Athena knew something was wrong when her pen refused to write.
It was no ordinary pen but a fountain pen lined with a sliver of bark from the oldest oak tree in existence. She had no memory of how it came to be in her possession. The condition for using it was simple: she must never remember where it came from. The day she did, she would see the pen for the last time.
“Come on. I have a deadline,” she said, tapping the pen against the desk. Still it sat between her fingers, unmoving.
She couldn't meet her editor's deadline without the pen's help. Every story she had written with it flowed with ease. The plots resolved themselves and the characters behaved and readers loved the stories.
The stories earned her more money than she knew what to do with.
That was when she was faced with a frightening realisation. What if the pen stopped listening to her or writing for her? Her reputation would go down the drain and her fans would dub her a one-hit wonder.
She tried to write again and the pen scratched on the page. PLOT HOLE.
“What do you mean, plot hole?” she asked. When there was no response, she opened the manuscript of eighty thousand words and read through until she found the inconsistency in her story.
She gasped softly, covering her mouth before chuckling. “That was a good save, my good pen.” But she had never made this mistake before.
Then flashes of a forgotten scene burrowed into her mind. She was eighteen, wandering in an empty class after lectures when she noticed a young man sitting by himself. He sat with one leg crossed over the other, reading a book while fluidly flipping a fountain pen between his fingers.
No. No. No.
She held her head between her hands as a sharp pain pierced through her skull. An unbidden memory was struggling to surface and she wanted to keep it buried.
It had started months back. Bit by bit and every time the memory came, she forgot about it afterwards. That was the reason for the plot hole.
She had never remembered the whole scene like this before. Her tears flowed because she wasn't ready to say goodbye.
A year later
Bell Literary Chronicles reported that Red Mark was best selling author, Athena Preston's last novel before she went into retirement.
I hope you enjoyed reading this short piece. It's inspired by the Freewrite #dailyprompt phrase "plot hole”.
Thank you for visiting my blog.
Image by Christine Engelhardt from Pixabay
