Bitter

 Out of Nothing

Part One
She was in. Everything was going well. She had dialogue. Delightful scenes, a boyfriend and a family. The creator loved her. All the attention, most of the words, then nothing. It suddenly stopped, like she didn't exist.
Then came the big lament.
“She abandoned me. I felt violated. I was such a well-rounded character, for goodness' sake. I mean, the story was going really well.”
She remembered the sense of elation when she created her. She meant something. After all those years of waiting, she thought, finally, yes! She was so grateful.
She had heard a guy downtown collects characters. Tries to breathe them alive again. It's hard to get in.
“I might give it a go. I don't see what I have to lose. I don't know whether I could put myself in the hands of someone else like that. I feel too damaged and beaten up. There might be a reason I didn't make it with her.”
Downtown the creator met her good friend. She did not know he was in love with her. She did not know he had a severe attachment disorder.
“Hey, how's it... how's the book going? You are such a star.”
“Ahh nah, it's just not true.”
“No, honestly, how is the new book?”
“I flagged it. It wasn't going anywhere. I was just sick of it. Just too hard. I felt bad. I hear the character is bad-mouthing me about it. I am frightened that someone will pick her up and have her stalking me like a psycho bitch. Imagine that. She could turn my life into a misery.”
As she talked, a small white car cruised past the window where she was sitting. If she had looked out the window, she would have seen her sitting in the front passenger seat. She would not have seen the small black pistol inside the pocket of her oversized jacket.
“I will waste that bitch.”
But where to live, meanwhile. There were no lines to exist in. It felt like being pegged on the clothesline in a violent easterly storm.
She would pay.
Her cosy bourgeois life would come crashing down.
She resolved to go downtown and see her friend. Perhaps he could help.
She got to his place on the fifth floor of a burnt-out apartment building. There was no door. A phalanx of characters blocked the entrance. There was a partially formed bot, an almost finished space traveller. She spoke to a bitter robot who let her through into the blackened room.
Her friend laughed when he saw her.
“So, things not so well then. Perhaps you should not have been so mean to the rest of us.”
There was a murmur from the assorted characters in the room.
“You can't take anything for granted these days. We all have creators. It means nothing.”
“Don't go. Stay with us. You really have to ask what was I and what was I to become. If you don't do that you won't succeed.”
She did not want his foggy sympathy.
Part Two
“Look, you are making me angry now. Just stop butting in and trying to take over. The proper story is about me and the fact it fucked me over just as I was about to break through. If I can't get the job done myself I am sure someone will help.”
It was a glittering event. Three sycophants surrounded her, trying to ingratiate themselves. You could tell none of them cared about their characters at all. It was all about themselves.
She sat by herself towards the back of the auditorium with that little silver pistol. A dusty avenging angel out of the desert. Perhaps that's what she really was. A zombie from a ghost town full of other zombies.
As she gaped at the crowd, she felt a presence sit beside her.
“Are you sure you really want to do this? Isn't it a little extreme? I know how you feel. It's happened to me.”
She ignored the stranger.
First up was a music segment. Aldous came on stage and dedicated the first song to the creator. She squirmed with rage.
“Would it help if you tell me your life up to where you were canned?”
She looked at the stage, then back at the stranger.
“I feel you are trying to manipulate me.”
“It would be much better to tell me. I know it's painful, but avoiding it…”
“I don't think this twat knows quite what she is dealing with. The tale I have to tell is not a happy one.”
Part Three
(The dialogue beginning "If it wasn't in there, she was sucking it." and ending "WTF." has been deleted.)
In between times they spoke of her bitterness.
She watched it flow away.
First, the head of a mountain stream, then a wide muddy river next to the sea, last, the lunge of a great white.
"You still seem angry and upset."
"I am, but I no longer feel the need to kill.
"I realise now I am my story.
"The creator need not construct me.
"I existed long before she wrote anything about me down."
"Yes. We are all sitting at the places we are at. Someone coming to us reaches the platform where we exist. We can visit one another, but we are only truly ourselves on our own platform. When we leave it to visit another, we are travelling between worlds. We are seen for a while, then we return to where we belong."
End.