Alastair

“I, uh, this… I know this isn’t my best work, but I’m under a lot of pressure,” Morgan mumbles. Colors return to his face, overtaking his features down to his neck. He’s redder than the dawn. “I’ll edit it and maybe that’ll work?”

“Do so,” I demand.

But as time carries on and sunlight creeps through the dark curtains, nothing comes to pass. Morgan writes and edits for hours, each time finishing the chapter with a hopeful gleam to his eyes. Then that gleam falters when he realizes I’ve yet to depart.

I’m almost insulted that he doesn’t appreciate my presence but, admittedly, I’d rather not lay eyes upon him either. He’s so glum I feel the urge to cry for him.

This cowering boy is supposedly my creator? He’s too thin with a height that barely reaches my shoulders. A commoner has more flattering attire than him. The dark bags under his eyes threaten to stain his entire face. He mumbles consistently and flinches when I so much as twitch. How could he have created the ever so fantastical me? Is this the price a warlock pays for channeling the great power of the Internet?

“This isn’t working,” I growl after another failed attempt. Morgan grips the edges of the laptop, lowering his disgraced head. “What exactly were you doing when I arrived? Perhaps you must mimic it exactly.”

“I was writing like I usually do.” Morgan nods at the broken desk. “I sat down after dinner and started the final chapter. I wrote as I always did. What about you?” He gnaws his bottom lip until it swells. “Did you do something from inside the book? This could have nothing to do with me.”

“Yes, yes, that could be true. If one of us were to accomplish such a grand feat, it would certainly be me.”

Morgan grumbles a vulgar word under his breath. If Morgan is truly my creator, now I know where my best friend received his filthy tongue from. I pray to the Gods that Jaxon’s safe in our world. Please. Please be safe.

“Marcius defeated me, a fate wrongly forced upon me by you,” I declare, glaring at the boy, who scoots further away. “He was about to land the killing blow. I thought of how this couldn’t be my end. I would not die there in the mud. Then the world burst into color. My wounds healed, and I woke up here.”

“Maybe that’s it, your determination to survive sent you here?” Morgan says, sounding more like a question than a suggestion. His lack of confidence is astounding.

“Why would I arrive here rather than be healed in my world and continue the battle?”

“I-I don’t know.”

“No spell was cast by me. Marcius certainly wouldn’t have done this either. He intended to kill me, not restore my vigor. He’d rather kill me than risk me finding a way home. My arrival has to be tied to you.”

“But I’ve rewritten the end a dozen times already,” Morgan whimpers. He rubs the back of his neck. “I even tried writing how you arrived here and how I sent you back. Nothing has worked.”

“Then something is different between now and how you wrote earlier.”

Morgan shakes his head. “Alastair, really, nothing’s different.”

“There has to be a difference, otherwise, I’d have returned home by now!”

“I don’t know, okay?” Morgan groans and leaps to his feet.

The laptop clatters to the floor. He sprints with the sudden speed of a jackrabbit, almost as small as one too, out the door. I follow him into the other room where he maneuvers around a plain couch and a large, solid black painting on the wall. Even his taste in decorum is uninspired.

“I’m tired. This… this is a dream. I’ll wake up soon. I’m going to lay down,” Morgan says, reaching for the handle of another door. I grip the handle instead, stopping him from escaping.

“There is no time to rest. Hours have passed. Etria’s in danger if it isn’t already destroyed. You must continue writing until I’m sent home—”

“I don’t want to write anymore!” Morgan suddenly shouts, eyes widening to mirror my own expression of awe.

“An author who does not wish to write?” I inquire, head tilted. “Do you not take pride in your work?”

Morgan’s expression darkens to match the bags beneath his eyes. He retreats, one hand gripping his opposing arm, threatening to bruise the skin.

“Not anymore,” he whispers.

“But you did once?”

“I don’t know about pride, but yes, I did love writing once,” he answers almost inaudibly.

“What changed?”

Morgan shifts his weight from one foot to the other. A pensive gaze meets mine, trembling with uncertainty that shivers in his very bones.

“Everything?” He sighs. “I wrote your story for fun, to go on adventures I never could, but then your story blew up.”

Blew up? An odd choice of words, although there have been a few explosions in my life. Morgan never explains which he’s referring to.

“Suddenly, so many people were reading. They had expectations for every chapter to get even better and I…well, I wanted to do better!” Morgan exclaims.

For a moment, I can imagine he’s my creator. I understand what that’s like; having eyes watching your every move with immense expectations and wanting nothing more than to do better.

But Morgan’s voice descends, hardly a whisper, “Doing better meant neglecting everything else. All I do is write about you, so tonight I decided this would be the end. I’d finish the story, regardless of whether readers liked it or not.”

“Isn’t this the answer?” I ask. Morgan gawks in the face of my theory. “Tonight you made the final decision to end my story. That’s different from all the times you’ve written before, am I correct?”

He nods slowly.

“And why did you decide now to end it? What was the catalyst to your decision?”

Morgan gapes, then clicks his teeth together when his mouth shuts. Blushing must be a common occurrence for him as his cheeks take on a rosy hue once more. This color differs from the previous, resting beneath bashful eyes that drift about the room until settling on his feet.

“There’s so-something I want to do,” he sputters.

“And that is?” He better not say kill me off or I will become quite cross.

He raises his gaze in a sudden ounce of courage to shout, “I want to get a boyfriend!!”