Rage+Against+the+Author

Rage Against the Author

Writer's are evil. I mean, seriously evil. Any writer worth his salt is a serial murdering criminal mastermind. Our job requires us to be complicit in genocide, war mongering, atrocity and various and sundry apocalypses. Our crimes are innumerable and endlessly vicious, and never go punished. Hell, we even get paid quite well to do such awful things. The victims of our villainy are helpless, unable to fight back, unable to even realize exactly what's being done to them or by who. They are our creations, and we create them mainly so that we can put them through hell. Fictional characters are the most oppressed and brutalized people in the history of the human race. Think about it. Think about the things that happen to the characters is any book you read. The lucky ones just get killed. The ones who survive are tortured, tormented, traumatized, and worst of all, transcribed. We kill their parents, their wives, their children, we even murder their pets if we feel like it. Writers are like insane, homicidal gods, smiting our creations with fire and venereal disease for our own entertainment. Look at Tolkien. During the Lord of the Rings Trilogy he engineered the deaths of tens of thousands of men, women, elves, and dwarves. He drove poor Frodo to the brink of insanity with that Ring he wrote into existence. He drove Gollum the entire way, and then killed him as an ironic finish to the plot. Tolkien was responsible for all of this crap, he made it happen. The man was lucky he never ran into Frodo or Sam. Being a writer myself, I didn't think about any of this until one night I found myself with a gun pressed against my temple, while a best selling book character shouted at me for repeatedly and grievously ruining his life. Which I kinda did for seven books. Which covered about twenty years of the guy's life. Some of us just aren't as lucky as that Tolkien bastard. It was a dark and stormy night, the kind of night that always brought out my best and most energetic writing. As a kid I'd always been fascinated and in love with storms, taking long walks in the middle of torrential downpours or even talking to them. There was just something about the howling of wind, the boom of thunder, the clatter of rain, that set my imagination alight and made me want to do things. My connection to and fondness for inclement weather continued into adulthood and into my writing career. I was working on the eighth novel in my Thomas Gate series. The books followed Thomas Gates, a male nurse who has a chance encounter with one of the world's greatest and most infamous magicians. The first book began with the dying, old sorcerer sitting down beside Thomas on a subway train and whispering the secret of magic into his ear, plopping all of his knowledge and tricks into Thomas' subconscious. All part of a postmortem plan by the soon to be dead magician to get revenge for his murder. The plan succeeds as Thomas is forced to kill the old man's enemies when they come after him, managing to defeat them through a combination of luck and a couple aces slipped up his sleeves by the magician. As the series moved forward, becoming fairly successful in the process, Thomas ends up becoming just the kind of magician his "mentor" was. In the process of reaching such lauded heights, which takes Thomas twenty years, he loses two wives, countless friends, his ability to sleep, and his left arm. By the end of the last book I had written about him, Thomas was an alcoholic wastrel pretty much living in his favorite bar. Which I began the book by burning to the ground. The Thomas Gate books were my most popular work, each new book having brought in a comfortable amount of money. The success of the books was part of the reason I'd kept them going, though not the only reason. I just enjoyed writing about Thomas Gate, especially the transformation of the character from a bewildered and out of his depth young man to a tough, bitter middle aged man with the personality of a war veteran, though Thomas' wars were more like bad acid trips that could result in multiple fates worse then death. I was able to keep the stories interesting and the character interesting, kept it fun and challenging to write. That night I was working on the fifth chapter to the new book, which I had tentatively titled High Noon. My plan was for the novel to focus on Thomas' status as the most dangerous man in the mystic underground. More specifically, I was going use the old gunfighter's dilemma, the fact that his reputation made him a target for every ambitious young punk looking to take down the heavyweight champ. Something in the twisted recesses of my mind liked the idea of throwing Thomas into a scenario similar to the first book, except this time he was the old warhorse going up against the latest and greatest. Force him to adapt to the way magic has changed over twenty years, and to the way he had changed as well. I had high hopes for this book. I had everything I needed to write at hand. My computer was on and had Microsoft Word open. The playlist I had set up for this book was playing in the background, a mixture of classic rock and blues. A hot cup of coffee sat at my left, while half a dozen candy bars were piled at my right. And there was the storm, which served as a pleasant backdrop to everything else. Everything was perfect, in its proper, disorganized place. The piles of junk surrounding my work desk were in the proper alignment, my waste paper basket was overflowed in just the right way, and I was still in my bathrobe despite it being 9 o' clock. So of course it was just as I was about to put fingers to keyboard and words to megabytes that there was a knock at my door. "Sonova. Wait just a moment, I'll be right there." I called as I lifted myself grudgingly out of my chair. Nothing makes a writer more irritable than being interrupted in the middle of his groove. The writer's groove is a precious commodity, and a temperamental one at that. The chances of me recovering my state of writer Gnosis were slim at the very least. As I shuffled across the room towards the door, I cursed whoever had come knocking, knocking at my chamber door. They had tampered with my process, with my groove, and for that they had earned my wrath. "I swear to god, if you're selling something, there will be blood." I muttered as I opened the door as much as the chain would allow. I peeked out to see a wino standing out in the hallway, glaring at me with an unsettling intensity. He looked somewhat familiar, though I didn't remember having ever encountered anyone like him before. He was obviously drunk as could be seen by his sweaty, red face and swaying stance. He wore a grimy suit, sopping wet with rain and spilled booze. It looked like he hadn't washed the thing in weeks, most of which had been probably spent in a bar. His hair was long and scraggly, hanging damply in front of his face. But what creeped me out the most about this guy were his eyes. They were angry, filled with a fury so powerful that it cut right through the booze. Whatever else about him appeared completely smashed, his eyes were clear. And more than a little bit homicidal. I slammed the door in his face on reflex. The rage in his eyes and the weird sense of familiarity I had gotten from him freaked me out. There wasn't any response from the other side of the door, at least not that I could hear. I waited a moment or two, and then with a shrug and a sigh, I turned back towards my computer and my latest novel. "Well, that was odd...and a little scary. Psychotic, drunken hobos. Huh. Maybe I could that..." I muttered to myself as I plopped down in my chair. I was just resting my fingers back onto my keyboard when the psychotic, drunken hobo kicked in my door. This wasn't an easy feat. The door wasn't exactly flimsy, and I had a couple moderately expensive locks on it. The usual precautions of someone who never had enough money to get decent security, got robbed often, and managed to luck into some money finally. So it spoke a lot to the crazy bastard's determination or murderous fury that he managed to bust it open on his first try. "You." He growled at me, as he stepped into my apartment. The crazy, berserk light in his eyes grew brighter as he watched me lying on the ground beside my upended chair. Without taking his eyes away from mine, he reached into his right pocket and pulled out a large handgun which he then pointed at my head. I wasn't sure exactly what I should do. A couple possibilities popped into my mind with a kind of frantic, convulsive speed, the kinds of things characters in my books would do under similar circumstances. I could cower and beg, maybe even piss myself in an attempt to look as disgustingly pathetic as possible. I could make a run for it, try and get behind some cover and just hope that this guy's drunken state would screw up his aim. Or I could stay exactly where I was, paralyzed, and pray silently that I wouldn't be shot in the face. In the end, I settled for the latter, figuring that at the very least I could go out with a clean pair of pants. "You. You. You. You..." The hobo couldn't quite get the words out. The hatred in his voice was almost solid, striking me in the face over and over again. He finally gave up trying to speak and made a move as if to grab something from his pocket. It was at this point that I noticed he had only one arm. My instincts told me this was important, that I should know who this guy was, but nothing was coming. The hobo stood there for several moments. He was stuck in that very awkward trap where he needed his one arm to hold the gun, but also needed it to retrieve whatever he wanted out of his pocket. Finally, and with great reluctance, he sidestepped over to a nearby bookshelf and set the gun down. "If you so much as take a deep breath, I'll have that gun back in my hand and firing away before you can get enough air for your death rattle. Understand?" He waited for a second, still glaring at me. "I said do you understand? Answer me!" "Understood." I croaked, thankful that my vocal chords had resumed function at that particular moment. He nodded and pulled out a flask. With a grunt of satisfaction, his gaze still trained on me, he took a sip of whatever it was. The flask was what finally jogged my mind into action, made me realize exactly who I was being threatened by. I thought I was going to vomit. My disbelieving eyes glanced back at my computer, at the words descending down its screen. Just five minutes before this guy had knocked on my door, I had been writing about him taking a sip from that very flask. The one arm. The disheveled appearance. The face which was a combination of mine and Keanu Reeves', a result of having watched Speed the night I'd created him. Thomas Gate saw the revelation in my eyes, and a bitter corpse of a smile curled across his face. "You recognized me? Finally." Then he punched me. His face went from hollow amusement to something made from equal parts demonic hatred and angelic despair. The thin, bedraggled, drunken magician threw himself across the room at me and made my world explode. I had managed to drag myself into a kneeling position, but that punch knocked me back on my side. Everything went shaky and I saw stars. My entire face felt hot and moist, and I could taste blood from where I'd bitten my tongue. "You, you, you //author//." He spat the word out from between gritted teeth. Thomas clenched his fist as if he was going to him me again, just pound my skull into the carpet until it turned into a bone and brain paste. Instead he took a deep, shaking breath and let his arm fall to his side. Without looking at me, he stumbled over to my chair, set it upright, and let himself collapse on it. "You're probably wondering how I managed to get here, to track you down." There wasn't any emotion in his voice, just a broken emptiness. "It wasn't easy. Heck, I only found out about the nature of our...relationship by accident. Botched a casting that was supposed to make me see the truth. Worked too well, showed me that I was fictitious. Can't describe what its like to find out that you're the center of you universe, and that everything bad that's happened to you was the deliberate work of a writer. So many awful things because you wanted to sell some books, collect a fat royalty check." "I...I didn't know you were..." "Real? Not quite, at least I don't think so. Doesn't matter. Either way, I figured out a couple things after that. Lots of things made a lot more sense with the inclusion of an author. I managed to pull myself together enough to jury rig a ritual that would take me here. Surprised it worked. Though probably not as much as you are." "What are you going to do to me?" I asked, not really wanting to hear the answer. "Not sure yet. I've been planning this for a week or so, since I got here. Originally, the plan was to kill you. Would be easy to get away with it. Just put a bullet between your eyes and head back to my world. But I'm honestly not sure whether my world would still exist if I killed you. Not that I much care much at this point." Thomas turned to look at the gun still lying on the bookshelf, his expression contemplative. "Please...don't. Don't kill me. I promise I'll write happier stories for you. Make everything better." I had pushed myself into a sitting position, looking up at Thomas sitting in my chair. It seemed that most of the anger inside him had died down, except for a dim ember I could still see in his eyes. "Go to hell. I've really had enough with other people writing my life for me. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with you. Most of my magic doesn't work here, just enough for me keep anyone from interfering and to keep that truth ritual going. So I can't do much to you other than kill you or let you live. So I'm going to say some things to you, and when I'm done I'll decide what happens next. If you sit quietly and speak only when spoken to, you might have a chance of getting out of this alive. Okay?" I nodded, grateful for any hope of survival. Various parts of my brain were shouting at me. Part of me, the stupid, rational part, was insisting that this guy couldn't possibly be Thomas Gate. Thomas Gate was a fictional character I had invented. It was impossible. Figuring that this situation kind of made words like rational and possible obsolete, I ignored this part. Another part of me wanted me to keep an eye on the gun. Just get Thomas talking, and once an opportunity presented itself, make a run for the gun and blow the crap out of him. I rejected this plan as well, mainly because I knew Thomas was a lot smarter, faster, and meaner that I was. I'd written that way. If I made a move, he'd kill me, no doubt. The third voice, the curious one, my inner storyteller, liked me right where I was. Listen to what the man had to say, I owed it to him and besides when would I ever get another chance to speak with a fictional character? If after everything was said and done, I'd deal with his decision however I needed to. Until then, I could just sit there and listen. So I sat and listened. "You've killed most everyone I've ever cared for. You didn't do the deed yourself, but you wrote up the situations and how they turned out. You killed my first wife, Jan, put her in that cancer worshiping monster John Marlboro's hands. He killed her so that he could draw me out, settle the score between us. He expected a fair fight, like in the movies. So I shot him in the back, and buried him alive. You set all of that in motion. John chose to do what he did, but you also created him to be that kind of person. So where does Free Will and your powers as the writer meet? Who was responsible for who's actions?" The events he was describing were in the third book of the series. As he said, the book had revolved around the feud between Thomas and John Marlboro, a magician who used smoking as the focus for his magics. He was one of my better villains, a personality so warped as to actually worship the cancer that was eating his lungs. I'd been especially proud of his death, putting the murdering chain-smoker in a situation where life depended on how well he could breath. "Then you killed Katelyn. I was standing right beside her when the bullet turned her head into a deflated football. I tried to hold her, but someone dragged me to safety, because the sniper was still trying to get me. The bullet that killed Kate had been meant for me, and you were the one who placed her in front of it. I burned the clothes I wore that day because I couldn't look at them, much less wear them, without seeing her blood and brains on them. And I never found out who fired that gun or who ordered it. You could have given me that much at least. Given me that small bit of closure. I guess that just wasn't dramatic enough for you though." "It was the Cat Lady. Payback for the grand son you perished. She had one of her relatives do it. The shooter was supposed to kill you, but when the old lady found out he'd gotten your wife instead, she figured that was good enough. I was going to use it for a future book. If its any conciliation, she didn't feel a thing and I was going to make sure that you got the Cat Lady back for it. I'm sorry though, for putting her there and for making the Cat Lady." Thomas froze and stared at me, a pained look on his face. He knew that I was telling the truth, thanks to that ritual of his. Plus, I had written all of it, so I'd know the little details such as who did and why. "Thanks. I..." He didn't finish the sentence. He just sat there silently, a pained expression on his face. I hoped that something close to peace would come from that knowledge. I owed to him. I was at least partially responsible for everything this poor bastard had gone through, even if I hadn't known it. Neither of us said anything for long while. He held his head in his hand, thinking god knows what. I sat on the floor, trying to decide whether I should go for the gun or give the poor guy a hug. The gun option still didn't look too appetizing, since by this point I had a feeling he wasn't going to kill. Thomas Gates had been through hell, in every possible fashion short of a face to face encounter with Satan. He'd lost so much, often for stupid or petty reasons. John Marlboro killed his first love because he felt threatened by Thomas' rising star. The Cat Lady had his second wife murdered in retribution for the death of her grandson, whose own stupidity and monstrous habits were more responsible for his end. He'd even been forced to sacrifice his left arm, the price he'd paid to save a young girl from something worse than death. He'd been through so much, lost so much, by this point I think all he needed was someone to talk to. Someone who could make it all make sense. "I've decided...I'm not going to kill you. It wouldn't do any good, and I honestly think I need the answers you can give me more than I need the revenge. You do have more answers right?" He sat up in the chair and looked at me. I breathed a sigh of relief and stood up. "Yeah, I've got answers. Things I never put in the books, because they're the things only the writer needs to know. I can tell you anything you want to know. If you'll leave the gun where it is, I can go and make us some coffee. I'd offer something stronger, but I'd say you could use some sobering up." Thomas nodded and followed me into the kitchen. He watched as I poured him a cup of steaming hot, decaffeinated coffee, and gestured for him to sit down at the table. "Thanks." He said as he sat down in the wooden chair and faced me. "Look, I'm uh sorry about the gun and hitting you in the face. I just..." He trailed off, letting the rest of his explanation stay unsaid. I understood though. "No worries. Well, no, lots of worries, but I get why you did it. If I found out that everything that had happened in my life was part of some guy's book series, I'd be tempted to kill him too. So while I'm not in your situation, I can kind understand your reaction. Plus Thomas, its the kind of thing you do. Someone does you or anyone you care about wrong and you go after them like a mad dog." He smiled faintly, accepting my statement. It was probably very strange for him to be conversing with someone who knew everything about him, who had thought him up in the first place. "Yeah, I guess you're...wait." He stopped, the smile gone. He cocked his head to one side as if he was trying to hear something. "Something isn't right. The truth spell just went off. Something you just said wasn't true. Repeat what you just said to me, slowly." "Uh...okay. Like I said, I know why you broke into my apartment and put a gun to my head. If I was in your situation, I would have done the same-" "That's it. The spell went off when you were talking about my situation. I'm fictional and you're not. Oh no. No, no, no, no, no!" Thomas slammed his fists into the top of the table and leaped from the chair. He began pacing back and forth quickly and talking fast, the kind of thing I always wrote him doing when he was explaining a plot twist. "The spell went off when I said that you're real. Which means that you're just like me, a character is story. Which means that someone wrote this entire encounter, wrote both of us into existence, you as the writer, me as the character. What kind of story is that?" As he spoke, that same stupid, rational part of me spoke up again, pointing out that there was no way I was a fictional character. But then again, it made a kind of sense. This entire incident, this bizarre, messed up night was like a story. Character establishment, plot devices, fantastical elements, this had all of the hallmarks of a story. Also, if I could have an encounter with a fictional character, how could I be sure that I wasn't fictional myself? The pit in my stomach returned and I began developing a bad headache. "Oh god. This would definitely be meta-fiction, because it's playing with the line between fiction and reality. Not just because of you and me, but also because of how you becoming aware of the real author. It's probably a short story, just because meta-fiction is usually done with short stories or at the climax of a novel. And you and I haven't been in contact long enough for a novel. Oh dear god in heaven, are you telling me that we're both characters in a short story! A short story!" "Yeah, I think I am. The truth ritual's been agreeing with everything you've said. And it was right about you, which going off of that logic means that its probably right about this being a short story." Thomas stopped pacing suddenly, and I saw that angry, hateful fire return to his eyes. "A short story. Which means that there aren't really eight books about me. Which means that Jan and Katelyn and Marlboro, everything, were just things this guy created so that I could talk about them tonight. This bastard did all of this to me, killed my loves ones, took my arm, drove me half mad, for one night." That stopped me in my tracks. Stopped me cold. If that Thomas was saying was true, my entire life had been thrown together just so that tonight would occur. My childhood, my college years, my first book, my first marriage, all of it had happened so that this one author could write about tonight's events. My entire life's meaning, one night spent in the company of a person who I only thought I'd created. Rage, unlike anything I'd ever experienced, filled my mind, my soul. Righteous, vengeful anger suffused every atom of my being, made me want to track down this author, the cruel god of my existence and tear him limb from limb. It was the anger that comes from finding out that your entire life was someone's else's joke, someone else's fun. Its the kind of emotion that cannot be put into words, at least not any that I know. I looked at Thomas and saw my own fury reflected in his eyes. I understood now exactly how he was feeling, and I knew he was thinking the same thing I was. He'd found one creator using his magic, maybe he could find another. Neither of us really knew for sure, the Author had created the rules, we could only hope we could exploit them. "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" I asked Thomas, and he nodded. I looked at my life, the sheer emptiness of it. No family, few friends, nothing really to keep me around. Just like the Author planned it. I had to assume that this was all part of the plot, the story finishing in a neat way, with the two main characters setting off on a quest to track down their creator. "Where do we start, Thomas?" Thomas looked me in the eyes, that insane, fury blazing like a forest fire. "We start with a little magic, and see where that takes us." So here's a little message for you, my dear Author. We're coming for you, Thomas and I. It doesn't matter how long it takes or what we have to do, we'll find you. Not because we want revenge or justice or anything like that. What we're both after is answers, answers that only you can provide. We're going to track you down, O' Creator, and force you to tell us why. Why'd you write us into existence, why did you feel the need to have us meet, why all of it. And the great thing is that we'll pull it off. It doesn't matter that you're holding all of the cards, or that the metaphysics and philosophical issues involved are infuriatingly complex. We'll find you because you wrote into creation the tools we'll need to do the job. So yeah, its only a matter of time before we meet. And you never know, someone might be writing you too.