She writes

Hundreds of college composition books littered her bedroom floor, each filled with her tight, precise handwriting. Every page, every margin overflowing with words. Her words, her stories.

She had to get these details written out, to preserve them. Oral traditions faded away, words put to paper were forever.

The feel of ink making contact with parchment was like no other. She tried typing out her words, but she couldn’t get them from her finger tips quickly enough. Pens, pencils, even crayons, were an extension of her hand, intrinsically connected to her brain. The words flowed though her veins, bleeding out onto the paper.

In the daylight, it was easier to control the urge to write, though sometimes she would realize her napkins at lunch were covered in words when she didn’t remember writing. Sitting at stop lights, a thought would come and she would cover her arm in tiny script in the time she had between red and green.

There wasn’t a scrap of paper, receipt or envelope in her purse that wasn’t used to scribble her stories.

To the outside world, her constant note taking was merely a personality quirk. There was no way of knowing her compulsion was all-consuming. Her need to write more primal than her need to eat or sleep. That in the dead of the night, surrounded by her notebooks and pens, she writes, and writes, and writes…

When the sun sets, when the moon rises, she succumbs to her Midnight Disease. While outside the warm summer winds blew gently through the trees, inside it was a dark and stormy night.

*Hypergraphia – the compulsive urge to write – is often associated with temporal lobe epilepsy or manic phases of bipolar disorder. It’s sometimes called the Midnight Disease.

Turn about is only fair, my challenge this week went to my challenger from last week, Greg: “Wait until your father gets home!”

My writing challenge came from my good friend, and Indie Ink newbie, Lance from My Blog Can Beat Up Your Blog: “it was a dark and stormy night.”

Interested in joining the Challenge? Stop by Indie Ink for details.

My word cloud graphic was created at: Wordle.net