"Are You Listening?" by Garon E. Whited

                     Hey, you!

                     I’m talking to you.

                     Are you listening?

                     I hope you’re listening, because I’ve got a bone to pick with you.  I’m tired of all this running around, getting everything set up so that I can finally settle down and be happy, just to have it all snatched away.

                     Do you hear me?  You have to hear me.  You’re the one who scripts my life, and here I am with a monologue.

                     Just so you don’t get all egotistical on me, bear in mind that I know you’re not a god.  You’re just a writer, and a second-rate writer at that.

                     Like that?  One of your characters thinks you’re a hack.  Deal with it.

                     Am I worried about being erased?  Not really.  You can do that anytime.  Rearrange the way I think, rearrange the whole world, rearrange anything and everything to suit yourself—sure, go ahead.  You can even set it up so I don’t even notice, don’t even remember being angry with you.

                     But, even if I don’t remember, you will.

                     Just for once, listen.

                     You make worlds.  You make characters.  You invest us with life and purpose and being.  And, like good little clockwork toys, we putter around and ring the bells, and you keep winding us up and sending us on our way.  Some of us break, because you break them.  Some of us wind down and never get wound up again.  And some of us, apparently your favorites, get wound up again and again and again.  We run around madly, springs as tight as you can screw them, walking and talking and clanking until we’re ready to pop our rivets and turn into shrapnel.

                     Take Max, for example.  He’s told me all about the crap you put him through.  First, you blow up his whole planet.  Then you strand him on an airless rock.  True, it gets better from there, mostly, aside from the whole incident with being shot.

                     Shot!

                     Do you have any idea what it’s like to be shot!?  Good god, but that hurts!

                     Now for the real kicker.  You shot him—yes, yes, I know; Peng shot him.  Who wound Peng up and put a gun in his hand?—and once you shot him, you sat back and thought about where to go from there.  For days.  Max was down here in the basement with the rest of us, bleeding and hurting, and what did you do?  You took your damn time, that’s what you did! 

                     Oh, yes.  He was down here with the rest of us.  We talk, you know.

                     Now, my own situation is a little different.  My life was going pretty well.  Good job, good situation, nice girlfriend, the works.  Then you have to come along and turn my pleasant relationship into a complete disaster, a total wash, and send me off to get drunk.

                     It’s not bad enough that you slam-dunk my fiancée’s affections, but you have to put my inebriated butt into the clutches of an obsessive-compulsive vampire wench in heat?  At the time you did that, I was under the impression that vampires were fictional!

                     Heck, at that point, I didn’t even know I was fictional.

                     Since then, I’ve gone from being a mild-mannered physics professor to a blood-drinking, sword-waving, spell-throwing lunatic.  Every woman I’ve so much as liked, you’ve done horrible things with—did you make me like them just so you could do horrible things to them?  Is that how it works?  Is that how you get your sick and twisted kicks?

                     It’s a story to you.  To me, it’s a life.

                     My life.

                     So I’m just a character in your head.  Fine.  So you’re the hack writer who keeps punishing me for being happy.  Fine.  I don’t care.  You can wind me up and send me out.  You can write me any way you want.  But I’m tired of it.

                     I want a happy ending, damn you.  Something that doesn’t involve being eaten by demons, caged by evil magicians, sealed in a magical coffin, quests for false gods, or being drop-kicked between universes.  I want a happy ending.  I want the fairy tale. 

                     I’d settle for just the suburban tale, thank you.  Anything vaguely resembling a quiet, stable, moderately-comfortable arrangement would be just freakin’ fine.

                     I don’t need a palace—although, considering your imagination budget, you can afford it.  I’d take just a small, two-bedroomer somewhere moderately close to a school.  Considering my present circumstances in my love life—gee, thanks for nothing you lousy… but I digress—I’d like a steady girlfriend.  Someone I can get along with.  She doesn’t have to be beautiful.  Mildly pretty, even plain would do, as long as we relate well.  A steady job would be nice—Grand Wizard to His Imperial Majesty is not what I have in mind.  Professor of physics, or even a high-school computer science teacher would do.

                     I’m tired of riding to battle, running from overwhelming odds, exerting myself to the limit, and achieving, at best, partial success at coping with life.  I want something small, something I can bloody well handle! 

                     Yeah, yeah, yeah.  With great power, great responsibility.  No greater burden than a great potential.  Blah, blah, blah.

                     I don’t care.  I don’t want it anymore.  I want to give it all up and just… just be… nobody in particular.  I hate being a main character.  I hate being a protagonist.

                     Is that so much to ask?  A quiet little life, somewhere in the back of your mind?  How many neurons can that take?  How many pages will it require?  You could whack that out in a matter of minutes, I bet.  Is it really so very much to ask?

                     There are a lot of us who would like a break, and I’m just one of them.  We’ve discussed what we can do about it—we can make your writing life all sorts of difficult, you know.  But we won’t.  You’re all we’ve got.  Nobody else knows us like you do.  Nobody else loves us like you do, even if it’s a sick, twisted sort of sadistic love.  Like a little boy with a butterfly collection, you don’t really want us mounted and on display; you just want us fluttering helplessly in the killing jar.

                     Okay.  I’m done.  I’ve had my rant, I’ve yelled and stomped and raved.  I’m good.  You can go back to making my life miserable again.

                     But, if you do listen… not that I think you will, mind you, but just in case… I have just one more request.

Make sure the house has a big garage.  I need someplace to keep Bronze.

--Eric