The Ghostwriter: Drafting the Proposal for the Rival

My name is Simon, and I am the silent hand behind the perfect words I wish I were hearing.

In the corporate offices of Sydney, competition for the "Project Lead" role was fierce. Isla was my main competitor, but I never saw her that way. To me, she was the person who made the fluorescent office lights feel like sunshine. She’s brilliant, but she freezes when it comes to formal writing.

"Simon, I can’t do this," she whispered, leaning over my cubicle at 7:00 PM on a Friday. "The executive board wants a ten-page strategy by Monday. If I don't nail this, I’m stuck as an assistant forever."

I had my own proposal to write. It was the chance I’d worked five years for. But seeing the panic in her eyes made my own ambitions feel like dust. I spent the entire weekend at my kitchen table, drinking cold coffee and pouring my most innovative ideas into her document. I structured her arguments, polished her tone, and gave her the "killer" closing statement that I knew would win over the board. I spent so much time on hers that I barely finished a mediocre three-page summary for myself.

Monday came. The board was floored. "Isla, this is the most visionary strategy we’ve seen in a decade," the CEO announced. I stood in the back, clapping the loudest, my heart swelling with a toxic mix of pride and self-destruction. She got the promotion—and the $20,000 raise. That evening, she celebrated at a bar with the rest of the team. She bought everyone a round of drinks, except she forgot to hand me one. I watched her laughing in the center of the crowd, knowing that every word she used to describe "her" vision was a word I had bled for. I went home to my small apartment, my own career stalled, and felt a strange, hollow victory in knowing I was the secret engine of her flight.