Megan Inky [ SAFE · 2024 ]

She touched her pen to the creature’s chest, right over the lock she’d drawn. But instead of opening it, she drew one final line—a crack. The lock split. The cage bars melted. And The Hollow began to unravel, not with a scream, but with a soft, almost peaceful sigh, like a held breath finally released.

“Shut up,” she said, not looking up. “You want it to work? Let me work.”

Only it wasn’t The Hollow . Not quite. She used its shape as a skeleton, but she added details: chains wrapping its limbs. A cage of ink bars around its torso. And in the center of its chest, where a heart would be, she drew a single, tiny lock. megan inky

Megan’s blood turned to ice water. “I don’t know what you’re—”

“I’ve got more,” Lucas said. “Your little menagerie of animated doodles? I’ve been documenting it for weeks. You help me, or this goes to every news outlet, every science blog, every creepypasta forum I can find. Your life as you know it? Over.” She touched her pen to the creature’s chest,

She held up her pen. The nib glinted.

It started subtly. Last spring, she’d been doodling in the margins of her history notes—a little dragon, nothing special—when the dragon’s tail twitched. She blinked, certain she’d imagined it. Then the dragon stretched its paper wings and sneezed a tiny puff of graphite smoke. The cage bars melted

“You tricked me,” he said.