DEATH OF A FANFICTION WRITER

EPOCH II: I Am The Only Real Person

Her flesh was a skin-coat, her eyes were two beady scrutinisers into my heart, her hair she wore proudly like a hat that was spilling onto her face, something was about to escape her mouth whether it was a confrontation, a cough, or a stream of vomit, and all of her features had a profound effect on my soul. She was my muse, I based the "Reader" character in "Draco Malfoy x Reader," off of her because her personality was so malleable. But in the back of my mind I'd always knew that she wasn't real, a figment of my psyche, an abstraction of a shadow, a reflection of my own mind staring back at me. And I knew whatever she was going to say didn't matter because I was going to think it in a few seconds anyway. But there was a part of me, a back-alley of my mind, that wanted her to be real so badly that it believed she was.

"Do you want anything from Tesco's?"

It was one of those drifting phrases where you couldn't distinguish quite what it was. An intrusive thought of no real importance, or an external vibration to your ear drums that did not come from yourself. It'd be weird if I said anything because why would I respond aloud to my own thought? But it'd also be weird to say nothing because why would I not respond aloud to someone's request for my response? I'm already forgetting her name, it could be Lightning McQueen for all I care. 

She was an author, I believe, her novels were some strange liminal zone between fan fiction and reality as she included characters from real life, gave them different names, and then put them into situations they would never be in regardless if they had been given a different name.

I was always wondered why I was never included in a single one of her works. But I suppose there's technically a part of me in every character she wrote, as it entered her mind subconsciously whether she liked it or not.

"I'm not trapping you, am I?"

The question escaped me. It was an odd thing to say to a person even if that person was indeed not real. How do I expect someone to answer such a question like that? Does she give me the usual prose that she bores me with in her yapalicious literature? Or is she forced to give me a short or even comedic remark to derail the conversation entirely? Or is she going to ignore me like she always does when I ask such an empty and ambiguous question?

Another indication to me that she was not real was the way she didn't move for prolonged periods of time when her input was not summoned. She just stood there like a still painting, it was easy to forget about her. Yet every time she appeared in my mind, she appeared right in front of me, and I knew that she was always there and even when she wasn't and in that moment I couldn't help feeling a profound guilt for the way I had treated her. I had regarded her as a thought or a piece of decoration, an archetype to model my female characters as I underwrite them into my fanfics.

We were both trapped. Me in the coldly unwelcoming dinge of a basement, and her in the chamber of my gaze. 

"If you were trapping me, you'd see me more often, wouldn't you?"

It was a three-pronged pitchfork that cut into my soul, absorbing all the nutrients of my heart before it was ready to pitchfork again. The first prong was the choice to respond to a question like that in the first place as opposed to brushing it off as an intrusive thought that enters your head and somehow escapes through your mouth. She chose to respond and put the second prong into gear which was that we didn't see much of each other, she rarely visited my parents' flat anymore and if so it was purely of her own invitation.

We'd met before writing had me in a chokehold.

The third prong was the tone at which she spoke, meaning that the second prong was more significant than the first and third but the second would be nothing without the first and the third must have came into it somewhere as well. To put a fine point on it, it was one stab but it felt like three. She had that intensity in her voice. 

I lowered my hands to the keyboard again, Wattpad was open to an empty first chapter. I'd added the title, the tags and everything, all that was left was the words.

"Well do you want anything?"

"Do they still do Naked juices?"

Ah...yes, the Naked juices. It didn't matter what Tesco's you were in, but there was always a handful stocked to the brim with the fruit-fusion delights. No one was buying them except for me. Sometimes I would skip out on meals just because they were so filling. Whether Rainbow, Green, or Ruby, you could always count on them. The warm embrace of a fruit you'd never heard of mixed with about a dozen more, and who knows what chemicals they put in them because there's no way that diabolical a combination of fruits could taste so good on their own.

Though eclectic, the arrangement of fruits and vegetables still remained lovingly consistent. It's the only guaranteed order you could bring to the chaos of the universe. The only friend that never walks out on you, never falls out with you, never gradually drifts apart with you, never gets tired of hearing your philosophical musings being screamed at it. She was my muse second only to the Naked juices. 

"Nah. They don't do those anymore."