The Blank Page - SCP Foundation

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You stare at the empty page, scared.

Pen to paper.

But you find the ink has run dry.

You just can't start the damned thing. The words don't come out in the right order, when they come out at all.

You look at your office and nothing catches your eye.

You look at the clock on the wall, it has no hands, it has no numbers.

There certainly are better places to be placed under house arrest. Though this is not a house, and you are not under arrest. More like a job, really, if that job was investigating you, which it is.

They put you in this office, asked you to write what you know, but what do you know? Why did they hire you, anyway? What came before all that?

What do you know? the Foundation asks.

Nothing.

Dreamless sleep and sleepless dreams.

You try to remember something, anything really, anything that could be something. Very little comes to you, a blank page is all you can imagine. You try to picture some writing on it, but you remember that your ink has run dry. You imagine a new page and try again. You write entire books within your mind. Translucent tomes writ with invisible ink. Spectral stacks in a liminal library.

The library.

You recall reading books. Loving them. Living them, or imagining you did, and in the imagining, living.

You remember being a child who loves books, or reading about a child who loves books, at least.

When was the last time you've read a good book, or any book for that matter?

Try to picture the words of your favorite book, to burn them into your brain.

You can't remember the writing, but you do recall the writing, surely.

A contest years ago, a writing contest, a Halloween contest, a mandatory contest. Kids, at school, making drawing made of words for teachers, scary Halloween pictures. The winner was featured in a school magazine. The winner doesn't matter, they never did. There was a late entrant, he made a simple poster, it read:

THE BLANK PAGE

IT'S SCARY

(for a teacher)

Or you think that's how it went.

This was years ago, you're not sure how many, you weren't around back then.

Come to think of it you're not really sure why it would be scary to a teacher. Stressful for the student, maybe.

You feel a pit in your stomach, either hunger or fear.

You sit in your office.

You stand up, you pace.

You glance at the clock.

What do you know? the Foundation asks.

You sit in your office.

You write it all.

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