The Inkwell presents: Ultrasensory

By The Inkwell

The bread and butter of a writer's craft is words, but not just words. It's the use of those words to tantalise a reader's senses, to have them experience the story, and this month, we made that the focus. Or more correctly, we asked for characters with a sense they needed to keep hidden from the world.

Why hidden though? Because it makes experiencing the world around one so much more difficult. Taking in information, information you cannot react to, is incredibly difficult. Especially when it's something you shouldn't have, and you learn things no one is supposed to know.

So that leaves us with one question: What secrets are your senses telling you?

Nothing Changes This Terrible Nonsense - Knowing how it will end isn't the gift one expects
The Spirit - Memories aren't the only things haunting Grizz
Victim's Whisper - One detective goes above and beyond to give the dead a voice
If Only - If only the imaginary didn't become reality
Out of Sync - Forewarned is forearmed, but only when understood
3:33 AM - A simple find carries a terrible price
No ITOME - Emotion cannot be chained, no matter how much we try

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Inkwell
• Release date: May 12, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215802861

The Inkwell

We are a writing collective founded on Discord that currently includes 20+ writers all helping each other on the climb to completed works.

Book preview

Nothing Changes This Terrible Nonsense

Written by Jesse Pollard

I used to think a lot about the plane crash in Regina Woods—and if I could have saved them. I was eight at the time, so of course, you might say I wouldn’t have known how.You’d be right, except… I can tell how people will die. All I have to do is look at someone in front of me, and I know instantly, like breathing, how it will happen.

When it happened, I was waiting in a lounge at Reedcliff Airport, and completely by chance, encountered the first people to die in the crash. It was an elderly couple, trying to speak over the noise all around us, and just like that, I started having one of my episodes.

I was standing in the middle of the woods, a stiff wind settling around me, staring up through the pine trees as the cross-figure of the plane started descending. As it got closer, a horrible, metallic howl tore through the woods, chilling me to the core. Soon, the plane was hurtling towards me, and all I could do was watch in growing horror as it slammed into the ground. Trees exploded, breaking under the plane’s weight, as it tore itself apart in it’s death slide. It was loud, so loud—loud enough that when I snapped out of it, I almost screamed to drown out the noise.

But it did stop, a long interminable moment later, and when it did, I took a few deep breaths, telling myself they would be fine, that I was just imagining things again. And then I tried to fix things for myself the only way I knew how.

You see, usually the characters in my favourite cartoons, like Jackie and the Gang, would be back in the next episode. No one died there, no matter what antics they got up to, and so many of their slapstick moments looked like the things I saw in my head that I struggled to tell the difference. So, that’s how I coped with seeing all these people hurt. I imagined the couple walking away from the wreckage, holding their heads and saying something like guess we should have gone where little Lily and her mommy went. I know it doesn’t make any sense now, but remember, I was eight. Cartoons are the truth no one ever questions at that age.

When the call came to check in at our terminal, my mother and I passed a lot of people who would also be on that plane, the same one as the elderly couple. And every time I looked up, every time my eyes landed on one of them, the crash would replay in my head. And each time, I tried telling myself they’d all come out of it alright. 

They’ll come out of the plane one after another, I told myself, over and over. Just like in the cartoons.

❖❖❖

After our plane took off, I started people-gazing, looking for episodes I thought were calming, or interesting, or even funny, like I was flicking through an open book on ways to die. Sometimes, I would laugh if it was something I wasn’t expecting, like people slipping in their bathroom or getting ambushed by a speeding animal. Sometimes, I would find a sense of calm in all the weird things I saw, like when I had visions of my mother sleeping in a hospital bed.

I know what you’re thinking, and yes, I realise that sounds fucked up. But when each episode happens regardless of how long you look at someone, you start to get used to them, and when you’re a little girl who used to watch those Funniest Home Videos shows, and a ton of cartoons, you see more similarities than you might be comfortable with. The slapstick chases around rooms, accordion-shaped people exiting crashed cars, people falling off cliffs and into ambiguity—well, it’s only funny when you don’t have the context. And sometimes I wish I never got it.

About half-way through the trip, I turned to my mother. Do planes fall down a lot? I asked.

Do you mean land? Because we have to land to get off the plane.

I tried finding the right words. No, like … land, but in a bad way?

My mother looked uneasily around the plane, but everyone was happily lost in their own worlds. Well, yes, she said quietly. But not often, sweetie. They happen more in cartoons than in the real world.

"But…they do, right? Can you stop a plane