Rose Black: The Young Writer

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Part One2

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It was late in the night.. past everyone else’s bed-time; it was time for work. Rose sat there thinking in front of her laptop, thinking how to create, how to best articulate, the horror story idea in her head. It was a terrifying story of a young girl of 20 who would be attacked by a formless unseen ghost either at a beach or in a steam-sauna cabin. Rose kept typing..4

‘She could see the tears of her sweat vibrate a little as if she had moved.. but she was sure she hadn’t, or did she?’5

..the opening statement and deleting it. She didn’t find it quite right.6

At times like these, she’d simply go in the kitchen and make herself some relaxingly sweet hot black tea. And that’s exactly what she did. She sat by the beautifully tall windows in the drawing room sipping the black-red tea in her white crępe nighty. The hemline was a little higher than her knees. She considered those her “work-clothes” that made her feel comfy, relaxed, even sexy if she’d will to feel so.7

But today, her comfort routines didn’t work. She didn’t feel motivated to type further or peaceful enough to go to sleep. So she decided to do something to inspire her. She opened her cupboard and stood there staring for a minute (like how men stand in front of a refrigerator wondering what wondersome food it holds even though what’s inside is already known and nothing great!). She saw her books of motifs on the bottom shelf and got down on her hunches. After rummaging through the crowded stuff down there, she dragged out the carton from the right corner of its bottom shelf- in the middle of the night. She did all this, (thankfully) without waking up her brother. Rose had decided to go through her forgotten but ‘memorable’ stuff - in other words things that were useless to her, but had been stored ‘cause she found them interesting and had a hard time throwing them off.8

The top of the cardboard carton was occupied by small sticker and sketching books from her 4th Std. (!) Aloud Rose whispered, “Shit! It’s been like more than 14 yrs now and I still have kept them! It’s a good thing when mom was around she never found these.” Beneath them, she found scrap books and all her “Dear Diaries” which described her heartbreaks in detail.. Now that was something she wasn’t even going to open. No way. And she wondered for how long these things would go on affecting… Anyway, she was happy now, engaged to her sweet loving boyfriend, Nigel, for whom she felt ever so grateful!9

Halfway down the box, she found a big fat black book. The cover brought back memories, though not completely in her consciousness.. it felt irritatingly like knowing what it tasted like but not remembering what dish you were comparing it with. But the joy she felt washed off the irritation, and it vanished as soon as it had come. The cover had been designed to give a burnt charred look. She opened it. The pages looked weak and flaky. But she knew better. It was slowly coming to her.. she had paid what she felt was a fortune at that time for this. Yes! It was this very book that had inspired her to write in the first place. All ‘serious budding pre-teen writers’ in the summer of 1980, in and around the small town of Daivitva, possessed a copy of ‘The Black Angel’. An old woman writer had autographed these.. named.. was it Helena? Or Heedin.. It was actually a publicity stunt for her ‘comeback’ which promised her in an even stronger fervour in her horror writing for children, after a gap of 10 years. “I wonder what happened to her.. I don’t remember reading any further of her books..” Hmm, the world of creativity & fame, no one knows what happens when.. who stays, who disappears, just a matter of “season”.. Season of luck, art and popularity…10

Anyway, she had found her ‘magic book’ of inspiration and apt word articulation and expression. And this made her feel like Garfield holding the world’s hugest sandwich!11