Ink Out

Ink Out

Jonathan felt drawn to look at it, much against his will. But every time he did, he cringed and shuddered violently.

"There's no way I'm touching that pen ever again!" he told himself over and over.

Was it only yesterday he'd discovered it hidden away in the back of his room mate's sock drawer along with an inkstand full of ink? He'd been looking to borrow a clean pair of socks. It felt so good in his hand, at first. It wrote smoothly enough when the ink flowed onto his notebook.

But as he kept using it more and more, it had begun to ooze out words he couldn't understand, and apparently without rhyme or reason. When this began to happen, Jonathan threw it across the room, inkstand and all, in disgust. With relief, he went back to his good old Bic ballpoint.

Now, it lay on the floor, seeming to mock him at every turn of his head in its direction.

"I'll trash it, that's what I'll do," he said aloud.

But even the simple act of picking it up to throw it away, was more than he could bear to do. This proved especially true, as every so often, it seemed to roll across the floor by itself. It always stopped just a little bit closer to him when he looked at it. Jonathan kept muttering to himself and quaking, even as he fought to convince himself he was imagining things.

It had seemed like a good idea to write the rough draft of his history thesis with an historic writing implement, for inspiration, if nothing else.

"It's just an old pen made from a quill. How can it be moving?" he told himself as he tried to get back to work on the paper.

Eventually, he became caught up in it. "Oliver Cromwell: The Role in Reformation." was great title he decided. He worked far into the night until he fell asleep at his desk. But the draft was finished.

When he awoke, he found the old pen under his writing hand and words 'Amo abavus (I am your great-grandfather)' written large across the first page of his draft.

"What ungodly language is this? What does it mean?" Jonathan howled as he thrusted papers from him as if they were poisoned.

As he watched in horror, the pen stood up and began to write of its own accord. It wrote 'Abs egeo ab axillium (I want to help)' then 'Abs abdico adeo stilus hic (I reject what you wrote here.)' Jonathan could stand no more. He jumped up and ran screaming from the room. Hours later, when he'd tanked up on coffee and a burrito; calmed down.

" I must be having stress-induced hallucinations of something," he determined firmly as he returned to the dorm room.
As he sat back down at his desk, the pen stood again and wrote: 'Abeo sic absum (You went away)' then 'Adduco abeo (Who persuaded you to go?)' Jonathan wracked his brains. Suddenly there was something familiar about what he had thought was strange language that the pen was using. Then it hit him.

He raced to the bookcase he and room mate shared and pulled out the latter's Elements of Latin textbook. With much difficulty, he managed to translate what the pen had written so far. Jonathan was astonished speechless, especially when it came to the first sentence.

"What do you mean you are my great-grandfather? Who are you?" he whispered reluctantly at the pen.

"Oliver Cromwell," it very slowly spelt.

Jonathan had to put his head between his knees after he read that or risk fainting dead away. Trembling, he made a collect call to his mother's cousin by marriage, Alma. She would know if anybody would if what the pen was saying was true; after all, she was the family historian and hard at work at the Bouchier family tree.

"Why yes dear, we're related to Oliver Cromwell through his wife, Elizabeth Bouchier, why do you ask?" his aunt told him calmly.

Before he thought better of it, he hung up on her. He knew he would have to apologize all over himself later and her would. Jonathan was too excited to ask his ancestor questions to make small talk now!

Picking up the pen, he feverishly began to write questions addressed to the Lord Protector. The pen, still in his hand, wrote answers, this time in English, albeit Old English.

"My thesis will be an amazing first hand account of Cromwell and Reformation," he boasted.

His room mate found him when he arrived back from his weekend at home. A bedraggled quill pen, which he recognized as a souvenir he'd picked up while in England last summer, was protruding from Jonathan's left eye. Written across his desk blotter in what looked like blood were the words: 'Amo abas Malam (I am the Devil)'

The horrified and distraught room mate phoned 911 in hysteria. Against his vehement protests, the police promptly arrested him for the murder of his room mate. For his were the only identifiable ones lifted off the pen. The other set they found could not be identified, but it was determined they did not belong to Jonathan Bouchier.