The pen that only wrote the truth
by Leu Seyer 06.10.2025
A haunted fountain pen that only writes the truth drives a professor into madness, blurs the line between fiction and reality, and ultimately ensnares his psychiatrist in its dark power.
Dr. Alex Morrow was a renowned psychiatrist in the Buffalo metropolitan area, in New York State. At this stage in his career, he was already contemplating settling down, and what tormented him most was not knowing what he would do with the next chapter of his life. That uncertainty was more terrifying than any of the stories his patients told him at the Psychiatric Hospital where he practiced. He wanted to tell some of his patients' stories, but the ethical implications tormented him. Nevertheless, he had already begun to write brief notes with that precious fountain pen that adorned the upper left pocket of his white doctor's coat. Somehow, he had found peace in telling his version of one of their stories, given that it was already public knowledge. He had personally wrapped himself in body and soul in the story of Timothy Velazquez.
Professor Timothy Velazquez believed in logic and the study of reasoning and inference. He focused on identifying valid arguments by analyzing premises and conclusions following established principles of reasoning. After serving as a professor of Creative Writing at the State University of New York at the University at Buffalo for over 18 years, he decided to try his hand at writing a fictional novel. He was uncertain whether to mention it to his seven regular students in Room 307 of Clemens Hall. At the end of the usual discussions, he took the plunge and shared his crazy idea of writing his first novel. They were all thrilled and proud. Timothy was a somewhat famous poet, and choosing to switch to a different medium of writing was a courageous move.
As a debut novelist, his days revolved around teaching narrative structure while his nights were spent typing a psychological thriller titled “Ashes of Silence.” The irony did not escape him: he had led a monotonous life, yet he was writing about madness, obsession, and death with chilling intensity and precision. However, what he least expected was that his meticulousness would soon cost him more than he could have imagined.
It all began to unravel on a Tuesday, that day of the week when he taught two classes back-to-back. After finishing his second class at 1:00 p.m., he decided to go shopping in downtown Buffalo. He visited a store in the Westside neighborhood, where some students had recommended a fantastic antique shop, worth visiting.
Breaking from his routine, he decided to buy a chicken wrap and a medium coffee with three sugars and three creams to enjoy on his way to the antique store. He entered the address into Google Maps on his cell phone and drove at a relaxed pace, calmly savoring his wrap and sipping his coffee. After about 25 minutes of driving, he finally found the store nestled among the many narrow streets in the neighborhood. It was a dusty antique shop wedged between a nail salon and a closed bar. Initially, he hesitated, as if he had no intention of going in—he never acted on impulse. But something about the flickering sign—Curiosities and Curses—drew him in like bait attracts hungry fish, feeding his appetite for excitement and new experiences in a life devoted entirely to the daily routine of working and sleeping.
The shop was narrow and smelled of mold and lost memories. At the back, on a cracked wooden shelf, behind porcelain dolls and broken clocks, he found something that caught his attention. In fact, he didn’t even know what he was looking for. However, this old fountain pen, black with gold trim, has considerable potential. The tip of the pen was still wet, as if it were in the middle of a sentence. It was curious how this pen wasn’t covered in the dust that coated all the other objects, and its small box held a tiny bottle of blue ink. He wondered how it appeared so clean and pristine. Moreover, it had no price tag, suggesting that it had likely fallen out of another customer's bag.
The owner, an elderly woman with cataract-clouded eyes, smiled without revealing her teeth.
“It's strange, isn't it? That fountain pen, if I remember correctly, only writes the truth, or so said the previous customer who returned it to the store.”
Timothy laughed politely, averting his gaze from the old woman's eyes.
“The truth, huh? I write fiction,” he said to her.
“And who doesn't?” she replied. “Take it. It chose you. That's why it's priceless. I never know where it is or if it's been returned. I've sold it so many times that I decided it's just a gift for whoever finds it.” Timothy looked at her with a hint of disbelief. He continued browsing for things he didn't need for about ten more minutes. Then he placed a twenty-dollar bill on the cash register before leaving.
Back at home in Williamsville, in a small all white house of about 1,200 square feet (111.6 square meters), the first thing he did after arriving was let his little dog out into the yard to do his business. He left the pen beside his computer, seemingly without any intention of using it. It's true that he loved to jot down ideas in pencil on paper, in either a spiral-bound or sewn notebook, and then develop them on the computer. But that night, when a creative block tightened around his chest like a thick fog, he picked it up without a second thought. He dipped it in ink, unsure whether it would be fresh or relatively dry, and began to write in his lined notebook.
That was when the visions and voices in his head began. At first, it felt like he had found a subtle muse—something inexplicable that managed to bring forth the ideas from the depths of his mind. Incredibly, his story flowed effortlessly. The protagonist, a broken man haunted by his wife's disappearance and financial burdens, was led to suspect that he had killed her. Timothy's fingers cramped from the speed, but he couldn't stop. The ideas and descriptions of the story and characters felt more real than usual, and his pain felt even more vivid, perhaps a little more than desired in a work of fiction. He never intended to write true crimes.
By Friday, Timothy was so engrossed in his writing that he even wanted to stay up most of the night instead of going to sleep. He was at his desk writing in his notebook rather than on the computer. Interestingly, the ink worked wonders; he didn't need to re-wet the fountain pen until after every three pages. How was that possible?
When his body could no longer withstand fatigue, he collapsed into bed to recover from his exhaustion. Yet even in his dreams, he continued to see the scenes he was writing. They were so vivid that it felt like he was not just an observer but an active participant in the actions. He felt the cold of the forest floor against the suspect killer's knees. He smelled the character's foul sweat before he touched the ground (how was it possible in the mid-XXI Century that he didn't use deodorant?). Even upon waking, he once found leaves from the forest on his bed. And again—but only once—he discovered a cut on his fingertips.
“Coincidences,” he muttered, washing his hands until they were spotlessly clean, pink from scrubbing with soap and rubbing them together. They looked reddened, as if raw. He began to recall the words of the old lady in the store. He contemplated the power the fountain pen might have to enhance his narrative. Naturally, he also thought about the lack of sleep and the time lost preparing his classes (if only he could dedicate himself solely to writing his book). Initially, he had envisioned a small book of no more than 40,000 words to launch his writing career. However, gradually, with each afternoon and evening writing, he had amassed 60,000 words in the relatively short span of four months. That was his best estimate, as he still needed to type the story into the computer, having transcribed everything by hand so far.
So, after that meditation, he decided to stop using the fountain pen and return to focusing on the computer. He felt he already had enough material to complete his first book and that it was time to begin the editorial review phase for publication.
But when he turned on the computer, his word processing program had vanished. He searched the Internet for a word processing program, and the first option in the results was a free program called “Stylo,” the same name engraved on his fountain pen. There was a significant price difference between buying one of the others for $149.00 or subscribing for a lifetime at $8.00 per month. So, without hesitating, he decided to download the program to digitize everything he had written in his notebook onto the computer.
However, when he sat down in front of his laptop, it crashed, deleted files, or froze. When he tried other pens, they broke. Some other quite different pens he tried dried up after writing just the first letter. The black and gold pen remained there, as if watching him, and he felt drawn to it like an invisible magnet. Once, he locked it in a drawer. The next morning, it was on top of his notebook, the tip wet, with a message written in his notebook: We're not done yet. It was undoubtedly his handwriting, but he didn't remember getting up in the middle of the night to write.
Intending to finish his book, after a quick rereading that took him all week, he made a clear-headed decision to complete the book's conclusion and hire someone to digitize it. But when he picked up the fountain pen again, his narrative accelerated, as did the voices in his head. Then came the corrections. Entire paragraphs were rewritten in his own handwriting—except he hadn't written them. They were darker. Crueler. A scene where the protagonist made peace with his ex-wife was replaced by one where he only thought about killing her. The character then became the top suspect in a crime. In the margins, scribbled in red: Truth is better than fiction.
Timothy decided it was time to return the fountain pen to the store since he had all the materials he needed to finish his novel. Besides, he was now sure that the pen had a negative influence on everyone who possessed it, which explained why it had been returned several times. To his surprise, the next morning, he discovered that the pen had written on its own once again. Paralyzed with horror, he watched as the letters seemed to dance across the paper, narrating his current life: Timothy walking to the store. Timothy was looking at his neighbor's wife. Timothy was considering what it would be like to strangle his ex-wife. But he hadn't thought that... or had he?
Timothy fell into a state of depression, no longer thinking about the stories of other imaginary characters but rather focusing on his own life. He reflected on how he lost custody of his children and the inflated child support payments that only funded his ex-wife's trips with her new husband. He stopped eating and withdrew from social life. His friends called, but he let the phone die in silence. He had become disengaged from his classes at the university.
That's it, he said to himself. He set off for the Westside part of downtown and looked for the antique shop, desperate for answers. He walked around the area where he remembered the shop being several times. But after an hour of wandering around, he concluded that it couldn't have been on that street, unless they had done a massive renovation there. Instead, the nail salon was still operating, as was the bar, both open and freshly painted.
“It's been like this, just as you see it, for about five years,” said a man at the bar whom he asked. Timothy looked puzzled and was squinting. "Are you all right, my friend?" asked the man when he saw Timothy shaking his head, as if denying the reality of the situation.
Timothy was clearly unwell. He couldn't determine whether it had all been a figment of his imagination or something extraordinary that had actually occurred. It was as if the imaginary narratives had abruptly ceased, replaced by the reality of the author's own life. The next night, he wrote in his own handwriting, although he did not recall it due to the sleep deprivation that was starting to impair his absolute grip on reality: our new character is a writer named Timothy Velazquez who begins to believe that his fiction is real. His descent into madness is subtle, almost poetic. “I didn't write this,” Timothy said, trembling.
Timothy ultimately lost touch with reality. He began to immerse himself in the fantasy worlds he wrote about endlessly. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia after Social Services took up the case, prompted by calls from relatives who witnessed his decline. By the time he was admitted to a psychiatric hospital, his only concern was the fountain pen that they had to literally wrest from his hands.
Psychiatric Evaluation: Excerpt from Dr. Alex Morrow's notes:
Patient: Timothy Velazquez, Male, Single Individual, born in 1967
Status: Involuntary re-admission after five years of remission – Haverhill Psychiatric Center.
Observations: The patient does not appear to remember being in this hospital about five years ago, following his second wife's suicide. On this occasion, he displays extreme paranoia, auditory hallucinations, and identity delusions. He believes that an antique pen controls his actions. He claims that his unpublished manuscript is a prophetic document. He exhibits hypergraphia: he writes obsessively when given a writing instrument and something to write on.
Within the sterile walls of Haverhill, Timothy now waits to regain his mental health. He is no longer allowed to use pens, only dull crayons and soft-tipped markers. He laughs to himself, repeating phrases from his book. Then he mutters under his breath, “They think it's fiction.” He takes a few steps back to look at his audience and then concludes energetically: “Fiction is the lie that tells the truth.” A few months later, one night, as he curls up in bed, something rolls across the linoleum floor—a black fountain pen with gold trim. The fountain pen that was taken from him and had been locked away in a locker.
Timothy screams, and the orderlies rush in. But the pen vanished. It was merely a figment of his imagination, the psychiatrist noted about the incident. Three days later, Dr. Morrow receives a package at his office. There is no return address. Inside, he finds a leather-bound diary and a fountain pen with its ink bottle in its packaging. He scoffs and simply comments, “Great. Another delusional gift.” But that night, unable to sleep, he opens the diary and sees only one line inside: Why don't you write about the story about your favorite patient?
Three months later, Dr. Morrow's new bestseller tops the charts. On the “Today” show, he appears with a strange smile, displaying not only a twitch in his left eye but also involuntary contractions of her left shoulder.
The pen hanging from his lapel protrudes subtly. He winks with his right eye at the TV’s cameras. The host comments on the title of the book: “Ashes of Silence”—the same one Timothy Velazquez was writing. Timothy was coming back from the hospital garden, as he was the one who maintained it. He wiped the sweat from his brow, took a sip of water from his glass, and sat down on the living room sofa. From the couch, he could see the program on television. He watches from the standard room, crayons in hand, and murmurs, “That... that was the title of my book.”
Then, seeing his reflection in the window—and realizing that he no longer has a shadow—he whispers, “Or was it me... his character?”
-
REFERENCES
Barthes, R. (1974). S/Z (R. Miller, Trans.). Hill and Wang.
Explores how texts produce multiple layers of meaning and blur reality/fiction.
Ricoeur, P. (1991). Time and Narrative (K. McLaughlin & D. Pellauer, Trans.). University of Chicago Press.
Explores the way narrative structures shape human experience of reality and time.
