Plot Twist: I'm the Plot Twist

2

The Draft Monster rose like a corrupted word document refusing to close. Its body was stitched from abandoned paragraphs, half-baked metaphors, and that one Wattpad cliché about "eyes like stormy seas" which had somehow turned into actual storm clouds, thundering violently inside its chest. Every step it took left behind punctuation scars on the ground, commas rolling loose like marbles, semicolons collapsing in despair.

"DELETE YOURSELF!" I yelled, brandishing the Plot Spinner like a holy relic. The Spinner whirred in my palm, glowing a dangerous shade of fanfiction blue.

The Monster roared back in Comic Sans. Literal Comic Sans. The words floated in the air, bright green, shaking with betrayal:

u abandoned meeeeeee

Beside me, the Demon Boyfriend cracked his knuckles. His claws shimmered faintly, and shadows licked at his cheekbones like stage lighting for an unnecessarily dramatic K-pop video. "I told you," he said smoothly, fangs flashing in the stormlight. "Your drafts never stay buried."

"Not helping!" I snapped, ducking as a giant quotation mark slammed down in front of me, cleaving the floorboards like a guillotine. The Monster shuddered, and loose plotlines whipped out like tentacles, some of them still dripping with old comment emojis.

Lucky the cat, never one to miss a dramatic entrance, was suddenly dual-wielding a neon lightsaber. Nobody questioned where it came from. She pounced onto the Monster's shoulder, eyes blazing. "I was written once, deleted, and revived in fanfiction. THIS IS PERSONAL." With a hiss that could curdle milk, she drove the saber deep into the Monster's metaphorical armpit.

Happy, my dog, padded slowly into the chaos with the aura of someone who had just rolled out of a yoga retreat. His tail swished lazily. "Bro," he said in his mellow surfer-dog voice, "can't we just...hug the draft? Maybe it just wants closure?"

The Draft Monster gagged in response, then projectile-vomited a flood of Wattpad tropes. Mean girls in glittering miniskirts strutted out, shrieking insults like "You'll never sit with us, protagonist!" Locker-slamming bullies formed a phalanx, cracking knuckles. Evil stepmoms materialized, sipping wine out of endlessly refilling glasses. And of course, five suspiciously shirtless werewolves flexed in unison, oiled abs gleaming under imaginary moonlight.

"Oh no," I whispered, backing up. "It's weaponizing cliché saturation."

One of the werewolves stepped forward, jaw trembling, and began, "You don't understand me, I—" but his dialogue tag glitched halfway. "He said angrily. He said angrily. He said angrily—" His voice looped endlessly as he spiraled into a black hole of broken coding.

Demon Boyfriend yanked me aside just in time as a sparkly vampire swooped overhead, hurling glitter like it was live ammunition. My lungs filled with sparkles. My eyelashes gained five pounds. The carpet looked like a unicorn had been mugged.

"You have to end this!" he barked, voice vibrating with dark authority. "Finish a draft. Any draft. Or it will consume your entire library."

"But which one?" My hands shook. The world cracked around me, and through the fissures I saw flashes of every half-written project I had ever abandoned. A pirate AU was sailing straight into the coffee shop AU. My cringey high school romance, the one I swore I deleted, was smirking at me from across the battlefield. My discarded villains were unionizing.

The Plot Spinner rattled violently in my hand. It spun, and landed on DEMON BOYFRIEND again.

He smirked, fire flickering at the edge of his jawline like someone had installed a special effects budget just for him. "Guess it's my story after all."

The Monster shrieked in pure outrage, as if deeply insulted by the redundancy of the trope.

"Fine!" I shouted. "We'll give this one a proper ending."

I vaulted onto the Monster's back, surfing a wave of discarded Wattpad comments like "update plsss" and "when will she notice him???" The words crashed and foamed like an angry fandom sea. My hair whipped around my face. I swear I smelled hot Cheetos and desperation.

Lucky slashed through the clichés, decapitating a love triangle mid-formation. "NO MORE LOVE TRIANGLES!" she howled, each swing of her saber severing plot holes and deus ex machinas alike.

Happy wandered behind us, herding the leftover side characters like sheep. "It's cool," he called lazily. "I'll just keep the forgotten best friends hostage until y'all finish up."

Demon Boyfriend landed beside me in one impossible leap, his shirt mysteriously missing because apparently physics recognized Wattpad law now. He seized my hand with infuriating confidence. "Say it," he demanded, his red eyes glowing like stoplights of doom. "Say the line. End the draft."

"What line?!" I wheezed, ducking as the Monster spat out a giant Wattpad cover titled My Bad Boy Stepbrother's Secret Vampire Baby.

"The confession. The climax. The kiss." He leaned closer, smirk curving like a cliff edge. "Give me a proper Wattpad ending."

The Monster bellowed, and this time it unleashed abandoned Wattpad covers like cursed butterflies. They fluttered through the air, sharp as knives. Titles scrolled across their wings: Unfinished Chapter 7. I'll Update Someday. Currently on Hiatus lol. The covers circled us in a deadly swarm.

"I can't," I whispered, trembling. My throat tightened. "I don't even know how this story was supposed to end."

"Then make one up!" Lucky screamed, hanging onto the Monster's ear for dear life. "That's what you always do!"

Something inside me cracked. She was right. I didn't need a flawless ending. I didn't need to rewrite the rules of storytelling. I just needed an ending.

So I grabbed Demon Boyfriend by his stupidly sharp jawline, stared into those overly convenient glowing eyes, and shouted, "You were my plot twist all along!"

Then I kissed him.

The Wattpad universe went silent. Even the Monster stopped, utterly baffled.

From somewhere in the void, a reader's voice screamed at max volume: "WHAT IN THE WATTPAD DID I JUST READ?!"

The Draft Monster cracked like a badly saved file. Whole paragraphs peeled off its body, crashing to the ground like fallen manuscripts. Tropes melted into mist, while the stormy-sea-eyes cliché burst like a balloon, showering us in harmless drizzle.

We collapsed in the debris, surrounded by the fragments of all my unfinished stories. For once, the battlefield was quiet.

Demon Boyfriend wiped glitter off his horns and arched a brow. "So. That's it? We're canon now?"

I blinked at him. 

"You kissed me. That seals the trope." He leaned back, wings unfolding with smug laziness. "The readers are already shipping us."

Lucky gagged audibly. "Gross. Delete it immediately."

I staggered upright, brushing dust and loose commas from my clothes. The Spinner lay quiet now, its hunger satisfied, the chaos fading like a tab finally closed. My library felt lighter. My head clearer. Maybe I could finally write in peace—

The ground trembled again.

"Oh no," I groaned, my soul shriveling. "What now?"

From the cracked remains of the Monster, something tiny crawled out. It had chubby cheeks, huge anime eyes, and sparkled with dangerous levels of cuteness.

"Hi," it squeaked, voice squealy enough to break glass. "I'm your Wattpad Baby. You left me in Draft Chapter 3."

The cat, the dog, the demon, and I stared in collective horror.

Demon Boyfriend pinched the bridge of his nose, looking like someone who had just realized his contract came with fine print. "Congratulations. You've unlocked the sequel hook."

And that was the moment I screamed into the void, my voice echoing across the shattered remains of my storyscape:

"WHAT IN THE WATTPAD DID I JUST READ?!"