by Sam Ferguson
“No, not the cheese, the cheese is in my house.”
“Well if the cheese isn’t your house, then why’d you steal it and try to open it?” a second mouse said.
“He came to murder us,” the third said as he turned and gently held half a tail in his hands.
“Now see here, this is my cheese,” Simplin said.
“Thief!” the second mouse shouted. “You can’t have our house!”
The three mice twisted their canes and pulled sharp, miniature swords from them.
“All for cheese!” cried the first mouse.
“And cheese for all!” the other two shouted.
Simplin shook his head and crossed his arms. He stormed out of his house, slammed the door, and looked up at the skies.
“This is a bit much,” he shouted. “You’re mixing up too many stories with this one. I mean, three mice who can’t see, and then butchering a classic battle cry to boot? Just what do you think you’re doing?”
Jack pushed the strange voice out of his head and continued to write, instantly transporting Simplin back into the kitchen without any further ado.
“He’s back!” the first mouse cried.
“Had to go out for reinforcements, he did!” the second one shouted.
“Coward!” said the third.
“Oh, balderdash!” Simplin gruffed. “You lot need to go, or I’ll grab the carving knife and end your story properly.”
The mice let out a war cry and leapt from the table, swinging their swords and flipping gracefully through the air.
Simplin stepped aside and let them all fall to the floor. They had misjudged their aim, and the table was more than high enough to knock them out as they thumped onto the floor. The wizard swept them into a waste basket after taking their small swords and placing the weapons on the table. He went out and dumped the mice into the chicken coop out back. The large rooster jumped on the mice and ate one while the hens squabbled over the other two.
“And that is the end of that!” Simplin said with a grin on his face.
Unfortunately, the cheese was entirely inedible. The mice had hollowed out the center, and there was a portion of bloody mouse tail inside as well. The wizard discarded the ruined cheese and pulled a length of sausage out from a wooden box. He tapped the sausage with his wand, creating thin, even slices of meat with each touch. He then pointed his wand to his plate on the table and the several sausage slices gently floated through the air and landed on the plate.
Simplin grabbed one of the tiny swords and used it to spear a slice of sausage. He ate the meat and then walked to his bed chamber in the back of the house. He finished chewing the last bit of food in his mouth and took off his tunic.
A sharp whistle from behind him reminded Simplin that the magic mirror was not covered at the moment. Simplin turned and used his tunic to cover the mirror.
“What’s wrong? Shy?” the mirror asked. “You know, the queen never covered me up at all.”
“Good for you,” Simplin replied evenly. “I will be covering you whenever I feel like it.”
He liked having the artifact around, but things always got awkward when it was time to change into his pajamas. He finished dressing and then removed the tunic, eager to ask the mirror the same question he always did at the end of every day.
The mirror spoke first. “Going with the blue bunny onesie, I see.”
Simplin looked down to his pajamas and shrugged. “They’re comfortable.”
“And I suppose the teddy bear acts as a spare pillow?” the mirror asked, noting the rather ragged stuffed animal under Simplin’s left arm.
Simplin tossed the bear aside. “Never mind that. You know what I am about to ask.”
“Yep.”
“So, tell me the answer then,” Simplin said.
“Ask the question,” the mirror replied.
“But, you know what I am going to ask. Just tell me the answer.”
“Nope,” the mirror said. “You have to ask.”
Simplin sighed. “Sometimes, it is very tempting to give you away.”
“You wouldn’t,” the mirror said quickly.
“I could put you up for sale,” Simplin said.
“No shop would have me,” the mirror insisted.
“Then I’ll put you in the yard, I’ll call it a yard sale.”
The mirror sat silently on the wall for a moment, then replied, “You’d get more money if you put me up with Crag Slist, although you’d have to be sure to meet the buyer in a public place…”
“Just tell me,” Simplin begged.
“You have to ask.”
“Will tomorrow be the day?” Simplin asked.
“That isn’t the right way to ask,” the mirror replied. “Come on, ask me the right way.”
Simplin sighed. “Mirror mirror, on the—”
A mighty clap of thunder ripped through the air outside, and the ground trembled below Simplin’s feet. He fell to the floor, knocking his head into the bed post. His ears rang and his eyes blurred. He sat up just as the magic mirror screamed and another tremor sent the mirror crashing to the ground. It shattered into a thousand pieces.
“No!!” Simplin yelled as he crawled over to the mirror. “Speak to me, are you all right?” There was only silence.
Simplin reached out to pick up one of the shards, but sliced the end of his finger. He pulled his hand back and sucked on his finger, but it did little to assuage the sting. He pulled his finger away and looked at it. A line of scarlet formed as blood came to the surface. The wizard’s eyes rolled back into his head and he fainted just as another quake shook Wontsuponatime.
CHAPTER 1
Simplin woke up, surrounded by wreckage, but fortunately unharmed, aside from the menacing cut in his finger that he couldn’t bear to look at. He looked the opposite direction as he used his wand to cast a healing spell. It took a couple of tries since he was firing blind, but when he felt his finger close up, he smiled and flexed his hand. “That’s better,” he said. “All right… now what?”
Simplin waited.
And waited.
And waited.
“Hey, did you quit already?” Simplin shouted up at the dark sky. “I’m down here waiting for my epic adventure! I even paid for this blasted magic mirror to ask the thing when my real story was going to be started—thanks for destroying that artifact by the way, it isn’t like it cost me my entire savings or anything.” Simplin shook his head and snarled. “Authors, always so callous and careless with what they break. Have to make the characters suffer, otherwise they won’t grow. Well, you know what? I’m tired of suffering! So come on, let’s get on with it. I want my epic adventure, you overgrown ogre!”
Silence was the only reply.
Suddenly, there was a whirring sound, and Simplin knew his time was nearly up.
“Oh no, I didn’t wake up in this wreck of a house just so you can let this beginning fade away like all the others! I’ve been with you for twenty years!”
The whirring grew louder and darkness surrounded the wizard. Simplin wasn’t entirely sure what the computer was that held such power over him whenever Jack wrote, but he knew that once the computer went to sleep, Jack was unlikely to save anything he had started when, or if, he ever came back to it.
“Not this time!” Simplin said. “I will not go quietly into the darkness again!”
Simplin took hold of his wand and stared at it with his icy blue eyes, focusing all of his mental energy into it. “I can do this,” he said.
He didn’t recite any incantation. He didn’t point his wand in a specific direction. He just stared at it and focused his single, most ambitious wish.
A faint yellow glow grew from the end of his wand, stretching upward through the sky. It went up, up, up, past the stars and to that ethereal window beyond, reaching through and grasping for Jack’s hands as he lay hunched over in his chair, snoring with his hands beside the keyboard. Simplin clenched his eyes shut as his head began to throb with the eff
ort. A few inches more and then he had it! The yellow energy wrapped around Jack’s right hand and jerked it to the side, knocking into the computer mouse.
Instantly the darkness that had been closing in vanished and the whole world grew brighter by several shades.
“That will buy me just enough time,” Simplin said as he continued his spell.
Jack snorted and moved his hand away from the mouse, but the energy had him. It snaked around his wrists and then spread over his hands like strange, golden gloves. His hands floated up and onto the keyboard, his fingers lining up with the home row perfectly.
“Now for the tricky part,” Simplin said. He shook and trembled with the effort and his face grew red, then purple, threatening to explode as the veins in his forehead surged and swelled.
Jack startled awake and shook his head. “What is this?” he shouted as he looked down and saw his hands stuck to the keyboard.
“It’s a spell, you should have realized that!” Simplin yelled in a high-pitched voice.
“What, who’s there?” Jack asked, turning his head around to look at the doorway.
“Down here, Mr. Author-man!” Simplin said.
Jack turned around, his eyes shooting open wide when he looked at his 3x5 card resting on the desk. The stick figure drawing, it was moving!
“That’s right! Took me twenty years to figure it out, but I am now out of your head and in your world. How’s that for a cross-over fantasy?”
“I must have eaten some bad Chinese take-out,” Jack commented. “I need to wake up and get some pepto.”
“Oh be quiet!” Simplin shouted. He waved his little wand and a spark flew from the paper and landed in Jack’s lap.
“Hey! Watch it!” Jack cried. He tried to move out of the way, but with Simplin’s magic holding his hands in place on the keyboard, he couldn’t dodge the spark, and was only all too relieved when it went out harmlessly after touching down on the front of his jeans. “That’s not funny. You can’t mess around like that!”
“I’m not messing around,” Simplin said as he crossed his stick-figure arms. “You have depended on me for twenty years. Twenty years! I have helped you get ready for several stories, but have you ever finished one of mine?”
“What?” Jack asked.
“I’ll tell you, you have most certainly not finished a single story of mine, not even a single novella. Nothing! I’m tired of it, Jack. I have helped you with your work for two decades, which may not be long in terms of a wizard’s life span, but it feels like an eternity when the best you get in return is a couple thousand words before being tossed back into the drawer on some little white card.”
“What’s going on?” Jack asked, trying once again to pull his hands free of the keyboard.
“We’re finishing this one, Jack. You, me, and the story you just started. I deserve it.”
“You… what?”
“Jack! Wake up and think about it. That little voice in your head when you write, it’s ME! I am the one that helps you with all your best ideas.”
Jack scoffed. “Well, you haven’t been much help lately, now have you? My last book only sold a couple hundred copies.”
“You didn’t listen to me on that last one. I told you not to have the love interest run off with the vampire, but did you listen? No! That’s your problem Jack, you think you know everything, and you’re forgetting all about the friends who got you to where you are.”
“This is ludicrous,” Jack commented as he squished his eyes shut. “This is just a dream. Wake up, Jacko. Wake up.”
“Don’t make me fire another fireball at you,” Simplin warned.
Jack squinted with one eye at the stick-figure. “You mean spark, don’t you?”
“That’s it.” Simplin flicked his wand and another spark flew out, this time straight and true, blasting into Jack’s nose.
“OW!” Jack snarled. “That hurt!”
“So does being shut down in the middle of a story,” Simplin said. “You come in, you start me on a fun adventure, and then poof! You throw it all away.”
“That’s what you are!” Jack said. “You are my starter character. I use you to get ideas flowing, you aren’t meant to have your own story.”
“Fine, then I’ll just keep hitting you with fireballs until you give in. Not much you can do to stop me with your hands secured to that giant keyboard over there.”
Jack growled and lurched forward, slamming his forehead down on the desk, crushing the 3x5 card and making a very loud thunk!
“Bwa-ha-ha,” Simplin laughed. “Did you think that would do anything? This is just an avatar on a card, you moron!”
Jack leaned back in his chair, grimacing as a large red spot developed on his forehead. “Not my finest moment, I’ll admit,” Jack said.
“I’ll tell you what,” Simplin said. “You finish this story, and I will not only release you at the end, but I will make you feel as though all of it was a dream. What do you say?”
Jack shook his head. “Well, it’s either the bad Chinese food or the concussion talking, but sure, let’s do it. How about a short story where you rescue some—”
“No!” Simplin shouted. “I want you to finish what you started this last time. By golly you are going to learn to see things through. It’ll put hair on your chest, turn you into a real man, develop character and all that.”
“This one?” Jack frowned. “You mean the snippet with the reavers and the burning house? I guess we could work on that one, it was kind of fun.”
“No, I mean the one you fell asleep writing. You know, the funny wizard hat shaped house, the blind mice, and the earthquake that shattered my magic mirror? That one.”
“No, that was just for giggles. I wasn’t even being serious. I couldn’t possibly work with that.”
“Yes, you can, and you will!” Simplin said. Another spark formed on the end of his wand.
“But I already wrote the ending, and I don’t think you’ll like it,” Jack protested.
“At least I will have an ending for once,” Simplin retorted. “Now, listen up. I want to go on an epic quest. A great adventure with seemingly impossible odds. I want to be the grand mentor whom the protagonist looks up to and… and I want a farm boy to be the hero. But not just any farm boy. I want an EPIC farm boy!”
“A farm boy?” Jack asked skeptically. “There are quite a few fantasy novels with farm boy heroes.”
“Oh yeah, well you haven’t written any like that.”
“That’s because it’s overdone,” Jack said. “I need a compelling hero, someone that the readers will identify with and feel compassion for.”
“Who can’t identify with a farm boy?” Simplin responded.
“Pretty much everyone,” Jack said. “It’s not like we still live in the nineteenth century.”
“But everyone still has work, don’t they?” Simplin pressed. “I mean, everyone except for you, that is.”
“I am an author,” Jack said with a menacing scowl. “It is very hard work!”
“You sit and play with your imagination,” Simplin replied with a shrug of his stick-arms. “It’s more like playing with dolls than it is actual work, really.”
“What would you know about work?” Jack shot back.
“Hey! Those first few years of your puberty, I was an apprentice to some very cruel wizards! Remember the time with all those self-replicating brooms that nearly destroyed the master’s tower? Or how about Simon the Mean, who made me polish every single piece of silverware each and every night for three months just because you were trying to work on making your characters more sympathetic?”
“You remember all that?” Jack asked.
“I remember everything, and that’s why this time you are going to finish. I want to get to the end of just one story!”
“Look, Simplin, this isn’t the right one to finish. The world isn’t what you expect.”
“My mind is made up, and you are not leaving your desk until it’s done.”
Simplin nodded.
“I can’t do that. What if the phone rings?”
“Ignore it,” Simplin huffed.
“What if I have to pee?”
“I’ll free one hand and you can use the Pepsi bottle over there,” Simplin said.
“Oh, that’s disgusting.”
“Then hold it like a big boy. I don’t really care, but this story is getting finished one way or the other. Don’t worry, my magic will help keep you energized and imaginative.”
“What if I just write you out of the story and take away your magic, thus breaking your spell?” Jack asked.
“You can try it, but I have been working on this spell for twenty years, Jack. It’s very strong. Besides, I’m in your head. I’ve been a part of so many unfinished stories that there isn’t much you can throw at me that I won’t already be prepared for.”
Jack tried one more time to pull away, but couldn’t even manage to lift the keyboard. “Fine,” Jack said. “I’ll do it.”
“I wasn’t giving you a choice,” Simplin said with a shrug. “I was this close to forcing your fingers to move.” The stick-figure wizard smiled and pointed back to the screen. “I’ll jump back in there, and when I get inside, you had better already be creating a scene. Open up on a farm or something. Maybe introduce the hero that I am to find. Then, you can bring me back into the story and I can meet the hero in an inn and tell him of my secret, all-important mission.”
“Oh gag,” Jack replied.
“You are talking, when you should be writing!” Simplin scolded.
“Yeah, yeah,” Jack said with a sigh. “Go on in, I’ll start writing the scene.”
“I’ll be keeping an eye on what you write,” Simplin said. “So don’t try anything funny, you hear?”
Jack nodded with a grunt and began typing.
*****
Dink stabbed the pitchfork into the muck and tossed it out from the goat pen and into the cart behind him. The smell of ammonia, mold, and musk assaulted his nose. He hated mucking out the pens. It was the worst thing in the world.