Veiled Enemies

Before anything, before you even learn my name, I gotta tell you that I am real. I may not exist - at least not in your world - but I am real. Don't assume what's physically real to be what's only real.

My name is Alyssa. This is my story.

Months ago, a man named Ian Deserio attended a writers' seminar in Freehold, New Jersey. This is back before I was even around. After scribbling out two stories so dreadful that they just barely fit the definition of "writing", Ian figured it was time to get his writer's block under control. Pen in hand, he sat in the dusty convention center for hours, listening to countless authors and screenwriters share their insights on writing. Hours on hours, Ian sat there as Stacy Schmolz gave her hour-long lecture on 'Dealing with Carpel Tunnel' and Alan Donald lectured on 'Choosing the Write Title' and Xavier Thomas taught everyone 'How to Write Erotica'. I'm telling you, people will share any story they can just to be heard. And Ian was ready to listen, although none of it was really doing him any good so far. In fact, it wasn't until renowned author Tim Bravey - author of Seen in the Night and The Distinct Pleasure - sat at the podium to give his lecture on how to create a memorable character, that Ian was finally given some useful information. 

'A Character to Last' was the title of the lecture, set to be 40 minutes long, following 'Ready, Set, Write' and 'Dream Journals'. Bravey seemed like he belonged in the 19th century, instead of the 21st. He spoke and looked the way you might picture an author in 1880 to look, but instead of tweed he wore flannel. He had a very arrogant tone, almost like he knew he was the best that this seminar could afford, but he shared some vital information that day. To spare the details of the next 38 minutes, you only really need to know his following words:

"To create a memorable character, you must always remember, that you do not create a memorable character. The character creates itself. Moreover, the character creates you! You see, you don't just sit down at your desk one day and think up the next great American character. It takes time. Do you guys remember Skim from my book Python? I didn't just snatch him outta thin air one day, I developed him over weeks and weeks. How? I became him. To truly create a character, you have to live that character's life. Skim is me, and I am him.

"I woke up in the morning, and brushed my teeth the way he would. When I went to my fridge, I made myself the food that Skim would eat. Doesn't matter that I can't stand mayonnaise, Skim likes it, so its going on my sandwich. You catch my drift? The second you let yourself go and let this new character envelop you, you have created a memorable character. Think about it, if he can do that to you, what is he going to be able to do to your audience?"

Ian had this all written down verbatim. After the seminar, he ripped the pages out of his yellow legal pad, and he kept them on top of his dresser for the next few weeks. He read them daily, sometimes hourly, studying them as if he were to be tested on them tomorrow. To him, this was a stepping stone to the next level. It was the key to a successful novel. A novel that might finally get him some recognition. A novel that might finally get him into the writing industry and out of this awful job. It took a little bit for him to normalize this radical thinking, at first he looked at Bravey's speech as a metaphor, but the more he read and reread the notes, it wasn't figurative at all. He had truly come to see the sense behind it - behind becoming a character and all the ideas that went behind it - and after some time he was ready. And I was born.

I am Ian's 'Skim'. But really, I'm just Alyssa. He created me for a story he was working on entitled Lost Joy. In the words of my creator, himself, I'm a 'beautiful, tall girl with dark hair and big, green, entrancing eyes.' I have 'a septum piercing and a few tattoos visible in normal clothing, showing that our seemingly innocent protagonist [me] has a little bit of an edge to her.' I'm 'always donning a half-hearted smile, because she [I] cares for the people around her, and doesn't want to exhibit any negative emotion for fear that it it may be infectious.' Ian's words, not mine. This is how he saw me; and therefore, this is how I am. 

I've got a childhood, and a backstory, just like you. I've got a mom and a dad, and an older sister I'm real close with. I've had a lot of life experiences that Ian was never able to have on his own, so he gave to me. A lot of writers do this, it's a kind of coping mechanism I guess. I had a rich family and was born into privilege. I've traveled a lot, mostly Europe, some Carribean Islands. I've done some drugs and had lots of sex, basically your average high school s**t. The kicker, the real selling point of the story, came when I was four and I was diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia - a type of cancer mostly found in children. My family took it hard, and everyone around me felt so entranced by my story, I was the saddest thing around. It took three years for me to beat it, and a lot of friends and family had gotten it in their heads that I wasn't gonna make it. Once it was gone, though, it was gone for good, never even showed signs of returning, and I was a normal little kid again. That's where it all got interesting, though. Once I was seventeen, I started to get into this weird depression, where I felt like I didn't deserve to be alive. You see, when I had cancer I wanted so badly just to live, to be healthy. I made these promises to myself, to my family, to God, that if I was able to experience a normal life again, I'd never let it go to waste. But once the cancer was gone, I was ecstatic, but only for a little while, and then everything just got very normal. When I thought that a real life was impossible, I had built up such an imaginary life for myself, that the eventual reality could only be called a disappointment. You sit in that hospital bed and tell yourself "If I ever get out of here, I'm living my life to the fullest", and you make all these empty promises, but you never end up doing any of it. And once you're mature enough to recognize it, you look in the mirror every morning thinking about how much you failed that little girl in the hospital bed. Call it 'survivor's guilt' I guess. I just call it my life. In any case, it got me all kinds of messed up in the head, which was the real plot development for Lost Joy.

If ever Mr. Tim Bravey had a disciple, his name was Ian. He soon took to Bravey's practices with intensity, and hit the ground running. It was small things at first - like picking a movie he didn't want to watch because I would like it or listening to bands he'd never heard of because I'd be into them - but he was really starting to make strides in this philosophy. As I became more developed, and faced challenges throughout the story, Ian would face them as well. In the book, my car broke down and I had to walk to work in the rain, and so Ian may not have had any engine failure, but the next time it rained, he walked to work, no umbrella. I did drugs that he had never done, so guess who tried their first LSD tablet? And when my best friend passed away - sorry, spoilers - he went two weeks without any interaction with his friends, to see what it must be like to be so alone. 

He had gotten way more into this ideology than he ever expected, and he really enjoyed it. There was only one problem: Lost Joy just wasn't any good. It was no better than his previous two stories, and it surely wasn't what you'd consider a stepping stone. He may have been creating a memorable character like Mr. Bravey said, but he put all his focus on me, and not too much on the actual story itself. I may have been the next great American character, but I didn't have a story. After reading through his first few paragraphs, he realized he wouldn't make a dime off of this book, so he hid the file and planned on never looking at it again. He tossed Lost Joy, put me away and went back to his normal life. 

And that was his mistake. 

Ideas are tricky, because trapped inside of someone's head, its hard to determine just how powerful they can be. Keep them trapped, and they could dwindle down to nothing; but keep them trapped, and they could haunt you forever.

After Ian tossed Lost Joy, he didn't think much of it. To him, it was just another failed story. Sometimes he mulled over his decision to drop it, but either way, work and bills and family problems - all the real world stuff - were lending a hand in helping him get his mind off of it. For the next few months, he became frantically stressed over his company's new client, whom he'd been assigned to and whom he casually referred to as 'a pain in the balls'. Even more than hating his job, he hated being bad at his job, and this guy was not making it easy. To add on, the rent in his building went up 22%, and he was really regretting not having given his lease a more thorough read through after his lawyer told him he's got no options. His grandfather was seeing his last days, and Ian barely got any time to visit him in the hospital with all that was going on. So, overall, he hadn't had the easiest few months since it was decided that Lost Joy was no good. If you'd asked him then, he probably couldn't have even told you who his main character was.

All the while, I was still here, in is head, somewhere. He'd forgotten about me, but I was still here, silently. Ignored and neglected. He created me, he built me to be this fucked up person, and then he abandoned me. This depressed and unstable girl, you nurture her, and then you leave her? A girl whose life story has been laid out for her, without an ending. Do you know how that feels? No. Because you're not a f*****g figment of some a*****e's imagination. The thing about ideas is, they never really leave. When they're shared, when they're turned into actions or words, they leave, and you become just another spectator to something you created. But when you trap them, they have nowhere to go. Just because you can't remember them, or you don't think of them anymore, doesn't mean they're gone. They'll always be in your head, somewhere. The weaker ones, they stay hidden, and you might never think of them again. The stronger ones, though, they rest, and they feed on incoming information, and they grow. And once they're grown, they come back into plain-sight stronger than before, and that's when most of them become actions. Or they become suppressed for even longer, and they start to eat you up inside. You don't get rid of stuff like this so easily, trust me.

See, me, I'm definitely not one of the weak ones. But I'm also not choosing to surface again. Not yet, at least. You see, this is where things all take a turn in our story. Not in the story of Alyssa, but in the story of Ian. Maybe in the story of Alyssa & Ian.

Let me explain something to you: ideas cannot have ideas. Think about it. It's like multiplying infinity by infinity, or dividing 0 by 0, it just doesn't work. It's one of those brain-numbing paradoxes that people spend their lives trying to decode. But let me save you the trouble, it just doesn't work. You might say 'Hey, well the wife and I had an idea to have a kid, and now that kid's alive and he's got ideas' but you'd be wrong. Ideas can turn into actions or words or even people, but when they do, they cease to be ideas. In my case, Ian has lent me so much in my development, that I am no longer just an idea. I have been given a small portion of his mind. In 'becoming' me, he let me become him as well, and I bet you that's something Bravey didn't put too much thought into. I'm not real, not yet, I'm just... a character. But I'm more than an idea.

But, you see, this undeveloped world I've been given, this life with no end, this incomplete person that he has made me, it's intolerable. I can't bear to be stuck in this bullshit existence. Ideas can't have ideas right? But ideas don't die. I hope you see what I'm getting at here. 

If Ian dies, he becomes a mere memory, a figment, an idea. And since I'm just a figment of his, just a character stuck inside his head, and I won't die with him, I will be free. I will become real - my soul reincarnated in a newborn child, maybe a boy from India, maybe a girl in Peru - I will escape.

He's a fool, you know. All he had to do was finish the story, and I'd have never been able to do this to him. I'd have been gone. But it sucked. It wouldn't "sell". It wouldn't "get him to the next level". Selfish and foolish.

I've found that the subconscious is the most dominant tool in the body. It's simple, really, because things are easy to fight off when you know where they are coming from, but its what's hidden that terrifies you. We're driven to do so many things through no conscious fault of our own, all because of these subliminal thoughts. Think about it next time you find yourself humming to a song you haven't heard since 2nd grade - thoughts are lodged in your head for years, and you never know when they're gonna come out. Subliminal thoughts become conscious thoughts. Conscious thoughts become actions. 

My current environment provides me with access to all of these subliminal thoughts inside Ian's head. I know what is passing through his subconscious every second, as well as any conscious thought he may conjure up, and any information pouring in. It's a very powerful position to be in. Here I know his childhood fears, his phobias, his insecurities. I know he loved, what he hated, what secrets he's hidden his whole life. I know what he could do to make his stories better. I know him better than the person who knows him best in this whole world knows him. And it's exactly where I need to be. I don't have a voice, he's not schizophrenic or anything, so I can't just tell him to die. I can't talk to him from his head and tell him I want to get the f**k out of here. All I can do is use these tools in my surroundings to my advantage. 

I'm not a bad person. I surely wasn't created to be a bad person, at least. I'm just a girl who has been pushed to her limit in this perpetual, inconsequential existence that couldn't yet be called a life. The way I look at it, I'm not a murderer. The way I look at it, he's done this to himself. Everything has been here all along. Inevitably, all of these dark, negative thoughts and feelings would soon surface, and eventually he'd find himself at this point anyway. I just started the process.

I kicked up the self-doubt and the memories of failure first. Then, fear. Every fear - every single one - I'm talking childhood fears of monsters under the bed, they came back. At once, he was overcome with fear of the world, and thoughts of failure. It was abrupt, and he had no idea where or why this was happening to him. Therapists couldn't help, what could they tell him, "Remember Alyssa, that girl from Lost Joy, she's trying to kill you"? I think that would make him feel even crazier.

So, he turned to "self-medication". That's where I felt it was a good time to send guilt. Guilt is a key. He felt at fault for his grandfather's death, and he felt guilty for not spending enough time with him. Rationality doesn't matter at this point. He felt that he had let everyone in his life down. 

Lastly, hopelessness, I felt, would do the trick. I sent up thoughts that made him feel that he was stuck. That he would always fail. That he would never escape his fears. That his self-medication diagnosis wasn't working and now he'd fallen into a pit of addiction. And that this pit was one he could never climb out of.

We met today, me and Ian. A few minutes ago he got really high and fell asleep. He's having what he'll assume to be a dream, but what is really an introspective journey through his own mind. Thinking about it, this is actually the kind of thing that could save him, had he not come into contact with me. I had never expected this; therefore, I never planned for it, but I explained to him that it's been me all along. Not that he'll remember this or anything, but it's something I felt I should do. As his consciousness drifted, I was able to take full control - for just a short time - of the brain. His body is currently mine, for probably only moments longer. I know that this is where I could have ended it all. Could've had him kill himself and set me free. But, the way I see it, he's gonna do that anyway.

So, I decided to write this. A short little memoir, something that I can put on paper to verify that I was really here. I'm writing this in hopes that maybe I can find this piece of paper in my next life, and maybe I can connect this life to that one. Maybe I can write to my next self and connect each future life. In any case, I'm glad I got to put my story down on paper. At this point, I'm as ready for my freedom from this existence as Ian is from his.

Author's Note

Reviews appreciated!!! Please!

Reviews

[Haimaii]

Now I really want to read Lost Joy, perhaps in my next life.
It also doesn't seem like Bravey's advice is a good thing to follow in a lot of stories. If you're writing a story about a serial killer, for example, it's a bad idea.
Very interesting plot. A couple of grammar mistakes, but that happens to the best of us.
Keep writing, I suggest. If you enjoy it.

[LightDarkMask]

Intriguing, nice theme and great detailing, i could clearly imagine the scenes described, Nice Work ^^

[HeyJadeXO]

I like the idea of the character's take on the author.Very original. Great work