Carbon Copy

Since her mother’s death, Nora has not slept. She lies beside her husband listening to him breathe, afraid that a lamp, a page turning, even the click of a pen will wake him. So she takes a duplicate pad from the boxes left by her mother’s stationery shop, goes down to the kitchen, and writes the day away in the dark, never reading a word.
Her mother taught her one rule that had nothing to do with money. Ink goes down. Down through the page, down through the carbon, onto the copy. Never up.
On the ninth morning, the back of the top sheet is stained blue. The letters are in her own handwriting, written backward, and they ask her to keep going.
A short horror story about grief, handwriting, and the things that learn to write back.