The inkwell paradox

 

Experimental Short Story Series #39
Title: “The Inkwell Paradox”
By Faraz Parvez (pen name of Professor Dr. Arshad Afzal, former faculty member, Umm Al Qura University, Makkah, KSA)

Welcome to the 39th gem of our Experimental Short Story Series—a literary experiment drenched in wonder, alchemy, and thought-provoking distortion. Today, we bring you a tale that peels back the fragile skin between imagination and manifestation, dream and ink, life and language. As always, our signature style fuses layered storytelling with a meta-literary lens, and a twist or two you won’t see coming.

The Inkwell Paradox

It arrived in a brown paper parcel—no return address, no sender’s name, just one line in impossibly fine handwriting: “Write well, and it shall write you back.”

Ibrahim Rahmani was no stranger to oddities. A retired linguistics professor and a reclusive writer in his twilight years, he believed words were alive. But even he felt a tremor when he uncapped the antique inkwell. The liquid shimmered like obsidian rain, scentless and thick. There was no pen inside the box, only the inkwell and a note that seemed more curse than blessing.

He dipped his old quill.

The first story he wrote was a childhood memory—a kite festival in Lahore, where his younger brother Salman vanished in the crowd and returned hours later, his face pale and lips trembling. A small thing. A forgotten moment.

The next day, Ibrahim received a call from a cousin in Karachi. “Strange,” she said. “I was just going through some old albums. Found a photo of you and Salman at a kite festival. I had never seen it before. I could swear… he wasn’t there that day.”

Something shifted in his bones. He ignored it.

The second story was fiction—or so he believed. A poem about a woman who walks through dreams and leaves behind the scent of cinnamon. That night, he dreamed of her. The same face, the same fragrance, the same sorrow in her eyes. She looked at him and whispered, “Stop before you disappear.”

He began to test it.

Wrote about a bird nesting on his windowsill—found it the next morning.
Wrote about a letter from his long-lost student—received it within a week.
Wrote about the power going out—and it blinked off seconds later.

Then he made the fatal choice: he wrote about his own death.

He framed it beautifully—no pain, only snow, a quiet heart, the smell of old books, and the crackling fireplace beside his armchair.

And then he waited.

Nothing.

Days passed. Then weeks. He stopped sleeping. Every corner of his apartment began to feel pre-written, staged. Conversations felt scripted. Dreams recycled. The line between author and character blurred.

One night, Ibrahim opened the drawer where he had kept the inkwell and found it empty. In its place was a handwritten page—his own handwriting.

It was the beginning of a new story:

“The man forgot he ever existed, because the inkwell had taken his past to write someone else’s present…”

He gasped—but no sound came.

He had forgotten his name.

He reached for his journal. Blank.

His reflection in the mirror? Faded.

He looked down and saw the ink flowing through his veins.

Not blood.

Ink.

Author’s Desk:

This story, like the others in our Experimental Short Story Series, attempts to bend the narrative form into a Möbius strip of meaning. “The Inkwell Paradox” is not only a tale of magical realism—it’s a commentary on how stories consume the storyteller, how words can trap as much as they can free, and how literature might just be our most dangerous form of immortality.

We are thrilled to continue this experimental odyssey with our readers, one strange tale at a time. From #1 to #60, each blog post is an offering, a literary gamble, a whisper from the abyss where fiction and philosophy kiss.

Stay with us. Read deeply. Reread. Reflect. Because somewhere in these stories, your own echo waits to be heard.

Presented by Faraz Parvez
Pen name of Professor Dr. Arshad Afzal
Former Faculty, Umm Al Qura University, Makkah, KSA

Follow the full series at: farazparvez1.blogspot.com
Coming soon: Our experimental series in eBook and print editions.
Because stories like these deserve to live on bookshelves and in dreams.

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