Fictional Character

 I thought him up late at night. He was happy to be thought up. He's expressed that to me many times. "Better than just being an idea that has yet to be noticed," he would say. "It's Hell there. You're just getting bumped into by other unformed ideas and bad memories that have been suppressed." 

 I formed him in my own image. I realized quickly that me and me don't really get along much. Always cutting each other off even though we're agreeing on something. Quick to argue. 

 The first thing I did was put him in a dingy apartment where he lived alone. "Oh...much better," he said sarcastically. "You could put me anywhere, why here?"

 "Because you don't pay rent so anywhere is better than nowhere," I told him. 

 He didn't have anything to say and just began kicking around loose carpet and fondling the splintered curtains. 

 "Do I have a job?" he asked. 

 "Yes," I told him. "But it's not going to be any concern to you. Something you might mention once every other chapter. Don't worry though. Your income will be steady enough to keep you alive and well-fed. Maybe even afford you a few extra drinks if I put you in a bar." 

 He seemed okay with this. "Can I at least know what I do? You know, so I can bring it up in conversation."

 "You're a construction worker," I told him. 

 After that, I gave him a girlfriend. The first of few. He didn't much like the first one. "Do you even know my type?" he asked me after she turned his football game off and said she had cheated on him. 

 So I gave him a new one. He loved her. He still talks about her. "The one that got away," he'll say. "Even though she didn't leave as much as you killed her off." 

 I must admit, I did. Sometimes you get a crazy idea in your head when playing with writing. I thought it would be interesting for the reader if I took what he loved. She died in a car wreck. She was alive when he reached the scene of the crash. They cried together. It was truly heartbreaking, I feel. 

 He slept with a few girls in between the second and third girlfriend. Girls he met at the bar who were charmed by the way he spoke, agreed with his likes and dislikes, but didn't have the strength as a character to stick around for more than one night. 

 "I like how I fall asleep next to them and they're gone by the time I wake," he said. 

 His third and final girlfriend he had met at work. The foreman's daughter who stopped by to talk about something uninteresting with her father. She caught my character out of the corner of her eye. He was smitten from the moment she smiled at him. I made him bold in the ways that I am not and they formed a long-lasting relationship. 

 "Aren't I supposed to have something happen to me where I learn a life lesson? Or say or do something that changes someone else's life?"

 "Why would you think that?" I asked. 

 "Because people are reading about me. What fun is it for them if I just go around and live a normal life and do normal things? My girlfriend dying is the only thing that has happened that wasn't me going to work, or bangin' a random chick, or having a funny conversation with someone you said was my friend." 

 "Sometimes normal life can be interesting to the reader because they go through that all the time, too." 

 "But to do those things all day, for your whole life, why would you want to read a book where all the main character does is live your exact life?"

 "I don't have to answer to you," I told him and sent him off to work. 

 

 "I think I'm ready to have you stop dictating what I do," he told me. 

 "How can that be?" I asked. "The only reason you're even able to do anything is because I make it so." 

 "I don't think that's true. I've become a real person. You're merely toying with my life." He cleared his throat and said, "You just think I stop living when you walk away from me. But I don't. I have children that you've explained away but don't you ever wonder how they came to be?"

 "No," I told him. "I made them up to give you more character. To turn you into a loving father as well as the loving husband."  

 "Oh...you made them up, did you?" he asked. "You think you're so wise. You think you're so powerful. You're a fool with a keyboard. And I am your puppet." He sat down on the chair that I put in the middle of the room for him. 

 I felt bad for him. So I left him alone for a few days. Didn't write anything else for him to do. When I came back to him, I changed things about his life to show growth. He got a new job working at the bank. He was a manager and his employees respected him. They would often tell him how they hated the company policy of not being able to fraternize with management. How he would be so much fun to hang out with outside of work. 

 I gave him yet another child and upgraded his house to a 5 bdr., 2.5 bath. Implanted feelings of being proud at his own handiwork. He was no longer like me. I made him the man I wish I could be. 

 "You see?" he asked the next time we spoke. "You see what I have become? I'm my own man."

 "So you are," I said. 

 "Now leave me alone," he demanded. "Go write about someone else's life. Make them feel love and loss. Put them in a s****y apartment with a s**t job. Make them go on dates with women they can't talk to on an intellectual level. Only finding them enjoyable in the bedroom. It sounds awesome, but it's terrible." 

 I grew tired of him and his all-around lack of appreciation for the good things I did for him. I knew that if I kept writing his life, I would eventually kill him. Or give him a disease that made him interesting. Definitely take his wife, children and house from him. He didn't deserve such things anymore. Terrible things I had in mind for my little man. So I put him away. 

 Sometimes I think I hear him asking to be written about again. But I realize I'm merely making him ask me and I shut my brain off. 

Reviews

[Tim M]

This was really unique. I love the threshold between character and omniscient narrator being broken, and the subsequent conversations and humor. And when you get right down to it, they're isolated arguments within the narrator all the time, as stated in the last line, so that he's really putting away a piece of himself, for fear of destroying it. Loved it buddy.

[Rochelle Tyler]

First off I would like to say that your dialogue between characters continuously gets better and better where in this piece it was beyond fantastic. Just within the first couple paragraphs I was very impressed by how easily I could see this being acted out in front of me, as if your character had manifested beyond your mind's world and was in an actual person in ours. So great job there, that was my favorite part. As it should considering the majority of this chapter is all conversation between you and him. Secondly, the idea of making a short story around the creative process one goes through when making their novel's characters is great and that is why your writing stands out to me so often. I've told you this already that your art for poetry and your art for story telling are completely different, the obvious talent for your short stories always being a new and engaging plot. Well done on this one, I could continue writing another page with how much I enjoyed reading this.

[jenniewren (J.W. Bouwma..]

this is a tremendous piece. perhaps even one of your absolute best, you know. i love your narrative tone: half journal entry, half fiction. i feel like this is an extremely truthful piece.. and that gives such power to it. have you ever seen "stranger than fiction"? the main idea of that has always intrigued me, and this is avery very well written example of the living character scenario.. how wonderful love.. this is something i hope you are proud of, because after reading it, i just sat here for like 5 min saying " Damn. Damn. This is incredible"

[Brittany]

I really like the inner monologue turned dialogue in this piece. Clearly the character created was meant to be based off the author himself, and yet he gains a life of his own after he becomes tangible. Maybe this piece is about dillusions of granduer...whatever fiction we implement into our characters, there's always going to be that shadow of truth lurking behind the facade. Also, reading this I thought vaguely of puppet masters. These seemingly inanimate things- lifeless things- become capable of what we want them to do, if we wish it to be so. This is the torment of a writer. Creating these lives and still having them fall short of expectation. I could easily assume that the writer just goes plain nutty in this one, but I don't think that's the case. It feels like dissatisfaction of self. Maybe. I don't know. This was phenomenal and I'm having problems saying how this made me feel. You have such a talent with transporting the reader into your stories, so that when they come away from it, it feels like a first hand experience. :) That is all.