belonged in this story than ever before. Julianne turned away from the now harmless intruder and smiled at Libby with pride. They began to walk off together side by side.
Bill sat for a moment on the grass with shock and sadness and then jumped up and yelled after her in a final attempt. “Libby, there isn't time for this. Its only because the structure is broken down that I can be here at all. I have to warn you! At the end of the story you d-”
“I want to be surprised!” she yelled back, cutting him off with a confident smile. She glanced back at where he was and found that the university had a brand new bench.
“Thanks for taking me under your wing. Things I’ll be a whole lot easier now,” she said to Julianne with a grateful smile.
Julianne smiled back but something in it made Libby shudder.
The week went by just as it had for Libby in the other versions and, as in the other versions, she remained blissfully oblivious to anything out of the ordinary. Leslie and Libby had rehearsed Julianne’s play and Libby had settled comfortably back into her glaze instincts now that the fourth wall was intact again. Julianne had also calmed down considerably and she seemed far less like the crazed narration diva of earlier. Her play was going up that day and she almost seemed nervous. Libby had all but forgotten about the madness of a week ago as she gave Julianne a big hug and assured her that the play would be “awesome.”
Professor Constantine came backstage to tell everyone to clear the area and Julianne started to slink off to the side, apparently to avoid being banished from backstage. Libby knew that she was supposed to go into the dressing room but on one of the first impulses she had dared to follow since the day she met Bill, she decided to walk over to Julianne. The playwright stood staring out onto the empty stage with a proud smile on her face.
“Hi!” said Libby cheerfully.
Julianne turned towards her with anger and embarrassment as if Libby had just interrupted something very important. Her brows folded in and she looked as cold and determined as when she confronted Bill outside. “What?”
“Oh, nothing.” Libby decided to ignore her tone. There was an awkward pause as Julianne tried to recapture her thoughtful stare but the moment was lost. “Did they like it?”
“Did they like what?” Julianne asked, annoyed with confusion.
“Your story.”
A smile began to form in the corners of Julianne’s lips. “It’s not finished yet.”
“Oh.” Silence. “I think mine must be.”
With this, Julianne turned slowly towards Libby and gave her a cruel smile. She began very slowly. “Your story? You don’t have a story. You never had a story. Your narrator didn’t stand you up. Nobody knew how to tell you. You just assumed you even had a story. Who the hell would want to read your story? This is and always will be MY story. Or should I say ours . . .” There was a sound of someone fumbling with the outer door and Julianne sighed, satisfied and continued on faster and more intense. “That’ll be my boy. See, I wrote the play for him and I told the story for me. But you? Who cares? You might have mattered if you were cruel to Leslie in the past. Or maybe if you had been a rival of mine. But instead, you were just the victim. A throwaway character. The stand-in. The (what did I call you?) placeholder in my literary consciousness. Anyone could have died. It was the gesture. You’re more like a prop than a character. And props never get their turn to tell the story. Now if you‘ll excuse me, the main characters need to help the action progress.”
Julianne grabbed Libby by the shoulder and threw her into the dressing room, shutting the door. Libby didn’t move from the ground where she landed. How ironic that people usually describe terror by saying their breath stopped. All Libby was doing was breathing. She couldn’t think or run, so she just listened to the sounds of her breath. Outside, the scene continued with Leslie and Julianne. But you and I know that he isn’t Leslie anymore. Libby hadn’t paid attention to the change but she knew now how the story ended.
She stood up and looked around the room. She saw her costume for Darla hanging on the doorknob and she put it on to keep her hands busy. And suddenly she wasn’t scared anymore. Just calm. She walked slowly out into the hall and it was empty. Emptier and more hollow than she had ever seen it before. She wondered with a laugh if maybe the story was already over and everyone had gone home, though she knew that could never be true.
Suddenly she realized that she could escape. There was nothing to guard the stage door. She could just walk out. There were probably all sorts of people she could meet that had nothing to do with this story. Didn’t she have a right to a story? She could go out and do whatever she wanted. But where would she go? In the end, wasn’t she confined by the parameters of this reality? She looked back to the chair and noose on the stage and realized that it was all she knew.
So the curtain rose and Libby walked on stage. She couldn’t help but feel how ironic it was that now her senses were more tuned then they had ever been. She felt the crack of every consonant as she began her lines and the swoosh of her eyelashes whenever she blinked. She was aware of every vertebra in her spine and every cell of her skin. They played the scene. There was nothing special about her performance; it was just a minimum wage delivery.
The scene was nearly over and Eugene convinced Darla to live. But Libby had already decided. As the lights dimmed and his right hand closed about her ankle, she wondered how she had ever even dared to imagine that she mattered. As his left hand matched his right, she felt satisfied because who was she to ruin a perfectly good story? As he kicked the chair out from under her, she was glad there had been no narrator so that no one would ever know how she sold out. The chance for some daring commentary on destiny was gone now.
She had forgotten in all the psychology that there would be pain. A tightening and hard pull of her neck and then the choking set in. Breathing suddenly became very difficult and she felt like she was swallowing her own throat. After the initial shock, she didn’t scream. She couldn’t. There was no air. A feeling of paradox as she began to black out. It felt so real for fiction.
Bill
FUCK!
“So, what do you think?”
“What the hell do you mean, what do I think? Is that it?”
“It is the beginning.”
“The beginning is just the word “Fuck!”? Like that? That‘s so stupid.”
“It’s to get their attention. Nothing grabs the reader faster than a colorful four letter word.”
“But who says it?”
“The guy does.”
“So, why don’t you let the readers know that. Give them a dialogue tag or something, for Christ’s sake!” He leaned forward to watch the words “he screamed” appear on the paper. He waited for more and then sat back. “Do you have any idea how annoying it is when you’re shifting through sections of dialogue having no idea who the speakers are? Cut the damn readers a break! Give the guy a name!”
Bill stared down at what he had written so far and then leaned back in his chair. He delicately nibbled the end of his pencil eraser to think. Greg was relentless, however.
“And while you’re at it, why not let us know location and physical attributes and stuff. If you wait too long to describe the character the reader starts to get all these ideas about what he looks like and that may not even remotely be what you are going for. But you’ve got to be crafty about it. Just work the details into the narration, you know? Don’t just blurt it out.”
Bill raised one eyebrow in an attempt to symbolize that he took this information in as well, but he was unwilling to move the pencil. He realized how clever and thoughtful it made him look, especially since his red hair was darkly slicked back even smoother than usual today, and now that his eyebrow was raised, he must clearly be exuding that “Cafeteria! Bask in my intellect!” vibe at full force. He froze for a moment so that anyone might take a picture if they liked. Work it! Work it! Book jacket.
“By those that use abysmal alliteration! It’s not the locat
ion or description that I am concerned about. It is a character sketch, if you will. The story of one man’s journey of self-realization where he slowly begins to grasp that he is no better off than those he pities. It is a brilliant tale where a man’s entire life unfolds to be nothing but a series of sordid lies. That, my compatriot, is my story. The only reason I brought it to you was to see if you could clear up a little dilemma. I want to add this friend in the beginning just so that he can have some dialogue, but the story is really about him. It’s just that I don’t want to reveal too much too soon. So, the question is...what do I do with the friend?” He sat back into the chair and smiled with his arms outstretched in a gesture of loss. Mmmmhmmmm. That’s the stuff. Book jacket.
“That’s easy. Just write him out! ”
Bill raised an inquisitive eyebrow (quite different from the eyebrow of acknowledgment) and Greg continued, “One paragraph, he’s there, the next, the character is off on his own. No big deal.”
“B-but, shouldn’t I explain what happened to the other character?” Bill felt his carefully constructed world beginning to fracture around him.
“Nah! He just goes off into literary limbo. Sucks to be him! It’s good to be a main character.”
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Bill was a writer. He knew this because when he saw an
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