Curious

Chapter 20: Explosive Fickleness

CHAPTER TWENTY: Explosive Fickleness

So much pain. Simon almost did not know how to deal with it. Everything hurt. Everything burned. And the stench—Simon almost did not know what to do with it. He lay there, unable to gather the strength to move, unable, in essence, to do anything but lie there and pray that the pain would leave him. He never wished more to die than in that moment.

It smelled disgustingly of smoke and of sickness. Simon felt like throwing up at the smell—but in all of his pain and his unable to move, he was unable to do anything productive. Not even vomiting. His throat overwhelmed, Simon couldn't breathe. His eyes seared from the smoke. He felt strangely vulnerable, exposed. As if he had experienced what hell was like.

He heard people crying in the background and wondered what happened. As he lay there, absorbed in his own pain, slowly it came back to him. The writer's tantrum, the horrible storm, and the fire. He knew that somehow that I was behind all of it. After all, I was behind everything. I was running the show.

I could feel Simon's heart beating fast, like a rabbit's. He was numb and filled with adrenaline all at once. Indifferent, but still shocked. Somewhere within him, he had always known I was capable, but up until this moment he hadn't realized how much.

Simon eventually gathered the strength to get up, wincing as he did. But he needed to do something, needed to occupy himself so that the pain didn't overcome him. He helped the people around him—providing a helping hand when needed and covering corpses as well. The princesses and the king were mostly unharmed, but the castle was a mess. The castle looked charred and as Simon watched it, some of the stone cracked into powder and a wing of the castle fell in. He spent most of his time resenting the writer. The more he saw the damage, the more he thought about it, the more he hated the writer.

It was a few hours before I showed up. I was a bit tired after my episode but I was fine as was to be expected. I don't normally put myself in the line of fire, only others. However, as soon as he saw me, Simon gave me a venomous look, making me remember the phrase 'if looks could kill.' Oh, cliches. Sometimes its hard to remember that before they were cliche, they were the truth.

"What the hell have you done?"

I shrugged, looking away, embarrassed. It was true, I had lost my temper. I had vented all my frustration on my characters. Not the best thing to do, but it happens to all writers. It's just better to get it out while you can. "I...I kind of had an episode. I was just panicking."

"You call this panicking?" Simon said. A person screamed in the background as if on cue.

I shrugged. "It's just that this story is just so hard to write. It takes me lots of time. So much frustrations. I just couldn't take it anymore. I had to vent my frustrations out somehow. SO...I..." I looked down at the floor in embarrassed. "So I...I kind of burned the manuscript."

"WHAT?"

I hurried to clarify. "But it was okay. I had all of it saved on my hard drive. I just needed to see the physical copy burn, to get out all my emotions. It had gotten to the point where I thought that the manuscript was beyond help and it upset me to think I had written so much, spent so much time on it, only to see it fail. So I burned it. I didn't know at the time that it would physically hurt you but then I thought it was a good idea if you experienced my pain. Now, you know what it feels like to be me, to have to deal with all this pain all the time, not knowing if it's worth it in the end."

"You are insane."

"That may be true. But a little insanity here and there never hurt. And for the record, I wasn't being insane. This kind of behavior is evident in all writers. It's nothing serious. And when I felt better, I got back to writing and here I am writing about how I am explaining this to you. See? No harm done."

Simon gave me a look and then limped away. Apparently, this conversation was over. This was fine by me. I may have had a little episode but Simon was not off the hook yet and he still had to convince the king of Tara's deficiencies.

He turned back after a few steps. "Why did you cause all this pain?"

I blinked. "There, I literally removed all your pain. Now no one feels pain. No one remembers any fire except you. No trees or castles are damaged. Everything is as it once was. Such is the power of words."

Simon was not satisfied by this. In his opinion, the writer should not have acted such a childish way in the first place, but considering his own faults (which he irrationally was not considering at the moment), there was really nothing he could say. Plus, there was nothing he could do. I was the writer, he was the character. Except for a few moments, I was the one who controlled him, not him controlling me, or the other way around.

Simon continued on to the castle and to his work. Indeed, it did appear to be a normal, somewhat idealistic day at the castle. Everything was as it was before. But he was still in a bad mood. He still remembered and the shock of it was too great just to wish away. When he realized he had to carry his duties, he growled. He snapped at the princess. Was more rude than usual to anyone and everyone he met. It was obvious that something had happened, yet no one else, no other character, who didn't understand what happened, also did not understand why he was such a bad mood.

He needed to calm down. He knew he needed to calm down. He reminded himself that he needed to stay cautious now. Never mind how mad he was at me, he needed to get the job I gave him down. The quicker he got it down, the quicker he could go home and be rid of me.

But Simon didn't care. He had been burned alive. There might be no way out of the writer's conundrum, but there was also no way he was forgetting an experience like that. He would not forget. He would not forgive.