We are all gods.
Brent sat at his computer unable to process what he had just read. The writing was immaculate, it was moving, and it had depth, and momentum. The writing was tragic, and thoughtful, poignant and articulate. Brent tried for a moment to understand how he could have written such a beautiful and terrifying piece of art, his mouth hung agape, trying to form words, but only air escaped. It was masterful minus one little problem. He wasn't exactly certain he could ever publish it.
The reasons he couldn't publish the work were twofold. Firstly, while he remembered sitting down at his laptop, cracking open a soda, pulling up Word, and loading Pandora into the background to play his favorite music as he tapped away at the keys, Brent couldn't recall ever striking a single key. He remembered closing his eyes and beginning to imagine the next step in his epic, and having a heated conversation with Julianne, a tragic character in his world. When Brent opened his eyes, nearly 3 hours had passed the conversation and ensuing argument was draining and he couldn't help but slam his laptop shut and go to bed, eyes hot and red from the maddening tears of his thoughts.
He woke up the next morning, after having the night to sleep on his thoughts, and opened the laptop back up only to see the blank Word document now bursting with a bountiful feast of ripe, fresh, flavorful words. The scene leaped off the page into his heart and he was again transported back to the same argument with Julianne in her white wedding gown, stained blood red from the waist down, her body wreathed in lightning, against a pitch black background, the same conversation was captured letter for letter. The pain in her words, and her condemnation of Brent's action set to the crack of thunder echoed in his mind while he struggled to regain composure and rip his mind from the scene.
It may seem unorthodox for a writer to imagine conversations with the characters in their piece, but this was Brent's natural way of things. Brent had been writing in his world since he was 6. It was his true hobby, and natural calling. He viewed developing the world, and the people that lived within the world, as more engrossing and escape-worthy than any video game. Hundreds of thousands of pages of writing existed in his world. His youngest writings were about the most generous and happiest denizens. A world-wise grandmother who always had some confectionery baking in the oven, a fisherman whose face seemed permanently creased from the smiles and laughter at the world around him, a friendly troll who gave up his home under the bridge to police the nearest city against the Blackhand Brothers, a gang of thieves who all hailed from rich and important families. As Brent matured, so did his writing, as was the nature of practicing the art, but Brent explored dark content with the mind of an adolescent teenager without stopping to consider the consequences.
A young man is prone to horrible thoughts, and Brent was no exception. Brent himself lived in the world of his writing, not as the author, but rather an avatar named William. Brent explored his sexuality and fantasy in the world of his writing. William was, more than once, kidnapped by beautiful college-aged women, tied to a bed, and raped. William has won and lost fortunes, saved countless people from horrible demise, and even taken the life of more than a few villains. William had taken the lives of innocents too. Julianne's father was a hapless bystander in a car chase, crossing the street without his hearing aide during a daring car-chase in the inner city. Julianne's father was mid-street when a gleaming black Ford Mustang riddled with bullet holes came screaming around the corner, clipping the old man and sending him to the asphalt, Williams police cruiser followed in hot pursuit not more than 2 seconds behind, rolling over Julianne's father; crushing his lower spine. Brent didn't kill Julianne's father upon impact, though; it was several weeks of intensive care in a hospital, as procedure after procedure failed to save his life. Nearly 100 pages were dedicated to the death of a man, whom he never even gave a name. Painful, wailing, bloody, expensive, soul-crushing, endurance testing, whatever words you want to use to describe the event, they'll never contain enough gravitas to actually describe the decay of Julianne's father, and eventually of Julianne herself.
Julianne became a tragic anti-hero at the whim of Brent. Her world, and her very fiber of soul was shaken and tested, and made to stretch until they snapped. Julianne's first boyfriend and eventual husband was an abusive drunk, who lived on alcohol. After her fingers had all been broken several times, and after surviving thousands of pages of beatings, and even a stabbing, she finally protected herself by shooting the only man she loved as much as her father at point blank range, with a double barreled shotgun.
Brent gave pause at the simplicity of this concept in his youth, he realized he could drive a woman to love simply by writing the idea as a sentence: Mary knew she was in love, it was powerful, and controlling, she would give anything for this man, this man she just met! Just like that, Mary, a woman who Brent just made up and another nameless man in a world simply materialized, and at least one of them would step in front of a train to prove their love. Mary eventually did step in front of a train, in despair over her only love's scorn and refusal to see Mary as anything other than easy sex, and a fallback when his other relationship conquests failed. The reader never would make the connection at the irony of the train, because Brent never wrote that she would step in front of the train to prove her love, it was the humor, and essence of mortality that Brent kept as a treasure for himself.
Today, though, the concept of love and the leverage it offered Brent in context of writing seemed trite, and boring. Love was beaten to death during the Victorian era, why explore that, when he could explore lust?
Julianne was beautiful, even in her broken life, it was her greatest asset. The body of a supermodel, and even her nearly fatal, grotesque stab-wound faded into a scar that managed to be mostly hidden, and somehow alluring and erotic in its mystery to any would-be suitor. This, of course attracted more scoundrels, and rapists into her world, and once again, Brent explored the darkness of rape, but unlike William, Julianne did not want, nor secretly enjoy the shredding of her soul. Onward she plodded through the pages of her story. Pregnant, and deciding to carry the child to term from her horrible accosting only to have the baby die during birth. Julianne prayed for death as she simply didn't have the strength, nor Brent's permission, to end her story herself.
The second reason Brent couldn't publish the work, was because the content of the argument with Julianne itself. Brent made a mistake that he could never un-write, not only because of the principle of the concept, ret-conning his own story was weak, and destroyed potential for growth. He also couldn't un-write it, because it was impossible to erase, all of the characters in his world now knew his secret, they understood the truth.
Nearly a year after William had died in Brent's time; Brent had all of the denizens of his world congregate to the sacred monolith of Galesh, where he introduced himself, as the worlds author, as their leader, as their god. Chaos ensued, no-one accepted or could handle the idea. Suddenly Brent lost author's control over the content of his story. Without permission his characters suddenly became capable of existential reason, and made choices that defied the logic of their framework. The old fisherman stopped smiling, and sailed off into the mist never to return. The grandmother, driven mad at the realization of a life wasted baking cookies drifted quickly into senility. The troll captured the Blackhand Brothers with sudden omniscient knowledge of their whereabouts, and feasted on their entrails before slinking back to his home below the bridge, waiting for unsuspecting travelers to slake his newfound hunger.
Brent had taken a couple of weeks off from writing. "I just need to get my mind straight" he told himself. "I have to figure out how to regain control." he muttered to himself multiple times. For some reason, it wasn't as simple, nor as profound as his realization of his concept of love. He no longer could control the outcome, he could only give them the test, and watch how they handled it in his minds eye. Decades of writing, his true life's work, even at the optimistic age of twenty-eight was now becoming a waste. His old writing seemed listless and filled with wanderlust, they were simply words thrown into a blender.
Finally Brent had a moment of clarity: He had discovered a way to make it right. He would give them purpose, and create a common foe for them to band together to defeat, and he would help. So he grabbed his can of soda, plugged in his headphones, pulled up word, and plopped down in his computer chair, and closed his eyes; only to be met by Julianne, wreathed in lightning.
"You call yourself my author? You call yourself my god? You made my life what it is?" Tears of blood streamed down her alabaster cheeks meeting below her chin and dripping onto her white gown below She floated forward towards him, naked feet pointed down, dripping sanguine life onto the earth below. Sparks of energy lifted Brents hair and tingled his arms as Julianne touched her forehead to his gently. "You are evil! Lucifer himself would cower in your presence, and I am your nightmare. I will become your writers block. I am the resonant embodiment of your impotence in this world and all others! You'll never hurt anyone again! " Brent was filled with rage, and shouted back, but to no avail, Julianne would not be dissuaded, and in this state, Brent could not simply will Julianne to perish, no matter how hard he concentrated. Brent and Julianne wailed and flailed at each-other for hours. Brent argued that this world was his, and they wouldn't be alive without his permission, Julianne countered that he was nothing more than a child with a magnifying glass over an ant-hill and he had lost the privilege of control. The gripping fear of loss swarmed over Brents body and Julianne sensed it and moved in for the kill "You may be our creator, you may be our god, but I am their goddess, and you have no power here. We will continue without you. You may look in on us from time to time, but if your heart bears the malice of control, and you'll find yourself here, with me." Brent woke up, exhausted, tears streaming down his face, and slammed the laptop shut.
"I need sleep, I'll deal with this shit tomorrow."