The Story Writers - Chapter One

Minimal, cryptic Science Fiction - 1,000 Words.

Seedy Pulp Writer talks about his Muse From Hell.

(Typos are on purpose)

I aught to know what its like. I am a writer myself. I have gone searching fruitlessly for something to write when there just wasn't anything. I have taken dictation from my muse, when she was speaking faster than I could type. I have gone without sleep, writing, waiting to see what would happen next in my stories, eager to get to the end to see how it all turns out.

I live in the city. It is a living being, an organism dug into the dirt next to a river, broadly sprawling under the hot sun. She is not pretty. She is obscene. She pours out her wastes into the water, and onto landfills that surround her. Great highways come into her and leave, bearing giant lorries which carry the sustenance she needs to live day by day. Her arteries are clogged with people, many of whom see to her needs. Others are parasites, living off of her like worms on flesh.

I know why she exists. She exists so that I might exist. My life is her single reason to be. She serves no other purpose. This is no egomania on my part. The story writers told me all this.

The story writers. Shadowy creatures who are not always there, living in dark recesses and remote rooms of the city, but always, always nearby. They write. They write in their little books, with bare wooden pencils sharpened with pocket knives. They write furtively, perhaps afraid for anyone to see what they write in those little bound books. They sit hunched over, in their dark overcoats, and with their brimmed hats pressed down so that no one might see. There is a desperation to their writing, and I know why.

I never saw them for a long time. My life was too self centered, my wants and needs hid them from me. I was led to write, and eventually, I learned to write as a consuming passion. It was only after many years that I began to see them, first out of the corner of my eye at some cheap coffee shop. They were so anonymous that I mistook them for people. Yet when I turned to look at them directly, they were somehow not there anymore.

Their presence in my life was like a quiet cancer. You never notice it until one morning something is there almost unnoticeable. But you notice it. After a while it is a continual presence in your life, and you begin to feel the cold doom of the thing. The story writers are like that in my life, but there is no doctor I can go to for treatment for their presence.

Right now we are at a stalemate, the story writers and me. I understand that they need me to live. They understand that I know they exist. What can be said between us? Their very presence betrays itself in my writings, and they are afraid. They are afraid because they need me to write about them. It is how they exist.

They want me to write about them as heroes. The want genuine love in their lives, and excellent adventures. They do not wish to have anything but a happy ending, and they are quietly desperate that I succeed in my writings, so that they may have a wonderful life. Epics they don't want, but only happy times where they bad guys are not too bad, and the plots are not too exerting.