Ghost On The Floor (Finding Alabaster Vol. 1)

Hey Penizens,

I actually have some big news regarding the pen, so stay tuned for that. But as promised, here is the definitive account of how all of this Haunted Pen business came to be:

They say necessity is the mother of invention, but have they ever stopped to consider that forgetfulness might be the absentee father of fate? The sequence of events that led me to Alabaster (the pen) were set into motion by an event so mundane, you could hardly call it an event. 

As many of you know, I write all of my posts by hand before typing them on my computer. My daily routine is:

1. Wake up at 6:30.

2. Feed Mister Frumps his human-grade soft breakfast.

3. Drive to a second-wave coffee place roughly three miles from my apartment. (Most social psychologists agree that 2nd wave coffee shops are better for working at, as they aren't the rife bastions of social comparison that 3rd wave places are, and because, for the price of a single pour-over at a 3rd wave place, you can get a large latte and a whole-ass breakfast item of your choice.)

As a general rule, I don’t take my laptop anywhere unless I absolutely have to. Instead, I bring a green Trader Joe’s tote bag filled with supplies like lined paper, a calculator, a Hydro Flask, and always, yes, at least three pens. 

Well, here's the non-event: that day I forgot my tote bag at home.

I'm not sure how it happened, and I can't remember a single time I'd ever done it before, but somehow, somewhere between tying my shoes and entering my car, I'd had a momentary lapse of focus. And now I basically had two choices: Either succumb to a scarcity mindset for the tenth time in one month and drive all the way back to my apartment—or—follow my own advice for once, and rely on the abundance of my community.

There’re a handful of other regulars who work at the same cafe as me, but for whatever reason, the only one there that day was one of the ones I’d never spoken to. A guy with a gray mustache who always wore a black turtleneck. He and I existed in that strange state of familiarity where you exchange nods of basic acknowledgment, and occasionally hear each other speak to other people, but never to each other. It wasn’t ideal, but I was in no position to hope for ideal, let alone expect it. As it was, the dynamic would have to be enough. 

Crucially, I knew he always carried a large canvas binder, and that whatever his job was required him to constantly be circling or scribbling over large blocks of printed text and geometric pictographs. (I always assumed he was an architect or something.)

Anyway, I started early, laying the groundwork by putting extra emphasis on our usual greeting nod. And, after I ordered my soy matcha and a warm grain breakfast bowl, I chose a table in his line of vision and made a pretty big show of it, pretending like I’d only just then realized I’d forgotten my things. 

We made quick eye contact, but he didn’t take the bait. (As I’ve explained many times, I’m not what you’d call a ‘ten’, but I am on the razor’s edge of being just attractive enough for it to be intimidating for some men to strike up conversations with me.) And so, with my drink soon to be called, and still nothing to write with or upon, I stood up, approached the table, and just asked for what I needed. 

It went something like:

“Um, hi, excuse me, I see you in here sometimes. I’m Kamryn. I was just wondering…”  

You get the idea. Soft. Non-threatening. Lost puppy vibes.

At first, his response was strange—a kind of blank blinking as he grokked my name and the fact that I was asking him for something. For an extended split second, I did feel like a leech on the exposed flesh of society, looking for handouts. But the feeling passed as soon as his face bloomed into a warm smile. 

“Absolutely. No problem. I’ve got plenty.”

He told me his name was Gunther, then flipped a heavy stack of pages over to a fully-stocked pen pouch in the front of his binder, and tore a small stack of lined paper. Really, and I can't stress this enough, he just overall acted like it really wasn’t a big deal. And just as I thanked him, the barista called my name, providing me a perfect excuse to walk away on good terms.

I sat back down at my table, and started writing my then-next blog post, comparing the three new salt bread bakeries that had recently opened in the city. After a shaky start to the day, everything seemed to be working out. The writing flowed pretty easily, and before I knew it, I’d filled up two and a half pages with my salt bread rankings. 

BUT

Enter now, my fate. Enter now, fate in general. Fate itself. Bigger than any one person, and utterly incomprehensible. 

As I neared the bottom fifth of my third page, the smoothly gliding ballpoint skidded to a scrape, ripping a fissure into the lined paper. I did all of the usual techniques we all do—licking the tip, shaking it, rubbing it warm—but nothing worked. There just wasn’t any ink left to warm.

By then, my matcha had turned room-temp, and my lower back was getting sore, so I figured I’d just tally my nearly three pages as a win, and call it a day. I downed the concentrated green sludge at the bottom of my mug, bussed my table, and went to tell the guy his pen was empty.

“Now you owe me,” he said, with a sudden coldness.

At first I laughed, expecting him to join in and say something like:

"Just kidding."

Or:

"No worries, it’s just a pen.'"

But that’s not what he did. Believe me when I say that, this time, he didn’t even smile.

“You owe me a pen,” he said, without the faintest trace of levity. “Only the pen. The four sheets of paper are my gift to you. Happy birthday.”

I laughed again, but more uneasily than before, now trying to escape back to my car in as few words as possible. After an elongated pause, I acquiesced, mumbling something about bringing an extra one from home the following Monday.

“No,” he said, with tightly clamping intensity. “That’s a special brand of pen. I’ve seen the ones you use, and I don’t like them. It can’t be an ordinary Bic, or any American brand. Nothing from Walgreens or Target where I assume you get yours. The one I lent you is a Sasara Clip Pen, and they only sell them at the Maido stationary store in Japan Town. And they only come in packs of five. And sometimes they run out, so you should call ahead and make sure they’re in stock before you go.”

Deep down, my nervous system switched into kick-self mode, zeroing in on the fact that because I’d been too lazy to just drive home to get my own pen, I now had to run a special errand that would probably take anywhere from 2 to 5 hours. For a moment, I considered just agreeing to all of his demands, and then running away and never returning to the cafe again.

But my rational mind quickly chimed in, pointing out that it had taken me three years to find a cafe that so perfectly fulfilled my needs, and reminding me that I’d been meaning to go to Japan Town anyway, for my monthly report on the latest goshapon drops.

So, hey. Two birds with one stone, right? I told him I’d buy him the same exact pen, and though Monday was still four days away, I don’t think any regular readers will be surprised to hear I went straight there as soon as I left the cafe. As most of you know, letting something like that hang over my head for longer than fifteen minutes is basically the equivalent of smashing my head through a three-inch thick window in super slow motion.

Maido is on the second floor of the newly revitalized Japan Town Center, tucked into a corner, just to the right of the main stairwell, between Udon Mugizo and Yakitori Edomasa. It’s a charming little shop with a great selection of stationary and writing tools, most of which are testable on the provided pads of blank white paper. One highlight of the store is just seeing the random stuff hundreds of other people wrote and drew on the pads:

(PICTURES HERE) 

I’d never seen the shop so deserted. There was only one other customer besides me, digging through a discount bin of irregular washi tape. And, contrary to the way Gunther made it sound, there was an abundance of Sasara Clip Pens, and they were incredibly easy to find, displayed prominently on the rack. I grabbed a pack of black for him, a variety pack for myself, and spent some time trying out the high-end watercolor markers, just for fun.

But then, (and this is the big moment) just as I turned to the checkout counter, I heard something fall to the ground. Now, here's the thing—I’m never really one to investigate the sounds I hear, especially in shops where the sounds have nothing to do with me. (I’ve worked several retail jobs in my life, and I know that falling items are a common occurrence, and that picking stuff up is one of the minimum requirements for anyone who works at a stationary store.) But, for whatever reason, this particular sound reverberated so deeply through my bone marrow that I went to check it out without even thinking.

One aisle over was a section devoted to Moomin plushies, keychains, and giant rolls of wrapping paper. There, laying out in the open, atop the short-cropped carpet fibers, was a pen that didn’t look like any of the others.

It’s very hard to explain how it feels when a mundane event resounds with the full bone-bending weight of destiny. But standing there in the pleasantly soft shop music, I felt it. The hairs prickled on my arms, and when I crouched down to touch the pen, there was a bright spark, like I’d just touched an exposed wire. 

Some kind of power was surging through it, entering into my fingers and lapping up through my arm veins. It was like a flame and a liquid, both warm and cool, and something else that’s harder to describe. Like a buttery distortion. It’s a strange thing to say, but the word the word that popped into my head then is still the one I keep coming back to.

Lucid. 

Just to be sure I wasn’t accidentally stealing anything, I took it with me to the counter and offered to pay for it. As expected, the clerk said she’d never seen it or one like it before. She offered to put it in the bag with the others, but that felt deeply wrong to me, but not because of anything to do with me. Somehow, I could just sense that it wasn’t what the pen wanted.  

Of course, I hadn’t articulated any of this to myself. At the time, I was still agnostic about whether ghosts existed, probably even leaning towards the “they don’t” side of the equation. All I knew was that it felt right to hold the thing, and to stick it into my front coat pocket. That for the first time in my life, I felt like I myself had become a home for something else. 

And, twenty minutes later, I experienced the very first strange occurrence I’ve since deemed “Acts of Alabaster”. The parking structure in Japan Town, like everywhere else in this city, is not cheap. Even though I’d only been there for a little over an hour, there was still a minimum flat rate of twenty dollars. Only, when I put the ticket into the pay station, all it said was, and I am NOT making this up:

“No Payment Required. Have a nice day, Kamryn.”

(If, in my limited talent as a writer, I've failed to make this abundantly clear: that machine had no way of knowing what my name was. And, in the times I've gone back since, it always makes me pay, and never says my name.)

TO BE CONTINUED