The Last Typewriter

 

The Last Typewriter

By Olivia Salter

Word Count: 1,193

Lena stared at the typewriter. Its dark frame gleamed beneath the attic light, an odd contrast to the dust that caked everything else around it. Old books leaned precariously on the shelves, boxes of forgotten memories sat unopened, and the air hung heavy with a musty, stale smell—time itself had gotten stuck in here. But not the typewriter. It stood there, almost unnaturally pristine, waiting.

Her hands hovered above the keys, her fingers trembling slightly. She hadn’t written anything new in days. Maybe weeks. She couldn’t remember. The pages of her last manuscript lay discarded on the floor, the edges curling, abandoned like everything else in her life. Rejection letters. Some polite. Some sharp. All of them the same: Not right for us. Try again. We’re going in a different direction.

The stack grew taller, but she never gave up. Never stopped typing. Not until the next one. Not until her name was on the spine of a book in a bookstore window, until people were waiting for her words like a drug.

Her reflection in the window caught her eye—hollow cheeks, dark circles beneath her eyes. She was running on fumes, but this time, she thought—this time it would be different. The typewriter felt like it had been waiting for her. The kind of waiting that only happens when you need something—when you know you’re on the edge of something big.

She slid a blank sheet of paper into the typewriter, a sharp snap cutting through the silence. There was a strange comfort in the clack of the keys, as if the typewriter already knew the words she was about to write.

***

Alice was a writer too, but she wasn’t like the others. She didn’t wait for her luck to change. She made it happen.

Alice’s life wasn’t always this way. At first, it was the same old struggle—rejections, too many cups of coffee, sleepless nights, and a fear that she might be wasting her time. Then, one rainy afternoon, she found it—a typewriter at an old junk shop, its smooth, shiny keys catching her eye like a promise. The shopkeeper, thin and pale as if his own life had been drained out, leaned in and whispered, “Not every story ends when the writing stops.”

Alice laughed. Just superstition. She didn’t believe in curses.

***

Lena blinked, her fingers stiffening above the keys. She glanced down at the page. She hadn’t meant to write Alice’s story, but the words were spilling out, carving themselves into the paper before she could stop them.

Alice had everything she’d ever dreamed of after she started typing. Money. Success. Recognition. But as the words flowed, she found the things that mattered most to her—her family, her friends—started to slip away. Little by little, they vanished, erased from her life like they never existed.

Lena stopped typing, her fingers hovering midair. She felt a tightness in her chest, as if the air had been sucked out of the room. No, she thought. It’s not the same. I won’t be like Alice.

***

In her story, Alice had written day and night, her fingers stained with ink, her mind sharp, her world opening up with every letter. Her name appeared on best-seller lists, her face on the covers of magazines. She was invited to talk shows, her books were translated into dozens of languages. The world was hers. But as her fame grew, the small things—the things that mattered—began to slip through her fingers.

Her sister stopped calling. Her friends stopped showing up at her book signings. Her fiancé, the one who had held her hand through all the rejection, vanished without a word, as if he had never existed at all.

And it wasn’t until Alice stood alone in her penthouse apartment, the lights of the city glowing beneath her, that she realized the price. There is always a price.

***

Lena wiped her eyes, blinking away the sting of tears she hadn’t expected. She ran a hand through her hair, her palms damp. The attic felt colder now, the shadows longer. She stared at the typewriter, feeling its weight, its pull. The words in her head were coming faster now. Too fast.

She couldn’t stop them. Not now. Not when it felt like the world was on the edge of something, some revelation that might change everything. She could feel her fingers twitching, almost against her will, moving toward the keys, and for the first time in years, she felt the pull of hope again.

***

But Alice had no way of knowing. She didn’t realize until the very end that the stories she was writing were erasing the people who loved her. The typewriter didn’t just write words—it stole them. It stole lives. She kept typing, thinking the success would make it worth it. But when she typed the last line—"To seek immortality is to trade the soul, one word at a time"—she disappeared. Vanished. Like a character forgotten by its creator.

***

Lena’s heart raced. She hadn’t noticed how quickly the paper was filling up. The typewriter hummed, each key an echo in the quiet room, louder now, louder, pulling her in. She could hear Alice’s voice now, warning her through the machine’s whispers.

Her hand trembled as she reached for the paper.

But the paper had stopped moving. The typewriter paused. As if waiting. The words were unfinished.

Lena looked at the sheet, the space before the final line still open. Her breath caught. Was this it? Was she next?

Her eyes flicked to the photograph of Rachel, her sister, hidden behind a stack of old novels on the desk. The rift between them had deepened, the phone calls fewer. She had stopped answering. Lena hadn’t even noticed when it had happened, when her life had become so consumed by the need for recognition that Rachel had faded into the background.

But now, as the typewriter hummed again, Lena felt the pull—the call of success, of immortality, of the promise that everything would change. She could see it all now. The book deals. The fame. The interviews. The applause.

Her finger hovered over the keys, the room closing in on her. She could hear her heartbeat in her ears.

She typed.

***

"The next writer sat down, unaware of the price."

***

The silence that followed was deafening.

Lena’s eyes flicked back to the window. The reflection staring back at her wasn’t her own. The hollow eyes, the pale skin, the empty stare. She reached out for the mirror, but her fingers passed through it, like the glass wasn’t even there.

The typewriter sat, still and waiting, untouched by time, untouched by the changes around it.

Lena turned away, her hands still shaking, as if she could already feel the loss, already see the life slipping from her fingers. She tried to move toward the door, but she couldn’t.

The hum of the typewriter began again. The room filled with its rhythmic sound, and Lena knew. It was only a matter of time.

The next writer was coming.