He fed upon my sadness,
consumed my every fear.
He wants me to be happy,
though I'm imprisoned here.

— Adriana Calloway

Adriana leaned back and listened to the leather crack and groan beneath her weight. Her father's study; his typewriter; his smell. She'd gotten an early start on her assignment, and the only remaining task involved hours of laboring over a typewriter, painstakingly punching each key to avoid mistakes; she had a reputation to protect!

Mostly though, she just wanted to do her assignment—her writing—justice; polish it until the cruelest literary critic gazed in stunned awe, seconds away from a seizure inspired by over-stimulation. These words didn't seem her own: the writing far above her caliber, and worse, using a style she didn't recognize. During the day when she wrote most feverishly, her pen bit angrily into the paper, ravenous to rend and tear its way into existence.

That current which compelled her hand to perform feats unmistakably alien and frightening, also inspired her imagination, perhaps even partially convinced her that this new skill was all her own. Or flowed from a wonderful muse, enamored maybe by her beauty or charm; whatever muses saw in the dross of humanity that spun dreams to skill without direction, wild and raw.

What bothered her most, though, was that the story, both of them, felt like sequels. In fact, almost everything she wrote recently carried that imperceptible aura of incompleteness, as if something lurking in the shadows had come before, and fallen weakly into the dim. I'll just write it later, then—like a prequel, when it comes. That's how inspiration struck: barrage of images, flashes of insight; get it all down before everything is lost.

It still wasn't her, though. Not her voice, not her ideas, nothing familiar in these words, and they frankly terrified her, each one. Yggdrasil, a word she had never seen, but never misspelled. Erebos, Hemera, Metis, gods and goddesses all, and until she looked them up, she didn't recognize one single name. According to her father, whom she asked first, ancient Greek mythology would come soon in either History or English wrapped in the guise of Literature or Sociology.

"Those Greeks," he said with a wink, "were tricky that way. Too smart for their own good; can't classify them."

All the same: why those names? Her father had no explanation for Yggdrasil, only that it felt powerful, an ancient word from which her story could draw credibility. Feel the bones buck and tremble in the twisted tree of life, of angels and demons smashing redemption as they all writhe to escape its prophesy.

"Go ahead," he said earlier that day, "enjoy it! It's not often writers weave their tales without the constant foil of writer's block. Let the story come; you're no medium, sweetie. It's you, even if you don't recognize it. Somewhere: your dreams, your nightmares, or just the cracks in the shadows—the perceptions your Id strives to express—are being tapped." He had yawned then, nodding at the lounge near the silent and cold fireplace. "I'm going to take a nap, so you type everything you wrote. Don't skimp, now! Don't ever doubt your gift, little lady!"

That was her father, always encouraging, always inspiring; her mother was the same, if not so sugary in her praise.

But all the same, he said those things without having read a single line, assuming, like all parents, that whatever she produced lacked flaws, could cure cancer if properly applied. But he was probably right in this case: maybe some tiny fragment of her soul cowered and whimpered from tortured scenery or truths beyond her mortal comprehension. Maybe the broken jumble of disturbing futures that began as mere homework, held some greather potential.

She almost giggled at the thought. Glory, me! Trumping herself up, adopting sudden regard as if she were a lauded poet—Poe's legacy hovering over genuine triumphs of dreary fervor.

Good joke, papa, she thought. There were worse things, however, than writing the story: she could be involved. She shuddered at that. Never!

And then the house was filled with uncertain clicks, clacks, and dings as her index fingers plunged and dipped into the keys, piercing the typewriter's even rows to probe keys and strain bucking-springs. But that was its lot, just as enduring the story was hers.

In the den, her father began to snore.