on my way out.

I ran down the alley and all the way home.

It was with shaking hands that I spooned the reeking, greenish powder into my tea the next morning. It tasted vaguely metallic but not entirely unpleasant. I sat and waited.

Nothing.

I glanced at the clock, cursing the late hour and rushed to Drea's home for a visit. On my way, a niggling thought tickled my mind. I hadn't written that morning. I brushed it aside, promising to write that evening, and kept driving.

Drea greeted me warmly and we set about entertaining Lola, her toddler. We played and laughed as the mid-morning sun broke through the wall of clouds, warming the earth of the lawn. I was in good spirits, almost forgetting my disturbing secret.

But then, almost imperceptibly, a prickling sensation began behind my eyes. I tried to ignore it, but it intensified and moved gradually over my entire head. The strange sensation made its way down through my neck to my arms. And down my arms into my fingers. It was taking over my entire body! I watched in horror as my fingers began making involuntary movements, like I was playing piano spastically in mid-air...or...could it be? Oh God... Typing.

I willed my mind to focus on Drea's words or on Lola playing in the dirt, but my body was now my enemy. I couldn't control my movements and the frightening hold this force had on me. The prickling quickly transformed into intense pain. I began to writhe in agony on the lawn, my fingers typing murderously at the air.

God above, what was happening to me?

I cried out for help, but the words died in my parched throat. Drea and Lola moved in slow-motion and it seemed as though they were laughing at me. They circled me and chanted in some strange language I didn't understand. Their sweet voices turned into the mind-splitting shrieks of harpies.

I threw myself toward the house, clawing my way across the lawn to the deck, the stairs and, possibly, freedom. Must. Write. Must. Create. My voice came in breathy bursts, scorching across the desert my parched lips.

Every movement required monumental effort, but somehow I was getting closer. Just through that door, I knew, was my laptop. My precious, beautiful laptop. My saving grace. My antidote.

The shrieks of the harpies grew louder as I moved closer to the door, but I ignored them. My beautiful friends! Transformed in my mind to monsters! What had become of me? Finally, I reached my satchel. I clawed at the leather, my gnarled fingers searching for the panacea of my laptop's pure white keys. I ripped open my laptop and as the screen jumped into life, the hellish symptoms faded, retreating to the dark recesses of my mind.

I was safe. I huddled in the corner, typing as fast as my fingers would allow. I understood then I could never stop writing. I could never rest. I knew that demon would always be waiting for the moment when my fingers stopped moving. Lurking in the dark places just behind my eyes. Waiting to strike. Waiting, ever waiting.