[ WP ] You have discovered an old typewriter in your attic , but it does more than simply print words onto paper ...

I swear by Christ I can hear it, no matter where I am in the house, an infernal, industrious tap-tap-tapping, a switch that can not be turned off or removed. It churns day and night like chaotic clockwork; I know not if it ceases when my boiling red eyes finally surrender to the malaise of sleepless nights. 
 
 It started when I was a boy, in this same house. My mother, a widower, warns me never to venture to the attic. Boys defy. I pulled down the stairs to their ratchety protest and climbed the old wood, a parquet tile clumsily cut out over each step and pasted down with carpenter's glue. 
 
 I learned what silence sounds like. It's not silent; it's a whispered echo of long-forgotten words rummaging back and forth across empty space, looking in all the same places for an object it will never find. I heard their voices, my grandfather, who built this house, and my father, both since departed. 
 
 When the silence fell quiet, I should have run like hell. 
 
 I threw back a burlap cloth, under which a faint heartbeat could be heard; not human, but machine, a tiny bell with a gay ring. And there it was. It was black ivory, sleek, looked new, and it had paper loaded from a long sheaf. Temptation slithered about me and its loving caress dropped my fingers to the keys. 
 
 The instant I had contact, the pact was sealed. I felt the hands of my temptation tighten to a damning grip, and the keys began to fly, each a single syllable in an unending, malicious chuckle. 
 
 `` What's happening? What have I done? I should get mom. What is - how - what - I - what else is on this page?'' 
 
 And that's when I read down the sheaf. 
 
 `` It's almost over. I can feel the warmth going down my arm, I hear it dripping on the floor. Did I set down the plastic? I do n't want Maggie to clean this up. Oh, Maggie. If you ever, ever read this, Maggie. I love you, Maggie. Maggie. It's almost over.'' 
 
 The final words of my father led me to my own insanity. Sleepless nights with contented taps from upstairs as that infernal machine claims another victim. I tried to destroy it, I tried to remove it from my life. At first, those were the restful sleeps, until the clock struck midnight and the thing woke me up from dreams at the food of my bed, hammering away in its black ink: `` I'm so glad to be rid of this, I'm so glad to be rid of this,'' it mocked me, as it had mocked my father, and my grandfather. 
 
 If you're reading this, stay out of the attic. And get out of my head.
