More on Torture and Fountain Pens

The current song being played over the office webcast radio thingy is a version of “No Woman, No Cry” sung by a choir of women in what I assume is Chinese.

I dreamt about fountain pens again last night. I dreamt that my mother gave me a vintage something-or-other for my birthday, black as night with a heavy enameled barrel as big around as my thumb and twice as long.

It was, she told me, the pen that Lovecraft was holding in his hand when he died. The pen had not been used since and even the ink had not been changed.

I knew, with irrefutable dream knowledge, that the next words the pen wrote would be the completion of his last, unfinished story — the crumpled pages the undertaker had forced from his clutching fist.

I was holding in my hand the final chapter of the Elder Gods mythos, untapped and waiting for release.

And so, removing the cap, I slowly started to write…