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There are deadlines to meet. Eager readers to please.
I used to think writer’s block was a myth: an excuse for lazy writers and hacks.
So… this is karma. I don’t love it.
“Just one sentence,” I tell myself, flinging my body down in the desk chair. The piles of scattered notepaper flutter in the breeze. “Just one sentence, Carstairs. Surely you can muster that.”
But as my hands hover over the keyboard, that all-too familiar sense of dread grips me by the throat. I’m paralyzed. The whispers start, deep in the recesses of my brain.
Don’t have it in you…
All dried up…
Would anyone even care if you stopped writing? Really?
The usual stuff; I know these whispers by heart. But then a pair of wide hazel eyes drift across my mind’s eye—the eyes of a certain pretty maid—and I bite the inside of my cheek. My fingers begin to move, typing of their own accord, and the chorus of angry whispers fade into the background.
It’s not the best I’ve ever written. It’s clunky and unpolished, riddled with cliches, but that’s what happens when you take eight months off the work. You get rusty.
The point is, I don’t write a single sentence. Not even a single paragraph.
With those hazel eyes lodged in my brain, I sit there and write ten pages.
* * *
“You, madam, are my lucky charm.”
The maid wrinkles her nose as she runs a feather duster over a stone gargoyle perched on the wall. I checked the grounds, the library, the dining room, and the sculpture gallery before I found her here, in a random upstairs corridor.
“Madam? Dude, I’m twenty three.”
“Dude? I’m a fusty old Brit, not a dude.”
We smile at each other: I’m blissed out, while she’s shy. The feeling of writing ten pages after so many long months of nothing… it’s such a release. Like I’ve run a marathon or climbed a mountain. I’m glowing.
The maid tickles the gargoyle under his chin with her feather duster. Is it pathetic to be jealous of stone? “So,” she says, glancing at me out of the corner of her eye. Her black dress is more rumpled than this morning, and her brown hair is frizzing out of her bun. She’s perfect. “Why am I a lucky charm?”
Ah. Yes.
“I wrote,” I say simply, and it doesn’t sound like much, but… it’s a miracle, nonetheless. The faded rug muffles my steps as I move closer. “For eight months, I’ve been agonizing over my next book, desperately trying to force the words. Nothing. And the longer I couldn’t write, the worse I felt—like my chest might explode. Then I spend twenty minutes with you, watching you scrub that wall, and…” I trail off with a shrug, because I can’t explain it. “Ten pages. You’re a miracle.”
The maid snorts, shaking her head, but there’s a delicate flush on her cheeks. She moves onto the next gargoyle, checking to make sure that I follow. “Hardly a miracle.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
She hides a smile, ducking her head to dust the gargoyle’s feet.
“These are strange,” I say, nodding at the carved stone monster. “Not the usual choice of hotel decoration.” Not with those long teeth and pointed ears and wild, bulging eyes.
“Yeah.” The maid heaves a yearning sigh. “Some people say they move late at night. Rumor has it they’ve been spotted crawling over the ballroom ceiling.”
They have? I file that away for a future scene, mind whirring. But first—
“Tell me your name.”
Another sidelong glance. “Penny.”
“Penny Dreadful,” I say automatically, and most would be insulted, but my perfect maid just smirks.
