The Story Writers

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 storywriters told me all this.

The storywriters. Shadowy creatures that 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 pocketknives. 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 storywriters 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. This is why my stories tend to be so insipid, never quite reaching the greatness I desire of them.

Would that they would grant me the same favor, but that is not possible. I exist to write their stories, and I must live in this gray slum of a city, torn with crime and pain, because that is where the great writers live and thrive. God, how I wish I could live in the country, in a cottage, with a happy chubby wife, surrounded with a green garden and trees, breathing fresh air.

They would never permit that, of course. I understand that much. If I were to live in such a place, my writing would suffer. I would write murder mysteries, or horror. I might not write at all. Or worse, I might write comedy. Why should I do otherwise? I would be living a life that was fulfilling and free of pain, and I would have little need to keep these Storywriters alive or fulfilled.

That is the final horror of my life here in this hellhole. I know I only exist because they write my life by small chapters into their little books, sitting in the shadows, hiding silently in the next room. I know they are there, though. I can hear their stubby pencils making soft little scratches upon the pages of their little books.

My life may be short, now that they know that I know about them. There are many other writers here in this world anyway. Too many writers. Who could ever get published? Being famous, being published, being an Author, has no bearing on their existence. Such successful Authors don’t exist anyway. They are only imaginary. Only my writing of their stories matters. These story writers. Then they can live. Then they can continue to come here occasionally, into my world, and write their badly written chapters of my dreary existence, an existence that only a truly good writer could endure.

I guess I look forward to seeing them out of the corner of my eye. I never look at them anymore. I pretend that they are not there. I do not wish to destroy this strange symbiosis we share. I am afraid to frighten them away, or worse, to have them edit me out of their little stories.

Who is real here? Am I? Are they? Does either of us exist in some real world somewhere? Or are we both a figment of some writer, somewhere, off dreaming in the desert?

I no longer care. I no longer need an answer to my questions. I only live to write, and I write to live, as any good storywriter would tell you. That is all that matters, my fictitious friend, as you set there in you imaginary chair, reading this imaginary story. May your ending be as happy as I hope mine will someday be.

Don’t forget to write.

Roger Born