The blank piece of paper seemed to stare back at me as I sat at my desk, pen poised, waiting for the lightning of inspiration

The blank piece of paper seemed to stare back at me as I sat at my desk, pen poised, waiting for the lightning of inspiration to strike. A lone butterfly fluttered drunkenly out of the page, skipping to and fro like a forlorn leaf tossed about by an autumn wind.

Out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw a flurry of movement, as of an eavesdropper who ducks away when they know they've been caught, but it evaded me when I turned my head to look. Hoping to catch it out, I put pen to paper and scribbled the first thing that came to mind.

Soft sounds, barely loud enough to register at the limits of human hearing, filled up the background of my mind like the susurrus of sand swept across a beach on a moonlit night. Amongst the varied and conflicted noises, my ears picked out a solitary drum beat, the crunch of tires on gravel and the call of an owl in the night as it embarked on the hunt.

Sketchy shapes were beginning to form in the outskirts of the room: strange plants and trees unfurled, complex spider webs wove themselves and a maze of pipes that seemed to lead everywhere and nowhere sprung up from the brickwork. The butterfly danced among them all; an intrepid explorer of leaves and branches, flirting dangerously with a myriad of spiders that lurked within the webs and dodging spurts of scalding steam that burst forth from joins in the pipes.

As my pen scratched furiously against the paper, picking up speed as it went, a stampede of imagination burst forth; lions and tigers and bears, dinosaurs and aliens and monsters filling the room with sound and colour and movement. Faster and faster, louder and louder until I thought my head, like the straining walls of the room, would burst from the pressure.

Fur pressed against scales pressed against wings as more and more inspiration strained to break free from the confines of my mind. A many limbed primate scuttled across the page, briefly jogging my hand and sending the pen skittering across the paper in a rainbow of ink.

A thousand eyes turned to me.

A thousand eyes blinked and went dead. Just as soon as it had begun, the room was once again silent and empty as the tomb.

Silent and empty, but for a single butterfly, catching the light on its wings as it danced this way and that on a private breeze.

Picking up my pen, I prepared to release the madness once again.