So I began writing a story.
In it, I invented characters. I made them think things. I made them say things to one another. I made them do things and interact with one another.
I created them. I controlled them. Sometimes I killed them. Sometimes I made them happy. Sometimes I let them be content, even when occupied by the mundane, like staring at the wood grain and glossy veneer on a brown table. I often embarrassed my characters. It didn’t matter. They did whatever I wanted them to do.
But then, somehow, they seemed to suddenly develop their own free wills. They started doing whatever they wanted. I tried to control them, pull in the reins, but it didn’t work. They began doing all kinds of silly things.
So what happened was that the stories all became easy to tell. I didn’t have to create situations. I didn’t need to give my characters ideas, preferences, phobias, virtues or vices. They did everything on their own. They did things, and all I had to do was describe what they did: how they acted: what they thought. I was able to write hundreds of stories this way: even a few novels. Lucky for me, my characters did amusing and tragic things. They made humorous comedies and evocative tragedies out of their lives. I couldn’t have done it without them.
I sold millions of books; I got bored. I stopped watching and describing my fugitives’ lives. I took up golf and traveled.
After about a couple weeks I checked on my characters. Something interesting was happening to one of them: Moxxie.
Moxie had been conceived by two of my creations. I had created Christina, his mother, and Mark, his father, back when I had had the power to create and control. I never intended for Christina to have a child. But like all the others, she started choosing her own fate.
Moxxie grew to be a big guy. He had a thin moustache with a defined lip line. His pink cheeks ballooned around his red lips, giving him a jovial expression. He was almost overly stout, but because of his muscular build, he managed his girth smoothly, so that his gait was almost graceful. His middle fingers were unusually long compared to his hand and other fingers.
What interested me was that Moxxie was visited by a scientist from the planet Blick. Blick was a planet of the star called, The Dotter, in another solar system: in another spiral galaxy about four mega light-years away from the Milky Way.
The scientist took Moxxie to Blick. The Blickeans had picked Moxxie and several other humans randomly. They observed them. The Blickeans were twelve to fourteen feet tall and three to four feet wide. They were like big rectangular blocks standing vertically. They seemed to be wearing long black hooded robes, but the robes could have been part of their bodies. Moxxie couldn’t see their skin or whatever they had like skin. He never saw their faces or eyes whatever they had like faces or eyes.
They spoke to him in English. They said that they knew all the languages of Earth. They were peaceful; they simply observed Moxxie, like a child observes a hamster, giving him props and coaxing him to perform tricks. Moxxie appeased them, shifting from stifling fear to mild apprehension.
Moxxie was surprised to see large bird-like creatures standing amongst the tall rectangular things. Here is how they looked:
They were slightly larger than Herons. They had blue feathers, or what looked like silky furry feathers, on round bodies. Their beaks were like giant pink tweezers covered with small purple spines. Their necks were long and skinny, not bending in the ‘S’ shape of many earthling birds’ necks, but having a ‘W’ shape, with the lower sections nearly touching the ground. The average wingspan was about seven feet. Each had three eyes: two on the head, one on the middle of the breast. Their legs and feet were pink and included the little purple spines.
The birds periodically laid eggs. Each seemed to lay an egg every hour or so. The eggs that the birds laid looked exactly like diamonds.
Moxxie asked the Blickeans about the eggs.
“They are exactly like what you call diamonds on Earth. They are simply hunks of feces here. They are not eggs. When these animals give birth, they do it from an orifice that also functions as an Earthling ear, and they give live-birth,” said one of them—the tallest one. The voice of the Blickean was monotone and deep.
“Oh,” said Moxxie. He blinked and looked around. “Well, diamonds are worth a lot of money on Earth.”
“We know,” the rectangles replied in unison.
“One of those birds would be priceless on Earth,” said Moxxie.
“Yes,” they replied.
Then a shorter rectangular one said, “Because you have cooperated with us, Moxxie, we will allow you to take one of our birds with you to Earth.”
So Moxxie took an alien bird back to Earth.
He became rich. A single excretion from the bird yielded around a five to ten carat diamond, perfectly polished, perfectly symmetrical. Every hour or so Moxxie had a new hunk of feces, worth at least two hundred thousand dollars wholesale.
He bought his mother, Christina, a large house in Tampa, Florida. He bought himself splendid homes around the country, including a mansion in Dallas, Texas. He bought a lavish apartment in Manhattan.
Christina had been poor before. I created her that way. I made her live in a little town in Ohio. I had her work as a cook at a little dingy restaurant which sold three pancakes for three dollars. I made her a gruff hard drinker with a manly figure and a big hairy mole on her right cheek.
After the bird came back with Moxxie, Christina never worked again. She had the mole removed. She started drinking expensive alcohol.
After describing all this about the diamond defecating bird in a story, I was sure I had another shoo-in for my upcoming collection. Then I realized that I had simply written a modified version of “Jack and the Beanstalk.”
But then, the bird seemed to become sick. Its diamond discharges became more sporadic. The diamonds were not symmetrical or polished anymore; they were lopsided and jagged; sometimes they came in shards. The bird started squawking. It even tried to bite Moxxie.
Moxxie thought he’d simply dispose of the bird. He had enough money. He had many diamonds saved and could sell them if he needed more money.
The biting and squawking became worse; Moxxie could no longer keep the bird in his house. He locked the bird in a large cage in the garage of his home in Dallas.
Moxxie went on a trip to Florida to see his mother, Christina. When he came home the bird was gone.
What must have happened was that the Blickeans came to Earth and set the bird free. I didn’t see how they did it. There was no damage to the roof or door or anything. The garage was still locked; everything was intact, even the cage.
There were reported sightings of the bird around the Dallas/Fort Worth area. It was all over the news that a large blue bird was flying around, unusually fast for its size, squawking loudly. There was an amateur video clip.
Then dozens of people came up missing around Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas. I wondered if it was the bird. Maybe it was killing people: eating them possibly. I waited around to find out, but no other sightings of the bird made the news. Moxxie and his mother simply kept on living comfortably, richly.
I got bored with the possibly homicidal bird that defecated diamonds. I stopped watching the lives of Moxxie and Christina.
I thought I’d quit writing. Nothing any of my characters did interested me anymore. It was as if I had gone through a mutation.
When I had first lost control of my creations, events in my life took on less meaning. I was primarily interested in the lives of my characters. Now the opposite happened; I became concerned with my life again. I stopped worrying about my characters.
My daily life took on more meaning. I began reading newspapers and fiction for fun. I started playing golf again. I saw old friends. This all pleased and satisfied me.
My self interest lasted about three months. Then I was drawn back. I went back to my characters.
This time I noticed something going on with a character named Duane Maple. He was a writer who I had created. Writers do that a lot; they create writers; they write about writing.
When I created Duane, I did it to write about the trials of writing. I did it to write about the stories and books I would have Duane write. I did it to write down my ideas without having to formulate them into complete stories or novels.
Duane, like all the rest, had become a free thinking individual by now. He started writing whatever he wanted. He started being less of the recluse that I had made him, too. I had made him single back when I was in control. I made his girlfriend leave him for one of his best friends. But I had made him good looking and suave. He began to use these things to his advantage after gaining his own conscience. He started carousing at night. He stopped being as lonely as I had left him.
Back when I was the one deciding the stories for Duane, I made him write mystery novels and crime fiction. Now he was writing a story, set in an imagined, ancient time, about a man cursed by a warlock. The curse was that any person the man touched would die.
In the story, Duane wrote that as soon as the warlock uttered the curse, the man broke free from the warlock’s henchmen. He ran to the curse-giver to touch him. He touched the warlock’s withered hands and face.
“Seize him,” the warlock said with a smirk.
The warlock’s hideous cronies grabbed and held the man.
“You lie, warlock,” the man said snarling. “Your curse did not work.”
“Take him away,” the warlock said, laughing viciously.
Duane then wrote that the doomed man was taken on horseback for many miles to the edge of a small village. He was beaten and left there to die. He roamed the village for several days. He was given alms by some citizens and taken in, finally, by a blacksmith. He eventually learned the craft and became a member of the community.
The doomed one, who was named William, was a tall, slender, handsome man. He was nearing thirty. About a year after becoming the blacksmith’s apprentice he began courting a young woman in the village. She was the daughter of a granary worker. She had a pretty face and a nice figure. Her name was Rebecca.
They took walks around their village. They went fishing in the nearby river. The two formed a bond and planned to marry.
“We will have children one day, William. We will teach them to read and write. We will teach them to be brave and honest,” Rebecca told William on one of their walks.
They consummated their relationship only a few nights before they were to marry. Lying on the ground beside Rebecca, behind the granary where her father worked, William looked up at the stars. He thought of the horrible experience he had had before establishing himself in the village. He was happy with his new situation and felt fortunate.
“I can’t believe we will be together like this every night, Rebecca,” William said softly, turning on his side to face his lover.
A terror took hold of him. Rebecca was lying on her back. Her eyes were open and blank. Her breast was still. She did not respond. She was dead.
Duane explained her death like this: Her divine undying spirit rose from its human cask to continue its course through time and space, never again to concern itself with that fragile vessel.
After his initial shock, William fled from the village. He was taken by a ferryman across the river. He traveled by foot for miles after crossing the wide divide.
He came upon a small man sitting under a tree. The man was not old but appeared to be strangely wizened. The two began talking. William told him the story of his beloved Rebecca. He told him of the love he felt for her, and that when he had felt it the strongest, he had turned to see her lying there, dead. The little man was moved—touched.
“I was separated from someone I loved also. My father was an awful tyrant. My mother left us when I was very young. I left soon after,” said the wizened little man.
William turned away from the small man. He looked up at the undulating leaf-covered branches of the trees surrounding him. He felt calmed by the man’s compassion and true empathy.
“Well, you see, I can never go back to that village. I…” William said, turning back to the man and breaking off his sentence.
The little gnarled young man sat there, his mouth agape. He was not breathing. He was dead. Duane wrote: The force which had animated that emaciated shell left its chamber to transform into an unknowable new configuration.
Finally William realized what his curse truly meant. He would not kill anyone he touched physically; he would kill anyone he touched emotionally. He knew he was doomed to be alone forever. He committed suicide with a dagger which the dead wizened one had had in a sheath on his belt.
Duane wrote this about the suicide: William plunged the blade through his own heart, spilling the ghostly water from his decaying canteen of skin, bones, blood and sinew. That living water would run free until it found another form to vivify.
I was sickened with envy by Duane Maple’s poetic prose. The creation had surpassed its creator. It was as if Lucifer had dethroned the Almighty Himself.
Duane went on with the story, eventually telling that the little wizened man was the warlock’s son. By cursing William, the warlock also doomed his only descendent.
Duane summed everything up beautifully, wringing every ounce of irony out of the warlock’s curse. I sobbed as I read the last few pages. My former marionette had written a master story. I wanted to steal it from him to use it in my world. I could never write something so inventive and execute it in such a way.
I felt awful. I realized that I had never really had the power to create anything great. I had never made up anything worth reading. The only reason for my success was my strange situation: my runaway characters.
After that, I decided, finally and firmly, that I would quit writing. I have plenty of money anyway. And so, these may be my final printed words: come back to me, delinquent characters. Come back and do as I say!
A sharp sting, screaming violent voices all came down around him. He clutched his chest! He had been
