By: Bruce Levine

Jason picked up his pencil for probably the hundredth time that day and put it back down every time. It wasn’t a case of writer’s block because each time he picked up his pencil he wrote something; it was that nothing he wrote really interested him.

Each idea seemed exciting until he put the first few paragraphs on paper and then it seemed to fizzle out. Nothing he wrote wanted to go beyond those first few paragraphs.

Jason never knew how he wrote or where the ideas came from. It was, he often said, simply that he wrote whatever fell out of his pencil – literally, as he wrote everything long-hand with a mechanical pencil using soft lead.

He also had said that his characters would push him around and that it was as if they were living the story and he simply took it all down like dictation.

Today though, it seemed like everyone had moved away and Jason felt as if he was living on a deserted island. He looked out the window to reassure himself that he was still living in the same place and had not been transported by one of his characters who had actually come to life.

Normally he wouldn’t have worried about a day or two without writing, but this new manifestation put a new perspective on things. Was he becoming one of his characters? Had they taken over his life to the point that he no longer existed as the human entity he always thought he knew? Or was he too a fictional creation creating more fictional creations?

If any of this were true then who was the ultimate creator?

Jason spent the remainder of the day absorbed by the question. He didn’t eat or drink, but remained transfixed. He had to know the answer, but couldn’t figure a way to prove anything and every probe remained a transitory illusion.

As the clock chimed midnight he wondered if he, like Cinderella, would revert into some other form of being, like the horses returning to being mice.

Perhaps that was all there was, he thought, as he decided to give up and go to bed. Tomorrow was another day.

Jason’s last thought as he fell asleep was that, if he awoke in the morning as himself he’d try to write down his experience. And if not, he wouldn’t have to worry about it.

The End