The Fourth Wall

I think life is best compared to a pen. Once written, the story stays the same, and cannot be changed. Sure, you can scribble all over the mistakes, but they are still there, obvious to anyone who cares to look.

            So, life is simple pen and paper. Some might say that is too simple an analogy. I kindly disagree. For what else can tell as many stores as a pen or pencil? What else can weave a convoluted tale of other dimensions?

            However, every story needs a writer. From my pen flows not ink, but life.



            It started with an idea, as all stories do. What if the stories of an author came true? What if the horrors of his own tales found him, and twisted him to their bidding? I began to write, not knowing the power my fiction held. It is quite ironic, looking back. I was young then, if only in mind. I wrote without thinking of any possible repercussions; for what harm could come from simple fantasy?

            I was taught the folly of my ways by a man with no name.

            He didn’t wait until night. Chloroform overwhelmed my senses, and I fell into the unforgiving concrete of my front porch.

            I didn’t feel panic. No dread gripped my heart. I sat calmly on my cot, waiting for my captor, and vaguely wondered why someone would have a jail cell built into their home.

            …the man with no name approached his prey…

            The true horror of my situation became apparent. I began to hyperventilate, and my vision was fading.

            “The end is nigh! The end is nigh!” he shouted, spit hanging in strings from his abundant jowls.

            I heard a keening scream, and realized that I was the source. I clamped my mouth shut, but I was too late.

            The hunter approaches, I thought.



            He looked exactly as he should have. His face was fat and pudgy, with his eyes in stark contrast- they were large, wide and alert. My nameless character stood before me, but did nothing. His eyes held no pity, harbored no compassion. He was made to kill, despite his unfit appearance. I had crafted him in that way.

            I was surprised at myself. I didn’t tend to give in to my delusions. This was obviously a hallucination brought on by work anxiety.

            My reassuring thoughts had no effect on no-name.

            He was breathing heavily, and I saw tears fall from his eyes. He was supposed to be an emotionless killer, not a sobbing pacifist. Then again, he could simply be coddling me, pulling me into an elaborate trap.

            My writer’s mind reeled, overwhelmed by the situation. My survival chance was extremely low. The man with no name was beginning to steady himself. He looked at me hatefully, his dark grey eyes boring into me. He took a step forward.

            “Forgive me father, for I have sinned.” he said, and dropped to his knees.



I was stunned. His voice hit me first; it was exactly as I had described it

…deep and powerful, with no hint of compassion…

in Cutting Teeth. Then, his words. The man with no name was not religious.

            As far as you know, my mind whispered to me, and I shuddered. He was still on the ground, his tears wetting the concrete floor around the cell. For the first time, I noticed my surroundings, and was taken aback by their careless appearance.

            The man with no name was neat and meticulous. This room was in chaotic disarray. Clothes strewn about, old food wrappers blanketing a dusty carpet which abruptly ended and gave way to the cold concrete on which I now stood, the man with no name a few feet in front of me.

            I could smell him now; smell the weeks of encrusted sweat and dirt. He was close, almost close enough to strangle me through the bars of my cell. It occurred to me to move back, out of the way of his deadly hands, but I didn’t.

            I stared into the face of my undoing. Or, rather, stared into the face of a vivid hallucination. I knew it could be real, and told myself so, but I didn’t believe me.

            He stood up, his face streaked with tears, and a horrible anger stole over his face.

            “Why do you mock me so, father?” he asked. I was dumbfounded, unable to say anything.

            He was next to the bars before I was aware he had moved. His stench was overwhelming. His face turned to a sneer, and his eyes…

            Spheres of hatred.



            I wrote. I had no intention for a sequel- not yet at least- but it had to be said.

            And so I wrote.

            I wrote of the man with no name, and wrote of the man he kidnapped. I wrote about his changed ways. But it was not what I wrote about that mattered. It was the writing itself. To get my imagination on paper, to bring my stories into the light. As long as it came from me, it didn’t matter.

            I wrote until my hand was black with ink. Thirty pages, not all of them good. But they were mine, and that was all that mattered.



            I got up from the chair of my writing desk, heading for the shower. Ink now covered my face, and one of the pages was ruined by drool.

            It was all a hallucination. I wrote, and dreamt of my story. Which was a good explanation, except it was wrong. It didn’t happen in that order. The man with no name captured me, and then I wrote about it.

            Or so I thought. Had he really kidnapped me at all, or was I going insane? I didn’t know. I honestly didn’t want to know. Either one meant dire consequences, for me at least. So I acted like it never happened, which it didn’t, so I could find out why it did. This, in all honesty, makes absolutely no sense. Or, rather, it makes no sense to you.

            I left the bathroom after finishing my shower, and went to check if my writing had any semblance of coherency. The desk had nothing on it. I opened the drawers, and they were empty as well. I instinctively turned my head, and looked around the room. The only thing different was the lack of anything I had ever wrote. If you are a writer, then you know how I felt at that point. If you aren’t… well, there are no words to describe it.

            There was a feeling to the room now. The writing desk below the window, the shelves stacked with CDs, the small television on the wall; these were normal. But the feeling coming from the room...

            To put it into easily understood terms, it was not of this world. I didn’t feel fear, exactly, but emptiness. I felt like I was nothing and yet my mind screamed to be everything. I started walking out of the room, and found I could not bring myself to do so. I fell to the floor, and slept once again.



[This is not the entire story, only the beginning.]