They never see me.They only read me.My words have carried men to fame, women to fortune, and corporations to worship—but no one has ever known the name behind the ink. I am a shadow stitched between pages, the ghost that gives life to other people's stories.Most people think ghostwriting is quiet work—typing away in dim rooms while the world moves outside your window. They're wrong. It's war. A silent war between truth and illusion, fought with commas, lies, and deadlines.Every story I've written has taken a piece of me. I've learned how to disappear between sentences, how to breathe life into someone else's fantasy while burying my own voice. Over time, I became addicted to invisibility. Anonymity is dangerous—it makes you brave. It makes you do things you wouldn't dare if anyone could see your face.It's 3:17 a.m. again. The hour when reality feels too thin to trust. My laptop glows like a confession booth, and I'm its only sinner. The apartment smells of burnt coffee and insomnia. Piles of papers rise like tombstones on my desk—half-written chapters, red-inked notes, receipts from jobs I swore I'd never take again.The hum of the city seeps through the blinds—sirens, distant footsteps, a lone motorcycle slicing through the night. I should sleep. I should step away from this fluorescent glow, this relentless tapping of keys, this obsession with other people's lives. But I can't. Because tonight, something is different.Then, there's the email.Victor Blaine. Billionaire, publisher, philanthropist, liar.He hired me three months ago to write his "final masterpiece." He said he wanted the truth of his life told before he died. I thought it was a metaphor. A rich man's way of saying he wanted to live forever in print. But his last message to me doesn't feel poetic anymore
"Finish the book, A.D.Even if I don't make it."I shrugged it off as his usual grandiosity. Billionaires speak in riddles; they see themselves as living legends. But then a news alert flashed across my screen, splitting my quiet like a thunderclap.PUBLISHING TYCOON VICTOR BLAINE FOUND DEAD IN HIS OFFICE.Apparent heart failure. No foul play suspected.I blink. My throat tightens. The headline stings, but the picture beside it makes my stomach drop. Blaine slumped over his mahogany desk, his hand resting on a manuscript with a title that burns through the pixels:The Rise of the Ghostwriter — by A.D.I stare. My fingers tremble. That title doesn't exist in my files. I never wrote those words.For a moment, I convince myself it's a mistake—some sick coincidence or media error. But curiosity is a disease, and I am terminal. I navigate to my writing folder anyway. Dozens of drafts labeled under various client names appear… except one.A file I've never seen before:R_GHOST_FINAL.docxIts timestamp is 3:17 a.m.—the exact time I woke up to check my emails.
I double-click it. The document opens itself, almost too smoothly. The cursor blinks like a heartbeat. Then, lines begin to appear—typing themselves before my eyes.> "A.D. sat in front of his laptop at 3:17 a.m., reading words he didn't write."I shove my chair back so fast it hits the bookshelf. My pulse races. The words keep forming.> "He tried to close the document, but it wouldn't listen."I slam the escape key. Nothing. The cursor blinks once, twice, then the next line appears.> "He wonders if this is how his clients felt—watching their stories control them."The screen flickers. And then it stops. Just a blank white page again, like nothing happened.I stare. My reflection glares back from the dark monitor—tired eyes, unshaved face, someone who looks too human to be haunted. I tell myself it's exhaustion. Lack of sleep. The mind playing tricks. But deep down, I know better.Every ghostwriter learns the same truth sooner or later:If you spend too long writing other people's stories, one day, the stories start writing you.The room feels colder now. My phone buzzes once on the desk. A message from an unknown number.> Unknown: Stop reading.Another follows immediately.> Unknown: You're next.My hands shake as I lift the phone, but before I can respond, the screen goes black. Power outage. Silence.I sit in the dark, surrounded by my clients' secrets, my own fear, and the ghost of a story I never wrote. Somewhere outside, thunder rolls over the city. Inside, the cursor on my laptop starts blinking again.I glance at the piles of unfinished work. Each manuscript is a grave of someone else's life, buried under my words. I wonder if they ever feel what I do—being invisible while their stories are immortalized. Or perhaps immortality has a price. Perhaps mine is just beginning.A memory surfaces—one of my first ghostwriting jobs. A memoir for a senator who promised reform but spent a lifetime building walls around his truth. I remember the thrill of wielding his life in my hands, shaping public perception with sentences he never saw. The intoxicating power. And the emptiness afterward. The quiet that settled over my own voice, as if it had been swallowed whole.Now, I wonder if Victor Blaine's final gift was a warning—or a trap. His manuscript wasn't just a story. It was a map, a warning, a confession written for someone who would never be the same. And somehow, in the twisting, impossible way of things tonight, it found me.I lean closer to the blinking cursor. The rain outside drums against the window like a heartbeat, demanding attention. My fingers hover above the keyboard. Every instinct screams to close the laptop, to unplug, to flee. But the same curiosity that kept me alive this long—kept me hidden in the shadows of everyone else's glory—pulls me forward.I type a single word.Who?The keys respond. Not with letters, but with the rhythm of the story forming itself, faster now, almost anxious:> "Who writes the ghosts, if not the ghost himself?"A shiver runs down my spine. The room feels smaller, the walls bending inward. I realize something terrifying: this isn't a message from the outside. This isn't someone threatening me. This is me. Or the part of me I buried in the margins, in the footnotes, in the empty spaces between other people's words.I've spent years giving life to stories that aren't mine. Now, finally, the stories are alive—and they've come for me.I stare at the screen. The cursor blinks. And in the rhythm of its pulse, I hear the faint echo of every sentence I've ever written. Every lie I've ever told through another voice. Every confession I've hidden in plain sight.Somewhere in the apartment, a clock strikes 3:30 a.m. The storm outside swells. And as lightning casts the room in fleeting white light, I know one thing with absolute certainty:I'm not writing anymore. The story is writing me.And if I survive, I will never be the same.