His scruffy handwriting slid across the page. He watched as his scribbled sentences fell from the lines and each word tangled in on the next and the one below it. Slowly, deliberately, the shifting mass twisted and wrapped itself into strands of jagged letters and splintered punctuation, forming an inky loop of barbed wire which suddenly rose up vertically from the notebook. It coiled around his poised wrist and snapped tight like a snare. The pen fell from his hand, rolled across the plush leather writing pad and landed nib first in the thick carpet like a dagger, a shiny patch of Indian Ink quickly spreading around the wound.
He watched as the oily black tape from his Dictaphone spewed out from the mouth of the machine and raced across the desk towards him in knotted ribbons before grabbing his free arm in a web of matted plastic. He called out but his voice merely echoed around the empty rooms of the house and called back to him through the open doorway. As if given life by his cry, the fountain pen rose up from the floor and hovered in mid-air, its tip just a few inches from his face, glinting in the Autumn sun which hung in warm squares along the wall beyond. The ping of the type writer bell and mechanical shudder of the carriage which roared and slammed into place drew within him a sharp intake of breath and drained the remaining flecks of colour from his face.
"T-a-k-e_i-t_b-a-c-k" appeared on the blank page in a cacophony of blurred steel and keystrokes.
'I can't,' he sobbed.
"T-A-K-E_I-T_B-A-C-K-!"
'It...it went to press this morning, there's nothing I can do...'
"L-I-E-S-!" stamped the machine, denting the soft cream parchment with each letter.
"L-I-E-S-!_L-I-E-S-!_L-I-E-S-!_L-I-E-S-!" it went, running over the edge of the paper and onto the black platen roller.
"L-I-E-S-!_L-I-E-S-!_L-I-E-S-!..."
With the machine crashing and pinging and rattling before him, the pen drew back sharply.
'No!' screamed the man straining desperately at his shackles as the pen shot forward and landed deeply in his skull, sending a fine crimson mist into the air and across his final words.
He watched as the oily black tape from his Dictaphone spewed out from the mouth of the machine and raced across the desk towards him in knotted ribbons before grabbing his free arm in a web of matted plastic. He called out but his voice merely echoed around the empty rooms of the house and called back to him through the open doorway. As if given life by his cry, the fountain pen rose up from the floor and hovered in mid-air, its tip just a few inches from his face, glinting in the Autumn sun which hung in warm squares along the wall beyond. The ping of the type writer bell and mechanical shudder of the carriage which roared and slammed into place drew within him a sharp intake of breath and drained the remaining flecks of colour from his face.
"T-a-k-e_i-t_b-a-c-k" appeared on the blank page in a cacophony of blurred steel and keystrokes.
'I can't,' he sobbed.
"T-A-K-E_I-T_B-A-C-K-!"
'It...it went to press this morning, there's nothing I can do...'
"L-I-E-S-!" stamped the machine, denting the soft cream parchment with each letter.
"L-I-E-S-!_L-I-E-S-!_L-I-E-S-!_L-I-E-S-!" it went, running over the edge of the paper and onto the black platen roller.
"L-I-E-S-!_L-I-E-S-!_L-I-E-S-!..."
With the machine crashing and pinging and rattling before him, the pen drew back sharply.
'No!' screamed the man straining desperately at his shackles as the pen shot forward and landed deeply in his skull, sending a fine crimson mist into the air and across his final words.
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