Scroll Eater by Kelly Murashige
She tells people she’s a writer. By this, she means she makes things up for fun. Every time she steps into the shower, she rushes out searching for her phone so she can jot down everything on her mind. Ideas come just as quickly as they leave, like everyone she’s ever loved.
In her writing, she has epiphanies she cannot process in real life. She makes up with people she cannot text. Makes promises in fiction that she could never say aloud. Her characters go to therapy, but she has not told a true story in years. Her writing speaks of hope, and she tells herself she is an optimist, but most times, she worries she’s delusional.
She’s a poser. A faker. A show-off. A fraud. She once was asked to submit a recording of herself reading a piece aloud, because someone liked her work for once, and when she learned most of the other writers were from posh parts of England, she briefly considered putting on her best fake British accent. She never got as far as recording an attempt, or even practicing aloud, but the fact that it even entered her mind will haunt her for however much longer she manages to stay alive.
She wants to be good. Wants to be better. Wants to do everything she has managed to do in the safety of her imagination. Wants to fix and mend and heal and save and live and laugh and cry and scream. She prays to God each night that she will take these stories of hers—every word He has allowed her to write, every message He wants her to hear and pass on to others, every lesson He has taught her a thousand times over—and wake up in a world as introspective as the ones she creates alone. She hopes someday soon, she will taste the sweetness she has described a thousand times and not the bitterness she fears will return someday.
She keeps her mouth open and waits for God to let her eat.
Born and raised in Hawaiʻi, Kelly Murashige is the author of the award-winning YA novels The Lost Souls of Benzaiten and The Yomigaeri Tunnel, as well as the upcoming adult novel Milkiverse (2027). Her work has been nominated for Best Small Fictions and Best of the Net. Though she can be shy, she loves obsessing over books, video games, and strange animals.
