The Demon in the Assignment
by Magdalena Polska
I feel the shadow slowly moving toward me the moment I sit down to write. She’s already there, sitting in the corner of my room like she never left. Her hair is black and long, almost stringy, dangling down like wet noodles, and her eyes—huge, analytic, unblinking—follow every move I make on the keyboard. Those eyes look like they’ve been open for years. She never needs to blink. She never needs to rest. I know what she’s here for. She’s not going to leave until I finish the assignment, and even then, she’ll only disappear for a little while.
The paper itself feels impossible. My professor wants not just fifty pages, but fifty good pages: polished, cited, academic. And it’s not just any paper—it’s a research project on The Molecular Impact of Climate Change on Microbial Life in Outer Space Environments. Seriously. As if I have a NASA lab in my basement. I’m supposed to combine biology, chemistry, and astrophysics, make graphs in some program I can’t even pronounce, and apparently invent a whole new “theoretical framework” to tie it all together. Then there’s a section about calculating energy consumption of hypothetical microbes on Mars while factoring in interstellar carbon cycles. I swear, the devil designed this assignment to make students lose their sanity. I can feel myself slowly slipping into madness with every clumsy sentence.
Every time I type a sentence, she whispers, “That doesn’t sound scientific enough. Where’s your evidence? Did you forget the algae experiment again?” I haven’t even done an algae experiment. I don’t even know where I’d get algae. Still, I grab a sticky note and scribble: DON’T FORGET THE ALGAE EXPERIMENT. My desk is covered in these notes, neon squares screaming impossible reminders of requirements: Invent new theory of microbial climate resistance, run calculations using quantum models, ask NASA for soil samples. She leans in to make sure I notice every note, every impossible expectation, and grins like she invented them.
I close my eyes for a second and try to breathe. In… out… In… out… But even my breaths feel monitored. The demon counts them with me, making sure each one is too shallow, too fast, or too tight. I feel the tension in my shoulders, my jaw, my chest. I know she’s feeding on it, growing stronger with every broken inhale. But I remind myself: I’m still here. I can breathe1.
Slowly, I let my fingers hover above the keys. The cursor blinks. One… two… three… I move a finger down, then another, like syrup dripping off a spoon. Each tap feels exaggerated, like I’m performing a ritual. The demon whispers insults syllable by syllable: “U–n–p–h–y–s–i–c–a–l… evidence… missing…” Her words are slowed too, as if she’s trapped in my mindfulness. I place a hand on my chest and feel the rise and fall of my ribs. The space between her words and my reaction grows, just an inch at first, but it’s mine2.
The tiny figure on her shoulder leans in and whispers, “Your writing is worse than theirs. You’ll never be enough.” Suddenly, it all clicks. She’s not attacking me out of truth; she’s passing along the same wound she got years ago. She’s haunted, too3.
She tries to throw another insult, but it comes out muted. Lips move, air empty. She claws at her face. Hair falls apart. Her outfit is even more pathetic now: tiny tattered NASA jumpsuit, patched with duct tape, one boot missing. I notice it all without fear. The more ridiculous she looks, the weaker she seems.
I grab a jar. She shrinks as I force her inside. Bugs—worms, flies, cockroaches—fall to the bottom. She chokes silently, gagging, legs thrashing. My stomach knots, but I place a hand on my chest, reminding myself it’s her, not me. I breathe. I’m still in control.
The jar is heavy, and the river outside feels like freedom. I throw it in. It sinks. I imagine the current dragging her far away, the shoulder-figure shrinking with her. The room is quiet.
The assignment still waits: twenty pages about Mars microbes and interstellar carbon cycles. But for the first time, it doesn’t terrify me. I write two messy sentences. Then two more. I let them be bad. Ugly, even. Lamott says the first draft doesn’t have to be good; it just has to exist4. The words start moving.
I pause. I think about my ghost audience—the teachers, the red pens, the invisible stares. I ignore them, I write for myself. The demon doesn’t disappear forever, but she’s smaller, quieter. The sticky notes still yell, but now I notice them without panic. I’ve learned something important: the task can be impossible, absurd, even ridiculous—but I can still breathe, still write, still move. The absurdity is mine, but so is the choice5.
This moment of focusing on the breath connects to Bhante Henepola Gunaratana’s concept of mindfulness. “Mindful awareness” means noticing thoughts without reacting, and here the narrator notices the tension in the shoulders and chest without letting the demon control them.
The slow-motion description of typing and tapping the keys connects to Pema Chödrön’s idea of creating space between a stimulus and your reaction. Talked about “pausing” as a way to interrupt automatic responses, which is exactly what the narrator does with the demon’s insults.
Realizing the demon comes from past trauma links to Chödrön’s teaching on compassion and recognizing suffering in others. Empathy and how understanding the origin of fear or judgment reduces its power—here, seeing the demon as haunted makes it weaker.
Writing messy, imperfect sentences first connects to Anne Lamott’s “shitty first draft” idea and the terminology used about “writing process scaffolding.” Letting yourself write badly first is part of building a process that eventually leads to clarity, which is what the narrator practices.
Ignoring the ghost audience connects to concepts from the TEDx talk on audience pressure and “internalized expectations.” Used the term “ghost audience” to describe how imagined judgment can influence writing, and the narrator demonstrates overcoming it by writing for themselves.