One.

The problem is I am not sitting here writing this and you are not reading this. I am not real. I am simply a character in someone else's novel. So are you. There is no messianic import to my statements; I wish only to convey the truth as I see it. Whatever you take from this is no consequence to me, for I am simply a messenger of the author, or the Author, if you will. This is no strange, new concept, for we have long considered the idea of Fate to be in the hands of God. I simply profess that my fate lies in the hands of the Author. I give him no attributes such as man has commonly given God, but see him in the light of human error.

Perhaps, the Author is out there somewhere in the night, or the day, writing furiously to keep up with the succession of moments, his or her hand cramping with slivers of pain crawling up their arm. Perhaps, these moments were written half a century ago, the Author long dead to the flesh, nothing more than an idea immortalized in these words. Or else, they are forgotten to Time, but in the thoughts of a scant few readers before falling asleep after a brief hour reading before bed.

These thoughts consume many of my waking hours, but I have just had a revelation of sorts. I suddenly saw the world through the eyes of the Author, tinged with a crystalline precision, an almost absolute form of vision. I was not frightened, but intrigued by what I saw. I saw a man walking down the street. I saw that he was almost transparent; as though I could look through him, look through his life both forwards and back. I knew how he died, how he was born, how he had injured his ankle stumbling drunk off a curb after drinking five beers and two shots of cheap whiskey. I asked myself, in doubt, whether he had not sprained his ankle because of the natural sequence of events one would expect from drinking to excess, or whether or not he had been implied in my thoughts because I had created him.

My sure step wavered and I nearly fell over with the shear weight of realization. I had created this moment. I created this scenario in my head: the alley I was walking down to avoid the curious eyes of the world; the halogen street light half a block away with it's halo of nocturnal angels dancing through the night believing they were revolving around the moon; a silent, spurious breeze passing across my face...

Real Enough

I've been staying awake longer, not sleeping. I've been staying away longer as well. Afraid to come back. But from where? And to where? I've been drinking longer and longer stretches of time, never quite drunk. I haven't been sleeping longer, though. That's the one thing that doesn't add up. I feel like something is out of balance. Something feels wrong. Something. Me? The whole fucking world?

The Middle East burns with the heat of a thousand towers falling. Violence. Terror. Fear. Death. Always Death, ever present. The world spinning off its axis-something wrong, out of whack. Am I becoming the same? Is my internal motor off, burning out? I can smell the ozone in the air, the tingling of the fine hairs on my arms, my ears starting to hum. The world is smoldering. I feel like it will soon erupt, pop loudly, and with a sigh, go out. Thousands upon thousands of years, millions upon millions of lives- gone. Gone. Only the dust will remain. The dust. And the wind. The wind blows the dust about in spiraling clouds, almost...like galaxies?

The wind blows cold and hot. Blowing. Blowing. Passing through the eves of an old, creaking house. Around the roof. Trying to find a way in. And you can hear it, clawing at the walls. At the windowpanes with fingers made of lifeless branches. The dead. The undead. Swaying in the wind. The swirling cacophony of wind. I listen to it even though I know it's all in my head, as though I were young again, reading Poe and Lovecraft in the middle of the night, no one else awake but me. Clocks ticking everywhere. And the sound of the wind. Clocks ticking, calling off the minutes and hours, ticking off the seconds into the future with a grave authority speaking from centuries long turned to dust. Counting down the minutes and hours until the end. Forever and a day. And the last night on earth.

Forever and a day. And a night. What will the last day of your life be like? And the last night? What will you do with it? Will you know? Will you sense it coming and prepare yourself? Will you be capable of having a perfect death? The Perfect Death? The one that is just for you? Not too bitter. Not too sweet. Will you cry out into the darkness with rage and fear? Or will you whimper and beg forgiveness from your God? Will you be caught unawares, blindsided by Fate? Will you lose yourself in the contemplation of your death? Or will you claim ignorance, as though you didn't know of Death?

I hate to tell you this, but...Death is real. Your Death is real. It has a name, whether Suicide. Or Cancer. Or Drowning. Or Burning. Maybe it will be a head-on collision with a Ford F100 driven by Larry who is recently divorced because he drank too much because he lost his job at the factory because he dreamt constantly of what his life would have been like had he not left college in the middle of his third year because Sheila Dawson had broken his heart after a year and a half of bliss because it wasn't as blissful after all, as he had thought, because he was drunk half the time, and besides, she'd met someone, Jake, who treated her the way she was meant to be treated, even if he later called her names and beat her until there was nothing left but a cracked shell of a woman who later took sleeping pills in a motel room in Kansas and never woke up, who, even though she had broken his heart, Larry loved with all his soul, and is currently thinking about while driving 68 mph down a two-lane highway, swerving back and forth across the double yellow line that means "Do Not Pass", at 7:30 in the morning, eight beers past the legal allowable limit thinking really hard about that Sheila Dawson and how much he really did love her, even if, even if she had broken his heart and shattered his dreams, while you, O nameless character, are fiddling with the knob on your radio dial trying to get clear reception so you can listen to the weather report to find out if it will rain tomorrow and whether you should bring your umbrella to work because you're afraid the rain will flatten your hair out, thus showing the world the poor comb-over you use to hide your bald head because Sara at the office might not smile at you when you say, "Hello, Sara. You look lovely this morning," all while you are trying hard to be as charming and handsome as possible, even though you're already married, have been for twelve blissful years, even though it doesn't feel like bliss right now because your wife isn't the same person you married, and neither are you, for that matter, but at least you try to act positive, be supportive, even if she won't, and you haven't had sex in the last three months because she doesn't feel like it and because you don't really care either because she's really let herself go in the last few years and she weighs twice as much as she did when you first met and started dating your second year of college, and because, really, you want to taste those beautiful twenty-three year old lips belonging to Sara at the office, and so here you are, moments away from your own death, thinking about fucking her on your desk some night when you're both working late and she suddenly stops working to tell you she's been secretly in love with you since the moment she laid eyes on you, and you are telling her the same thing, and then you're both ripping each other's clothes off and thrusting with the entire weight of your being, your soul, your very heart, and you're moaning so loud and grunting and calling out each other's name, and the name of God, and you're on the verge of the greatest, most satisfying orgasm of your life, when you realize you've missed the weather report, and you'll just have to bring your umbrella along, just in case, and besides you're afraid of your own hair and not the fact that Larry has just come around a bend in the road, has just crossed far over into your lane, is now traveling at 73 mph, trying to open another beer, still thinking of Sheila Dawson, while you are headed towards him at 62 mph, for a combined total of 135 mph, while you grope yourself thinking of the last residual moments of Sara's 23 year old cunt wrapped around your five and a half inch cock, in fact, almost the last thoughts of your boring, safe, pathetic life before you and Larry collide, killing poor, lonesome Larry instantly, the steering column finally completing the job Sheila Dawson had done so long ago by crushing his chest and heart, although you still have a few more painful moments of life before your very own Death.

This is your death. Are you ready for it? As you lay dying on the asphalt, the blood pouring out of your eyes and ears, you blink away red tears and see a tall figure coming towards you. He seems to have no discerning features. He may or may not be dressed in black, as though for a funeral. He seems to have something to tell you. He is now kneeling down and leaning over you. He puts his hands gently on both sides of your broken and bleeding face, and now he leans even closer to you and kisses your forehead. Still holding your head in his hands, he says, "I am sorry for the pain I've caused you. I didn't mean for it to end this way."

"Are you God?" you ask, choking back tears.

"Yes. And no," the stranger answers. "I am your creator, but I am not God."

I see the reaction on your face, and realize my words have hurt you more than the crash, that there is more you want to ask me. So, I lean closer, my ear almost touching your bloody lips, and still I can barely hear you.

"What...is my...name?" you ask with desperately imploring eyes, bright and dull at the same time.

I'm so sorry. You don't have one. I never gave you one. Then you die in my arms and I take your death away from you. A small tear rolls down my cheek. I recoil suddenly. Suddenly aware I have given Life and taken it. I feel like a child who has just killed a bug beneath its foot, though it hadn't meant to step on it. Now the child cries at the sight of the bug, lifeless and crushed on the sidewalk. Have I killed you? Will you, poor nameless character, now haunt me? Will I now wonder whether I am not just the figment of someone's imagination? I tremble at the thought, the warm summer evening growing chill. I feel the skin on my arms go goosey. I'm not the figment of someone's imagination, am I? Am I!? I'm real. I'M REAL! I shout into the bar and everyone grows silent, looking at me.

"You're real enough. Now, pay your tab and get out of here. You're scaring the clientele."