A burgeoning adolescent writer sits idly at his workspace, he is in the process of writing a story. He is a meek-eyed, unkempt boy with a feeble, slightly malnourished build and combed black hair. Despite his weakly, dishevelled appearance, his talent exceeded all physicality and was often lauded by adults triple his age to be ‘undeniably genius’. He received much praise and acclaim in this manner, many applauded the young boy for his way of using clever rhetoric and elegant prose, all while contriving genuine and lifelike characters.
Indeed, he knew he had a tremendous talent in this area. The boy in fact, often thought that his talents were completely wasted on the likes of highschool competitions. True, he would emerge uncontested in each competition he entered, but he gained no satisfaction or pleasure from ruthlessly defeating children who were undoubtedly unable to create a cohesive plot even if their life depended on it. Rather, it was the process of creating these fictitious tales that he could take pride in.
He was testing himself. The boy used these writing competitions simply to test his ideas, he was after all, blessed with an immense gift. He sat in a state of reverie, feeling prideful on the success of his recent experiments. They ultimately became distant to him however, as he was ready to move on to his new project. He held pen to paper, and began to write. As words started to form in his mind, so did the ideas for characters he would implement. In these fleeting moments of self-awareness while writing, he would often wonder if even Tolstoy could match the talent he possessed. The knowledge he had accrued through his writing experiments had made him adopt an iconoclastic view of other writers. This was of course, the result of his over-bloated sense of self.
His conscious remarks were soon replaced by an all consuming concentration, he had begun his writing process. Horror was easily his favourite genre, he loved the thrill he got from writing it. Knowing this, it is unsurprising that the story he would write would be a short horror story. He envisioned the story he would create, and started theorizing ways to maximise fear. Of course, he thought, what better way to instil fear into the reader than to use those two. The diction on paper had become a vision, amalgamating to form a window into another world. His vehement writings became fleshed out, his characters were now alive. He watched them as they examined their surroundings, completely lost in their current whereabouts. As he was the writer, he felt the impenetrable fervor of terror they felt as they stood in front of the insidious, gothic manor that loomed over them. The characters with no choice, foolishly entered.
The boy was fond of the vampire story, he derived great enjoyment from creating them. He studied on as the characters made their way deeper into the house, an abyss of an all encompassing darkness. The walls were rotting, the wallpaper peeled off and seemed to coalesce with the floor and ceiling, along with the great abundance of cobwebs. The benign feeling you have when you are in a homely residence was not here, an eeriness permeating from every nook and cranny the house had to offer, the pair knew they were unsafe.
A young couple, both of a pale complexion, the male sported dirty blonde hair while the female was brunette. The male had a rough, thuggish physiognomy that made him look constantly tense, he may have even been considered boyish in the past. He was quite a lean boy, much above the average height for a man, while his female partner was much smaller in stature compared to the male. The woman had a petite, rounded face that appeared as evidence of a once beautiful woman. The couple were written to be young millenials, but their current features made them appear much older. Tears ran down their cheeks, their faces were both contorted into wrinkled visages that revealed the terrifying extent to their suffering. As he surveyed the young couple, the boy hoped that they would meet the friend that he had written in the manor.
He was quite a big fan of Nosferatu; he had hoped that they would appreciate his love-letter to the classic film. Of course, he believed his reimagining of the vampire was far more monstrous and grotesque than the original.
He held an ear to ear grin as he watched the couple navigate helplessly down the decrepit corridors that he had created. Unbeknownst to most, the appraisal the boy constantly received was the byproduct of the suffering of many characters in a continuous cycle of torment. Ever since birth, he was able to blur the line of fiction and reality seamlessly. In fact he even acknowledged that it wasn’t himself alone that equated to his great talent - the characters seemed to write themselves!
The boy watched, unable to mask the boundless joy he felt. He wasn’t sure why he felt so joyous when watching his creations, but his detachment from the characters paralleled the way a child would play with and break their toys. Despite being an adolescent, in that way he was incredibly child-like. He wanted to control his narrative, and he became indignant when his toys wouldn’t do what he wanted. Of course, the power he held allowed him to do whatever he pleased.
The quiet sobs that the couple shared together would turn into a frightening, cacophony of blood-curdling screams. It appeared that the monster he had written in finally managed to catch its prey. He watched in glee as the creature bit through their flesh with ease, the sound of tendons and tissue tearing and popping. Their cries of anguish soon became muted, the gnawing and crushing of their bones became the only sound audible. Their mangled corpses would not go wasted, as the creature savored every last inch of their bodies.
The boy noted that it was possibly too violent and required some tweaks and proofreading, but he was nonetheless content with the result. After that performance, he simply couldn’t wait to write them in again. Their reactions he felt were very genuine - unlike that first time. He reminisced on the couple’s previous attempts to avoid the narrative. They were defiant, painstakingly so. They consistently attempted to find some kind of escape, to no avail. However, after the boy had written them into dozens of torturous scenarios, their spirit inevitably broke, allowing their reactions to be at their most visceral. Reprehensible his acts may be, the boy knew that this power was much larger than himself.
At times when he wasn’t feeling an immense pleasure for the pain he was indirectly causing, he pitied them greatly. Then again, their endless torment was definitely better than the fate of the characters in his scrapped stories, imprisoned within the page; helpless to the infinite darkness that surrounded them. He wondered if they would continue to remain in that state after his death. He was reassured however, as he knew that his ideas would continue for millenia.
What a hellish existence, he thought, and how cruel too. What kind of god would birth them into such a world, one filled with infinite suffering and endless resentment? He chuckled at his musings, this question was of course rhetorical. He thought it to be wickedly hilarious whenever his characters would begin to pray to their god. The boy thought, don’t they understand?
He was their god.