The Author

The night was dark and humid. It swallowed the light of my torch like the hungry maw of a mighty wild beast. On I went, the ghostly willows straining to gently caress my face, like a mother would her babe, as I passed them by. I saw the light of the wetland shanty approaching through the mist and gloom, its watchful silence sent a chill down my spine that lingered long after I was struck from behind and fell, unconscious, into the soft mud, peppered with jagged leaves and grasses.

                                                                                            . . .

I am aware of the darkness pressing in around me. The harsh luminescence and buzzing of a flickering halogen globe the only clue shedding light on my situation. Regardless, I scan the black, but nothing jumps out at me. Turning my attention back to the unsteady pillar supporting my sanity, I hear the distinct clacking of an old-timey typewriter. It's every note ricocheting inside my skull like the buckshot of a rusted musket in an abandoned mine; hitting nothing, yet echoing back endless noise. Closing my eyes in an attempt to fight the auditory onslaught, I focus my mind's eye on the source of the sound. There, encompassed in light, a figure sits at a small writing desk with the source of all the noise perched atop it. He, or at least it appears to be a 'he', types with incredible speed and, as I watch, tears a page from the machine, balls it tightly between his lean and gangly fingers and tosses it over his shoulder before replacing it with a fresh page, seemingly produced from thin air. He doesn't start writing again though. Instead, his chair floats from the desk with the combined grace of yellowed leaves in fall and turns its passenger to look upon my figure sprawled on the ground.

Instantly conscious of every pore in my skin filling with anxious sweat, I gingerly ease to my feet and give myself a full-body brush down. All the while, his gaze coolly calculates my form, as if discerning its worth. Unimpressed, his chair returns him to his work. Suddenly, I feel a soft but persistent pressure against the small of my back. Surrendering to the unseen force, I edge closer and closer towards the unnatural auditory conflict between the impossibly loud machine and its absolutely silent operator. Though his lips remained chained together, embracing in silence, the words as they were typed, floated through the mind of my mind's eye, whispering to the depths of my soul.

'...David walks along the path, hands in his pockets, lazily kicking the leaves on his way home from work. He had taken the scenic route through the park, needing some time to himself that the subway express train simply could not offer him. Feeling lonely despite the warm afternoon sun, the breeze tugging playfully at colourful kites, David ponders the relationships in his life; his mother, a world away doing mission work in Zimbabwe, and the neighbour's cat who visits his apartment each morning to defecate and steal food. Stepping off the curb to cross the street, still deep in thought David doesn't see the approaching van as it speeds towards him in the changing traffic, too fast to stop. Tyres screech, horns blare, David flies with the white winged pigeons from the gutters and comes to his eternal rest in the rear windshield of a single mother's smart car. The end.'

The typewriter ceases its clacking and the page is placed ink-down on a notably large pile of similarly placed papers, that I somehow didn't notice when I first laid eyes on the writing desk. Another page is produced from the nothingness and fed into the machine, but when my attention turns back to the pile, it's gone without a trace, eaten by the darkness. Once again, the words meandered me.

'...BANG! Another plate hit the wall. BANG! A cup and saucer accompany the plate's fractured remains. 'More work' was all Jane could think as she heard the commotion in the dinner from her hands and knees on the kitchen floor, a sudsy scrubbing brush held firmly in her left hand. 'NO!' The scream resounds through the thick and grime soaked walls, assaulting Janes ears. Her curiosity winning the mental battle that had ensued the cry, Jane leaves the floor half cleaned and ventures towards the parting door, ajar on it's rusted hinges, it's porthole window revealing nothing out of the ordinary. Opening the door so gently that not a flake of rust is disturbed on either hinge, Jane steps out of the kitchen. The worn edge of a wooden baseball bat greets her face, sending her nose on a permanent vacation into her brain. Collapsing to the floor where she once stood, she enters eternal slumber. The end.'

As I expected, the typewriter pauses it's mechanical chimes and, just as before, the page is removed and placed ink down on a large pile of paper, that promptly disappears once it is out of my line of sight. The man's withered fingers return to the keys gingerly, knobbed knuckles flexing slowly at first, then becoming a blur of motion as I feel the words once again inside me.

'Once again turning hopefully towards the clock ticking loudly from above the door, William wishes he could stop time. Unlike the other kids around him, he doesn't want the bell to ring. He would much rather stay here where he is somewhat safe from the older kids. The bullies. The ones that call him names and push him around in the hall. He wants to stand up to them, but he is too scared. Pulled from his thoughts by the dreaded sound of the unfortunately punctual bell, William half-heartedly puts his worksheets and pens in his bag, arranging them neatly so as to not hinder his access to anything the bullies might demand from him. Walking from the room, he catches sight of the senior gang in the fringes of his peripheral vision and turns to walk away from them down a different hall. "Hey looks guys, it's Willy Wanker!" William walks faster. " Where ya offta Willy? What's ya hurry?" Faster. "C'mon fellas, less-see if he 'as any golden tickets!" William hears heavy footsteps before a large hand falls on his shoulder, squeezing it like a vice, stopping him in place. "What 'ave ya got for us Willy Wanker?" Wanting nothing more than to dissolve into sand and slip through the gum and grime covered floorboards into oblivion, William just stares blankly back into the bullies faces. William is thrown to the floor, grazing his elbows. "Give us ya golden tickets!" Obliging, William gently removes his bag from his back and unzips it only just enough to fit his hand through. "C'mon, Give 'em to us!" Reaching into the depths of his bag, William slowly withdraws his hand like an arcade claw machine, revealing his prize; his fathers Baby Browning pocket pistol, painted gold. Realization hits the bullies faces at the same time as the bullets pass cleanly through them and they crumple to the ground. William, now free from the bullies, takes his 'golden ticket' and crumples next to the bullies, his life dripping through the floorboards into oblivion. The end.'

In the ensuing silence as the page is removed and placed on its pile, I reflect on the three endings provided by the man. They were too real, too human, to have been figments of his imagination. Somehow, I felt, they must have been real deaths, of real people, and that this mysterious man was like some kind of Fate, cutting the strings on people's lives like in the greek myths. Progressing through my mind as fast as William's bullets, this series of thoughts lead me to realise that, in my current situation, I had a choice. I could choose whether or not to allow this one man to control the lives of the planet's population. 'No one man should have all that power' The words float through my mind from some long forgotten memory of my childhood. A fresh page had just been placed in the typewriter and the man's fingers now approached the keys as if in slow motion. Making a rash decision, I charge the man with more force than I believed I could possess. Upon impact, the man and his chair careen wildly of into the darkness and I stumble back towards the desk from where I fell. hastily skimming over the keys, I begin to write.

'The Writer in the darkness continues to float in his chair endlessly into the abyss, feeding the hungry void. In his absence, the people in the world, unbeknown to them, become the controllers of their own fates; the writers of their own stories. The typewriter, its desk and the void in which it exists, disappears forever.'

The desk and typewriter dissolve into an immeasurable array of miniscule particles and whirl away, caught in some ethereal eddy of tornado-like destruction, taking the floor from beneath my feet on its way. I fall towards the black, in slow motion, like feathers through the sky on a breezeless Spring morning, fully expecting to be snatched from the air and consumed by the pressing darkness. The descending feeling increases and, turning myself in the air, I look in the direction of my trajectory and the destination at the end of this seemingly endless fall; my own limp body lying prone and lifeless in the mud of the wetland marsh. The ground rushes up to meet me and I hit my body with resuscitating force, sitting up, wide eyed, with a rasping gasp, tasting the rancid mud on my tongue. Thoroughly shocked, I just manage to grasp the sound of approaching sirens and flashing lights before I fall, unconscious, into the mud and jagged leaves once more.

                                                                                                 . . .

Groaning, I shield my eyes from the harsh artificial light of a fluorescent bulb as I slowly sit up and survey my surroundings. I am in a hospital, and as a nurse enters the room, I fall back into my bed and pass out from exhaustion, a content smile spreading across my lips.