‘Write what you know.’

He stood by the window, looking out thoughtfully, as all main characters are bound to do at some point in their short, dramatic lifetimes. And with such a perfect set-up to think, he began doing exactly that. He thought about his life, about himself, about everything he’d thought about a thousand times before and yet never grew tired of…

He was thirteen, on that strange precipice where he’d convinced himself he was both extraordinarily unique and yet, the same as every other lost daydreamer staring out their windows. He loved books, and writing, and was quite good at it too, if he said so himself. He had a penchant for thinking in the third person, as he was doing currently.

In short, he was a completely boring character.

He was neither unique nor interesting, not really. He wasn’t bullied nor friendless, so he couldn’t be pitied; and his friends weren’t particularly charming or endearing, so he wasn’t awe-inspiring either. Most characters are orphans, or at least have a singular dead parent, but he had two—loving, alive, and annoyingly attentive. Not that he wished them dead, of course! He loved them with all his heart. But in the case of characters, personal tragedy did increase appeal.

He sighed.

Seriously, what good was ‘write what you know’ if what you knew was completely… normal?

He sighed again, dramatically this time, fully aware of how pathetic he sounded.

“Dear, dinner’s ready! Come eat while it’s still hot!”

Perhaps, he thought. Perhaps the dinner had been laced with a drug to make him forget the strange and eerie events yet to come. Perhaps such events included ghosts, or other universes, or serial killers stalking the hallway in the night. Perhaps this had been going on for years now, without his knowledge.

“Dear! The food’s getting cold!”

Of course not. Dinner would be the same as always: homely, decently cooked, and made with love. He shook his head, brushing off the fantasy. He briefly considered entertaining the pinprick of guilt that popped up for imagining his parents capable of such things, then waved that away.

I’m just imaginative, he told himself. This is normal.

Still, the thought of being ‘messed up’ thrilled him. Of being different. Of being special.

“Coming!”
That night, after the goodnights were said and lights switched off, he curled under his blanket and resumed his favourite hobby—or guilty pleasure, depending on how you viewed it. His fingers raced across the keyboard as the glow of the laptop screen lit his eyes, not glancing down once.

This is silly. A familiar voice - annoyingly close to his teacher’s - whispered in his head. You’re nothing more than an overly emo teenager in over his head. You’re not special.
Shut up, it’s fun. Said a different voice. A lighter voice. It’s fun and it’s exciting. And I am special.
And back and forth went the two voices, all night long. He kept on typing, not even bothering to listen in anymore.

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That morning, he awoke again, the similar grogginess. The similar feeling of having been awake for hours when he knew that wasn’t true. That it couldn’t be true.
‘Dear! Breakfast! Eat it while it’s still hot!’ came his mother’s sweet, soothing voice from downstairs. It was like honey, that voice.
‘Coming!’
‘Eat up honey, it’ll be good for you.’
He didn’t notice the blood stains under his bed as he rushed down to meet her.
All he could think about was breakfast, made lovingly by his mother, as she’d made every meal, every day of his life…

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He made his way to school. His friends were waiting for him, as usual.

‘Hey, there’s our local idiot. How’s it goin’?’
‘Bro, please tell me you finished your homework. Mrs. Lizard Face has second period and she’s totally going to have my head.’
‘Dude, we had homework? Oh man I’m so totally screwed…’

He chatted away, without a care in the world, seamlessly shifting into the persona his friends wanted like an actor changing outfits backstage.

A small part of him, or maybe a part of him he pretended was small, was unsatisfied with his friends. Annoyed, even. They felt shallow to him, like paper cut-outs instead of real people.
Maybe that’s all they were. Paper cut-outs. Figments of his imagination, brought to life by his lonely, desperate mind. Maybe he was sitting in a corner, all alone, as people passed by. Maybe if he reached out to touch them, they’d vanish like smoke…

A sharp fist bump to his shoulder brought him back to his senses.

‘Hey-hey, come back to us, bro. We can’t lose you yet. Don’t worry, we’ll be scolded together.
That’s what friends are for, huh?’

They were real, all right. He laughed along and muttered some grievance about Lizard Face or whichever poor teacher they were disappointing that day. They were most certainly real.

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He sat on the last bench. The students didn’t notice him, the teachers didn’t care about him, not even the janitor looked at him twice. But a grin was spread on his face all the same. On the notebook in front of him, a sketch of two other boys in black ink grinned back at him. He didn’t need anyone else; he had his friends right here.
‘Last-bench! Get your head out of the clouds and back here, boy!’ Yelled a teacher. The only time one had ever addressed him.
‘Don’t worry, we’ve got your back’, he heard his friends say. And he grinned all the wider.

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‘Last-bench! Get your head out of the clouds and back here, boy!’
His friends chuckled before retorting with more ruckus, glad for the distraction. He, however, didn’t join in this time. His mind was somewhere else.
That’s the line I wrote, he thought. Line by line. Word for word.
Electricity travelled up his spine.
Those were his words, he knew. The very same he’d hastily jotted down on the corners of his notebook a few moments prior. His words had, somehow, spilled into reality.
‘Hey, you okay? Where’re you zoning out this time, dude?’
He smiled back and replied with whatever was acceptable, but inside he was bubbling over with excitement.
Maybe I am special after all.

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For days after that, he experimented further and further. A strange, almost magical tree. A distinctly-dressed customer with an even more distinct coffee order. The dishes for the next week. And one by one, like God’s own miracles, they all came true.

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And there it was.
The fantastical tree.
The customer.
The coffee order.
Even every dish for the week had been exactly the one he’d noted down.
His writing weren’t just words typed out in a laptop or smeared onto a notebook. They were magic.

He’d known. He’d always known he was special, that there was a life for him outside of the mundane, boring, regular one fate had crafted for him and bound between pages. He was like a deity, with magic in his fingertips, the ability to bring beautiful, wonderful things to life. There was no limit to what he could do.

His friends stopped talking to him. Or, rather, he stopped talking to his friends, and they faded away. His parents fretted more than they usually did, replacing their daily ‘good-night’ with ‘are-you-ok-darling’. His grades, usually deemed average, fell rapidly. But none of that mattered.

When you're the writer and lead of your own story, everything else is just background noise.

‘Honey? We saw your marks today. Your mother and I are worried, son.’
But of course. Of course they would worry. He couldn’t even blame them, after all, that was the role handed to them. His fingers hovered over the keyboard. He could relieve them of that role.

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His parents didn’t care about him. Not really. They wouldn’t even notice if he vanished.

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‘Son? Are you in there? Your mother and I want to have a talk with you!’

His brow furrowed. He typed faster.

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His parents left him alone all day. Eventually, he learned to accept the loneliness, to clutch it around him like a soft, warm blanket-

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‘That’s it, I’m coming in!’

This isn’t right. None of this is right-

‘We are going to have a talk, mister.’

He thought for a second. What was it he had said?
Personal tragedy increased appeal.
Well.
The show must go on.

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Where does reality end and fiction begin? What even is reality, but the perception of the world through our senses? Reality is only what we make it to be. And he made it to be his.

How did it go again? ‘All the word is a stage, and all the men and women are merely players’?

Yes, yes, exactly that…merely players. That’s all they were. That’s all anyone was. Except for him.

‘For I…’ He smiled. ‘I am the writer.’ He thought. What an exciting thought. He could feel it, the spotlight. He could hear the applause. He felt, for the first time in his life, important.

'All the men and women are merely players, and I am the writer.'


I am God himself.