An old bottle of shimmery black ink that is still liquid after all these years. The glass jar collector found it at an estate sale for a dollar. He brings it home and consigns himself to spending the afternoon rinsing the obviously dried ink out but when he tries to pull the cork out, it's so tight that he fumbles it and drops the jar.
To his surprise, instead of ink splurting out everywhere, a blob oozes out of the jar, spreads slightly, and then pulls the old jar over itself and starts wandering across his desk.
He is too shocked to say anything, too shocked to be afraid.
The ink creature encounters the collector's journal and wiggles itself in glee. As it moves across the page, it aligns itself with the lines on the paper. In the ink trail it leaves behind, the collector starts to recognize words.
"It is time to write. I can help you."
The creature, looking like a snail made with the darkest part of the midnight sky stopped and turned its front portion towards the collector. Something like two eyestalks emerged and pointed up before pointing at the pen lying in the crease of the book.
"Wha... How?" The collector finds his breath but his words still eludes him.
The creature moves across the next line on the page, leaving behind more words in its trail. "You will need an iron nib for a bone stylus to use my ink."
This entire matter reminded the collector of some stories he has read. He thinks he's prepared to defend himself. "And if I agree, what do you want from me in return?"
The creature moved over several lines. "A plate covered in lampblack upon which for me to rest. A thimble of vinegar from which I will drink. A commitment from you that you will write often."
The collector regarded the words he read carefully, and the words he was about to say twice as carefully. "You are a summoned spirit, or demon, I guess. In all the stories I have read about such things, blood is involved. Why haven't you asked for that?"
The creature made one last slow crawl across the page. "Because as a writer, blood is what you will pay the page." The creature withdrew itself into the small jar as a snail would into its shell until it appeared like a small glass jar of dried up ink resting upside down on the open journal.
The collector picked it up and saw the mark the creature left behind on the page. The circular rim of the jar had left a perfect circle of ink and inside of it was something the collector had only heard about in stories.
The ink demon's seal shimmered as if the stars of the midnight sky had been ground into the black ink. All the collector had to do was to trace it, and his new friend would come to help him.
