Short Stack

Characterization

"Got any interesting requests, Monica?" Ralph asked as he polished one of his characterization guns and rubbed out an ink stain left behind by the man he had captured the day before. Armed with nothing but an outdated textbook, the retired history teacher hadn't stood a chance.

"Nothing special," said his intern. She scowled as she scrolled through a typo-laden email. "Some guy from Boston sent in a request for a couple to feature in his young adult romance novel. He wasn't very specific." She sighed. "At least he didn't mention a love triangle."

Ralph rolled his eyes. He knew unique characters like police officers masquerading as rodeo clowns were rare, but he would have appreciated a request that was at least a little more interesting. At this point, even a request for a zookeeper would be a refreshing change.

"He sounds like an amateur," Ralph said. "I doubt he'd even notice if I sent him two chimpanzees. At least this will be easy though." He popped two character containment capsules into the back of his characterization gun and shoved it into his holster. "See you in half an hour."

"Can't I at least watch?" Monica asked. She crossed her arms with a huff. "You haven't even let me try to make a character yet. How am I supposed to get a job after this if you won't let me do anything important?"

Ralph sighed and rubbed his temples. "Believe me, you still aren't ready. For Pete's sake, you cried when I brought back that teacher."

"Hey, that guy didn't deserve to be captured. I had him for World History a few years ago, and he seemed decent enough for an old man with an unhealthy obsession with the French Revolution. And he just retired last year, too."

"Monica, can we please save this for some other time? It's not like I ever capture anyone that important."

"Not to you maybe, but that man was important to me. If it weren't for him, I never would have graduated."

"I'm never going to hear the end of this, am I?" Ralph muttered. "Look, maybe I'll let you watch me next time if you finish cleaning the other guns by noon. There was still residue in their capsules from that rave last time I checked, and I'd rather not deliver more hormonal teenagers than I have to. Those things are overused enough as it is."

Monica groaned.

"Hey, if you do a really good job and stop whining about who I capture, maybe I'll even let you pick my next target. Anyway, I'd better get going." Ralph gave his gun a quick once-over before exiting his office.

###

The smell of sunscreen assaulted Ralph's nose the moment he got out of his car. Sand crunched under his shoes as he walked along the shore and searched for candidates.

Empty beer cans and discarded hypodermic needles lay scattered across the sand. People seldom visited this litter-covered hellhole save for teenagers looking for a place to get drunk, high, and even dumber than usual. With school in session, only the most committed delinquents dotted the shore. It didn't take long for Ralph to find a pair that made him raise an eyebrow.

With a tattoo of a leopard crouching on her forearm, bright blue hair, and a piercing in her nose, Ralph thought that the chick cackling at her own joke looked like the personification of cliché rebel girls. A slightly younger looking girl, around 17 years old, laughed alongside her before pecking the other girl on the cheek. Her fierce looking companion swept her off her feet into an intense make out session moments later. Ralph allowed them to vacuum seal their lips together for a few seconds before taking out his characterization gun and firing at the older girl.

Once the character conversion bullet hit her, the rebel dissolved into a cluster of Rockwell Extra Bold text before being sucked into one of the gun's character capsules, leaving ink dripping down the gun's muzzle. Words like passionate, blunt, and lonely bounced around inside one of the transparent storage compartments.

The girl's partner had only a second to gape at Ralph before he shot her and turned her into Times New Roman. Compassionate, patient, energetic.

Ralph almost regretted converting her.

He patted the characterization gun's capsules and wiped its muzzle with a handkerchief before walking back to his car. The author had only requested a couple. He hadn't said anything about needing straight people. Even if the girls' parents missed them, at least these teens would help increase the representation of the LGBT BLT whatever-it's-called-now community in fiction.

###

"Monica, you won't believe the characters I made today." The girl was sitting at his desk, reassembling a squeaky-clean characterization gun. He heard a capsule click into place before the gun was pointed at him. "What the hell are you doing?" Ralph yelled, reaching for his own gun. It wouldn't do him any good; he had only prepared it to convert two people today.

Monica grinned. "Just filling a request, sir. A young woman from Virginia asked for a character creator for her short story, and you fit the bill pretty well." She fired, transforming Ralph into Comic Sans. Judgmental, immoral, insensitive.

Yes, he would do.

Word Count: 880 Words

This was originally published in the June 2018 issue of ARTPOST Magazine.

This is easily the most meta story I've ever written. Ralph irritates me more now than he did when I first wrote this, and that's saying something considering I always intended him to be unpleasant. He's just one of those characters that really gets under my skin, probably because he represents a tendency that I hate seeing in writers. Some people are so busy slapping characters into generic roles or playing diversity bingo that they forget to actually flesh out their characters...