Just Writing Randomness

A Spectral Conference

     Ghost sat down at the head of a large table within his mind. On his left sat a naive young character who had only just begun the fleshing process. On his right sat an old character and dear friend. His first truly developed character. Each side of the table was lined with various entities of an author's mind. They were all waiting for one person, the one who would sit on the other end of the room.

     Lightning flashed and thunder cracked. The doors on the far end of the room flung open, letting rain and chilled wind to raise the hairs on many of the attendees' legs. A mighty voice boomed out above the maelstrom outside, "Good, good! You are all collected!" A thin, wily-looking man casually sauntered in and took the last remaining seat, directly across from Ghost.

     "By all means, make yourself at home," Ghost facetiously remarked. It was unlike an outsider to call a successful meeting like this.

     The lean man leaned back and placed his dripping boots on top of the table. "It would be my pleasure!" He looked around at the confused faces from Ghost's newer characters. "My apologies. Allow me to introduce myself. You may call me, Phantom."

     At the sound of the name, Ghost drew his mouth into a thin line growing ever straighter. "He is essentially a different side of me. So different that I do not consider him welcome in this establishment on most occasions. He is being especially rude tonight, because he wishes to provoke me."

     "Oh, aren't introductions fun?" Phantom bellowed. "Anyone want to see a magic trick?" No voices answered, nor did any hands raise. "Aw, alright. Down to business then!"

     On Ghost's right, Ackemi Kygar stood up, lifting a few documents and folders with him. "Tonight we will be discussing the future of our endeavours. Phantom called this meeting after witnessing a significant lack of progress on any front for the past several months. He wishes to...jumpstart the process." The Jedi turned and nodded at the man on Ghost's left, who returned the gesture. "James Haldwell will be taking the minutes and keeping us on track." Ackemi took his seat and slid a few of the papers over to James.

     Phantom giggled loudly from his end of the table.

     Ghost began, "The first item on our agenda is to respond to the matter Phantom has brought to the table. Would the named party please present his query?"

     Phantom nodded, mocking seriousness. "Of course, old buddy, old pal, old...y."

     Ghost interjected, "To be clear, Phantom is a newly defined persona and is not actually any sort of old 'acquaintance' of mine."

     Phantom continued, "You lot haven't written squat in ages! All you've done is plan, dream, pretend; it's a bunch of lies! Writers are supposed to write. I know, shocker," he waved his hands in a rude manner.

     The chair to Ackemi's right squeaked. In it sat his former apprentice, Kodiak. A man who had just clenched his fists so tightly that he had shoved himself, and his chair, backwards. Ackemi placed his hand on the shoulder of his younger friend to settle him.

     "A decent author would have a few chapters of a book in at the least. You are sitting here in your fancy, make-believe 'mind-realm' like you actually have a claim to proper authorhood. I simply cannot stand for this!" Phantom ranted on.

     In response, the paradoxical duo, Me and I, stood up from their shared chair. They spoke in unison, "Technically, you could not stand for anything had Ghost not written you to do so."

     Phantom smiled. "Oh, wouldn't that be nice for him. Thing is, I'm still within twenty four hours of official creation; therefore, I am immune to any character-building-based restraints he may choose to conjure up." To this, he recieved a collective gasp as many heads at the table turned to face Ghost.

     One voice called out what almost every character at the table was thinking, "You...you mean...we could have developed ourselves? We didn't need to listen to you?"

     Ghost nodded solemnly. "Yes, I grant every character some time to become themselves. And most of you did that. You all shaped yourselves to an extent; you just chose to mostly stick with what I had said."

     Phantom roared a yawn. "I'm getting bored. And I do not intend to waste my free time with prittle or prattle. So I'm going to lower the hammer and shine the brass tax. I've got a poison. A poison which all of you have already drunk of."

     More shocked gasps erupted. A figure robed half in black shadow and half in white light shook their head back and forth. "Impossible. We have not had refreshments tonight. There is nothing you could have poisoned that we have ingested since or before you arrived."

     "Yin, Yang, I appreciate your combined, basic observation of the blatantly obvious. I would suggest that you work to improve on that." Phantom looked pointedly down at the edge of the table where Yin's shadowy hand was resting. "All of you, look at the liquid pooling around your hands and dripping onto your feet. Maybe one of you daft people noticed the excessive amount of water that has been leaving my boots all this time. That is the poisoned liquid." He snapped his fingers and the water turned into a threatening, deep purple.

     Ghost's eyes widened and he grimaced. He could not decipher what exactly Phantom was planning. "What, pray tell, does this poison do? And how did you make us drink of it as you described?"

     An evil glint materialized in Phantom's eye. "This is the realm of the mind! Here we are all at our strongest and our weakest, as well as our most off guard and vulnerable," he grinned maliciously with his last word. "I simply turned all the pores on your hands and feet into tiny mouths, all of whom were more than eager to drink up whatever came along!"

     I nearly fainted in his chair, but Me caught him.

     Phantom resumed, "This poison is only truly effective in the realm of the mind, so I needed to get you all together here in order to administer it. And before you all start calling me dishonest, I was not. I really am here to jumpstart the writing process again. The symptoms of the poison are as follows: being forgotten, losing of self, intermittent vanishments, character degeneration, unsatisfying death, and eventually, erasure from reality."

     Ghost rose from his seat, crashing the flats of his hands down on the table. "Monster! You would destroy all of what has been achieved here! The game you play may bring a permanent end to the creativity and writing career of our assigned author!"

     "Precisely," Phantom's grin grew into a full smile.

     Ghost turned to a group of similarly clad men in white armor, "Toon, apprehend him!"

     They stood up and their leader saluted, "Sir, yes sir." The group quickly moved behind Phantom and forcefully cuffed his hands behind his back.

     Ghost looked sternly into Phantom's eyes. He spoke slowly, dangerously, "What is the antidote?"

     Phantom returned the gaze without penance. "There is none." He glanced around, basking in the still-shocked faces of most of the characters and entities. "However, it can be stalled. The author must write. If he does not, you will all slowly fade away. He must constantly develop his ideas and actually write them down. This should get things going." He then raised his hands into the air and waved them a bit, as if he had never been handcuffed.

     The clone troopers lunged for him, but Phantom started to vanish. He slowly dematerialized, starting from the feet and laughing all the while. There was nothing anyone could do to stop him, and even those with the capabilities to do so were too deep in contemplating the situation to act. When his head and mouth finally disappeared, a last taunt carried through on the wind and echoed around the chamber, "Write, boy...write..."

SuperiorGhost: That is just....splendid.

     With those final words, the scene closed. A ubiquitous blackness closes in from every direction and the reader's view of the room was blocked. The reader could rewind and look back, but they had already seen the story. So why bother? Their time and energy might be better spent looking forward. Until next time, dear friends!