Alex stared at the blinking cursor, which pulsed like a tiny heartbeat on the empty document. The deadline loomed over him like an executioner's axe. Three days left. Three thousand words to go. Zero inspiration.

He had tried everything—pacing, caffeine, yelling into the void, sacrificing an old laptop to the gods of creativity (it had felt cathartic but wholly ineffective). His editor's last email was practically seared into his retinas: I need this story, Alex. No excuses.

Then, out the corner of his eye, out of almost nowhere, he noticed the book; "The Art of the Unfinished Word."

Where had that come from? It sat there on his cluttered desk, nestled between an untouched planner and an aggressively judgmental stack of rejection letters. Maybe an old gift from his ex-girlfriend? Did she believe in weird stuff like that?

Alex flipped it open, skimming through pages filled with archaic writing tips and vaguely ominous footnotes. One passage stood out:

For those who struggle, the void will provide. To summon inspiration, perform the ritual of the Unfinished Word.

It was deceptively simple. Alex only had to light a candle, say a few words, and write three sentences.

With a sigh, he grabbed the half-melted candle from last year's power outage and flicked his cigarette lighter to the wick. The small flame cast flickering shadows over his desk, making the edges of The Art of the Unfinished Word seem to ripple.

Feeling utterly ridiculous, Alex cleared his throat and muttered, "I offer my words to the void; in return, let the void fill my pages."

Nothing happened. No spectral winds. No ominous whispers. Just silence and the faint scent of lavender and melted wax.

Shaking his head, Alex turned to his keyboard and forced out three uninspired sentences:

The wind howled through the abandoned town. A lone figure stepped into the ruins. They were not alone.

The candle flickered.

And then, the words poured out.

Alex had never written so fluidly in his life. His fingers flew across the keyboard as if guided by some unseen force. Hours passed by in a blur. By morning, the story was nearly done. A damn good story, too.

Then things got really weird.

For one, the document saved itself under a file named "Untitled - DO NOT DELETE." Alex didn't remember naming it that. He tried renaming it, but the title refused to change.

Then there was the extra dialogue.

Character: "This scene isn't working."

Alex: Excuse me?

Character: "I don't like what you did with me. I was supposed to be the hero."

Alex stared at the screen. The character—one he had just written, mind you—was talking back. Either he had completely lost his mind, or his old laptop was haunted. Neither option was great.

When he tried deleting the conversation, the words reappeared.

Character: "You can't just erase me, Alex."

"Oh, hell no." Alex slammed the laptop shut.

By the next day, things had escalated further.

The document typed on its own. A minor character he had killed off was suddenly very much alive in the story, despite Alex's attempts to remove them. At one point, his protagonist wrote him an email.

Subject: We Need to Talk

Alex—

You can't keep doing this. You're ruining the pacing. Let me make my own choices.

Also, I don't think I like how you described me. "Rugged but in a sad way"? Rude.

Fix it.

Alex tried walking away, but every time he did, he felt an unbearable pull toward the laptop, as if the story wasn't finished with him. And worse still, things from the story started appearing in his real life. The fridge now contained the exact meal he had described in Chapter Four, and now a black stray cat, just like the one in his book, lived in the hall near the fire escape.

And then there was the worst part: The Ending.

According to the book (The Art of the Unfinished Word, not Alex's actual novel—though at this point, who even knew the difference?), the void demanded completion; Once the ritual was performed, the story had to be finished.

And the ending it wanted?

Alex dies.

"NOPE. No way," he said aloud to himself.

Alex furiously backspaced through the final chapter, but the words rewrote themselves faster than they could delete them.

Alex dies. The end.

There had to be a loophole.

Desperate, he tried tricking the book:

The writer, he broke the curse and lived happily ever after.

The words almost laughed at him. (Seriously: - The text on the screen rearranged to say, "Nice try.")

Then Alex had a terrible, brilliant idea. If the book demanded an ending, what if he wrote one it couldn't escape?

So, he typed:

The cursed manuscript was trapped in an infinite loop, doomed to forever remain unfinished.

The screen flickered. The cursor blinked rapidly. And then—

Silence. Nothing.

The document closed itself. The book on his desk vanished.

Alex exhaled, hands shaking. It was over.

Then he saw the new file on his desktop:

"The Sequel."

The cursor blinked, waiting.

Alex sighed. "Oh of course there's a sequel."