The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!
The High Price of Art
by Angela Yuriko Smith
The trick she told him
is to stay in your seat and write.
Only when you type
The End can you stop.
He could only blame himself.
He wanted a book.
She promised results.
Life Editor, her card said.
to keep you on task.
Guaranteed results—
I will kill all your darlings.
She had been upfront.
And her process worked.
Fueled by coffee and terror
he wrote for three days.
Her knife at his back…
she was his terrible muse.
The pages stacked up
with his excitement.
The sacrifice was worth it—
a book finally done.
The last page rolled in.
The last paragraph typed out.
His book, accomplished.
He smiled and tapped out
The En . The ink failed! The En .
Then, she ended him.
Fiction © Copyright Angela Yuriko Smith
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com.
More from Angela Yuriko Smith:
Angela Yuriko Smith is an American poet, author and co-publisher of Space and Time magazine, a publication that has been printing speculative fiction, art and poetry since 1966. Together we build a poem as a community each month. Visit “Exquisite Corpse” at SpaceandTime.net to submit.
Spreading the Writer's Word 
If only he’d left out the “THE”, he might still be with us and a successful up-and-coming author! Nice one, Angela!!
Love this – really rich imagery and the haiku form really builds the tension. One less adverb or superfluous adjective and he would have finished – caution for us all there maybe 😀
The analog version of a computer crash, with deadly results. Loved it.