Last August This conversation took place via twitter.
"Feel a bit like a mad god today. I just
eliminated a character from my WIP as if he never existed. #amediting"
I simply asked, "Did he go gentle in the night? Or did you drop a
piano on him? Your tweet is the first line of a short story. #amwriting
:)"
His reply.
I took the big cosmic eraser to him. None of
the other characters are any the wiser :)"
This exchange made me think of "Eye In The Sky" The Alan Parsons Project. It stayed with me for a few days until I sat down and wrote it out. You really should listen to the song as you read it. ;) So without further ado -
Cosmic Eraser
The mad god must be angry. Let me explain, becoming a
character in the mad god's universe is our ultimate goal. We are nameless,
faceless, waiting for the mad god to call us to action. Our mad god has no
rhyme or reason that we can see. He just calls us out, a few at a time, as he
needs us.
What we become is up to him. So many have gone before me,
and so many more wait for their turn. It's interesting really how we just wait
here in this void. But that is not what this is all about.
This is about the one that came back. I'll call him
Character X because like all of us he has no name, or if he received one, he
won't tell us. Character X won't talk to any of us about what happened. It's
really very peculiar, we're all unsure of what it means. This has never
happened before.
Character X had left months before when the last call to
action came. Character X had been chosen with a few others, and as usual they
had left to great fanfare, knowing they would live forever in the mad god's
creation. It is a great honor to be called into service. I only know that I want
to be chosen as much as everyone else.
It all began on a regular Tuesday afternoon. We could hear
the quiet scraping of the pencil on the paper. The mad god was in edit
mode. He was molding and shaping his labor into something only he could see. I'm
sure somewhere, somehow it served a purpose, but I couldn't know what that
purpose was, outside of wanting to be a part of it.
The scratching came to a halt and we heard a deep sigh.
The mad god was contemplating. His mood permeated our existential plane like a
dense fog. It hung in the air almost as if he had written it into being. This
too was new. A sound began, one that was unfamiliar. It sounded like soft
rubbing.
The mad god continued with whatever strange event he was
wrapped up in. The sound grew in volume, until with a crazy whoosh of the mad
god's breath the fog slowly disappeared.
In its place stood Character X. He looked around at all of
us with the saddest expression that I've ever seen. He said, "I've been
erased." That was it. Since that moment Character X hasn't spoken a word
to anyone. The mad god hasn't felt the need to explain what this
"erased" is all about. All we know is Character X came back from creation.
The first one...
2 comments:
I've been avoiding starting revisions. The Cosmic Eraser, mad god and Character X are just what I needed to read. Thank you for making me smile and putting me in a much lighter mood about the whole revision process.
"Kill Your Darlings..." Right? ;) I'm truly glad I could help lighten your mood. Thank you for reading and letting me know. :)
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