Vengeful Creations || ONC 2021

Chapter Twelve (B)

"Oh my god..." I whispered.

My hand flew to my mouth. I hadn't thought about this girl in fifteen years. But there was no mistake: I was staring into the face of the protagonist from my first novel. My first abandoned novel.

NAME: Shaunti Dupree
ALIASES: ???
AGE: 17
OCCUPATION: junior in high school
LOCATION: some town ???
TIME: year 1995
WRITTEN WORK: "The Bad Boy Next Door"
STATUS: discontinued
DESCRIPTION: angsty, moody, secretly deep, attracted to guys who seem "dangerous" (such as her next door neighbor: Justin Evans), likes books about werewolves & aggressive music, long black hair, brown eyes, petite...

"Shaunti?" I asked.

She was still a teenager. Still brooding in her bedroom with the mismatch furniture and curtains. Still staring at but not reading her assigned copy of Macbeth. After all these years...

Shaunti stared at me, a disgruntled expression on her youthful, pretty face. The grungy instrumental part of "You Oughta Know" thumped from the huge boombox on her desk. The song perfectly matched the dark mood that emanated from her, and I felt a pang of guilt.

"Oh," she said, her voice flat. "I get it. You're the author. Nice of you to drop by. Guess you forgot all about me, huh?"

I flinched at the uncomfortable truth of her words. "I never forgot about you," I said. (Half true.) "I just moved on to other projects." (Mostly true.)

"Uh-huh," she grunted. She shoved her fingers through her hair. "You mean 'better' projects." (Not entirely untrue.)

I bit my lip. "I didn't say that."

"You didn't have to," Shaunti snapped. "I'm not stupid. I know books about insecure teenage girls who fall for 'bad boys' are vapid, and predictable, and cliché as hell. That's why bored, desperate housewives like them so much. But you didn't have to just leave me here. You could have recycled me into another story." (Ouch. So true.)

"You're not wrong," I admitted. "And for what it's worth, I'm sorry. I lost interest in your story because the concept is a dead horse's saddlebag of redundancies, but that's not your fault. You're a great character."

"Don't blow smoke up my ass," Shaunti said with a sneer. "It's beneath you."

"Hey!" Peter protested. "If you're gonna openly be a bitch—"

"Peter, stop," I interrupted. "She has every right to be angry."

"Peter, huh?" Shaunti asked. She appraised him openly. "You're kinda hot. And rude. Sort of my type, actually."

"Uh, yeah, hard pass," Peter said.

"Whatever." Shaunti shrugged and looked at Hamlet. "Your clothes are weird. Who are you?"

"Prince Hamlet of Denmark," he replied.

"Hamlet?" Shaunti repeated. She held up her copy of Macbeth. "So, you're like this guy's...friend?"

"Certainly not," Hamlet sniffed. "I abhor the employment of witches to better one's position."

"Oookay?" Shaunti said. She shrugged again and leaned back on her elbows. "So, creator, what are you doing here?"

"We're just passing through," I said with a lame shrug.

"Right. Of course," she snipped. "I mean, why would you be here to finish what you started? Why would you care that I've been moping around this room, pining over Justin, listening to angry Alanis Morissette music on constant replay since you were eighteen years old?"