Ben’s Typewriter
The words we bury speak the loudest.
Ben had always been a truth seeker. From the moment he first picked up a pen, he knew journalism would be his life. He had a sharp mind and a keen sense for uncovering corruption, injustices, and the stories people wanted buried. His heart beat for exposing the truth, and his byline grew in prominence across local news outlets. But with his rise came the weight of responsibility, and the harsh realities of the world he was trying to change.
It was a dark winter evening when a powerful politician approached Ben with an offer. The politician, a well-known figure with influence over city affairs, had a secret he didn’t want revealed—one that could topple his career. In exchange for keeping the story hidden, he offered Ben a large sum of money, enough to erase the crushing debt Ben had accumulated over the years.
Ben’s heart raced. His idealism screamed at him to refuse, but his growing desperation clouded his judgment. The bribe was too tempting, and the truth seemed, for the first time, too costly. Torn between his morals and the possibility of financial freedom, he took the money. He buried the story, and with it, a part of himself.
For weeks, Ben couldn’t shake the weight of his decision. The guilt gnawed at him, creeping into his thoughts during every quiet moment. He couldn’t stop thinking about the story—the one he would never write. In his cramped apartment, he sat hunched over his typewriter night after night, trying to capture the words he could never share. Draft after draft filled his desk, crumpled paper piles rising higher than the light from his lone desk lamp. He wrote and rewrote, searching for redemption in the words he couldn’t publish. The clack of the keys became a constant, but the sentence he needed to complete was always just out of reach.
The night Ben died, his hands were still poised over the keys, clutching the typewriter with an unyielding grip. His life had slipped away in the silence, leaving him alone in his apartment with only the echoes of the words he had never written.
Now, Ben’s ghost lingers in the places where stories are meant to be told. In newsrooms across the city, people have reported hearing the unmistakable clack of typewriter keys in the dead of night, as though someone is typing furiously in the background. Those who sit at Ben’s old desk—his typewriter now abandoned—often find themselves surrounded by unfinished articles, words appearing on the screen only to disappear moments later. The articles are like whispers, fragments of Ben’s regret and the truth he could never bring to light.
One day, a young journalist, drawn to the same politician Ben had once sought to expose, stumbled upon Ben’s typewriter in an old storage closet of the newsroom. As she opened the case, a hidden drawer revealed Ben’s final draft, a story that had never seen the light of day. The article was a meticulous account of the politician’s corruption, a damning piece of investigative journalism that could bring the powerful figure to his knees.
Determined to honor the truth, the young journalist published Ben’s story, the words that had haunted his ghost for years. As the article went live, Ben’s presence filled the newsroom once again. This time, he appeared to the young journalist—his figure translucent and flickering, yet his eyes full of silent gratitude. With a nod, Ben’s ghost slowly faded into the light, the weight of his unspoken truth finally lifted.
Created By: Erica Latasha
