The Uncertain Life Of Thraym

I'm Thraym, and I’m trapped in a place that makes no sense. The sky is a constant bruise of storm clouds, rain that never falls, and shafts of sunlight that flicker like dying light bulbs. I live in a crumbling city that might have once been grand—a place caught between old-world charm and half-finished construction sites, where ancient stonework rubs shoulders with steel scaffolding and neon signs that flash gibberish. The city feels alive, but in the way an animal too wounded to be saved is alive: twitching, gasping, caught in the agony of becoming something else or dying where it lies. And I’m no different. Nothing here is finished, and neither am I.

Yesterday—if that’s what it was—I was a busker, playing an old saxophone under a graffitied overpass. My music echoed through the tunnels, filling the space with a melody that didn’t feel like mine. I had the vague notion that I’d once been a miner or something equally hard and tangible. The music was a softer life, a sadder one. People shuffled by, tossing coins and bills into my open case, their faces blurred and indistinct like half-remembered dreams. I didn’t know them, and I doubt they knew me. They were just strangers in a city where everyone seems to be passing through, even if there’s nowhere to go.

I remember feeling the music take on a life of its own, wrapping around the concrete pillars, pulling people in. The notes hung heavy in the air, dense with stories I never meant to tell. I could feel the city breathing with every note, like it was listening, waiting for something. Then it happened—again. That familiar prickling sensation at the back of my neck, like cold fingers running along my spine, and I knew the author was changing me. My fingers stumbled, my vision blurred, and the saxophone notes twisted into something discordant, something wrong.

I was rewritten.

Now I’m sitting on the edge of a rooftop café that overlooks a river choked with rusted boats and floating garbage. The café is half built, scaffolding still in place, and the tables are just slabs of unfinished concrete. I’m no longer a musician—I’m a journalist, hunched over a typewriter that’s missing half its keys. The wind keeps trying to steal my papers, sending them skittering across the rooftop like leaves in a storm. I chase them, grabbing the edges before they can fly away, but they’re blank. My mind feels the same—empty, waiting to be filled with the right words, if only the author would decide what they are.

I’m supposed to be writing an exposé about corruption in the city, a piece that will blow the whole thing wide open. But I can’t remember what the corruption is or why it matters. I type and retype the same lines, but they never seem to go anywhere. My fingers hover over the keys, waiting for direction, but it never comes. The other patrons at the café glance at me with hollow eyes, their outlines fuzzy, like sketches that were never finished. Some look like businesspeople, others like tourists, but their faces blur and shift when I try to focus on them, as if the author hadn’t bothered to give them any real detail.

The café overlooks the river, its waters slick with oil and debris, and across the way, I see the skyline of the city rising up like a mouthful of broken teeth. Skyscrapers stand half-finished, cranes looming over them like predators waiting to strike. Neon signs buzz and flicker, advertising things that don’t exist, and the whole place feels like a set piece left behind by a careless director. I feel like I’m part of a scene that’s on its third or fourth rewrite, none of the versions quite sticking.

I can feel the author’s presence even when I can’t see them—like a headache that never fully forms, or static in the corner of my mind. The city shifts and changes, and so do I. There’s always the sense that something important is just out of reach, some truth that’s never quite revealed. I type furiously, but the words are meaningless. My thoughts aren’t mine, not really. They’re drafts, placeholders until the real ones come along.

*Thraym types furiously, but…*

But what? But nothing. My fingers freeze over the keys, waiting for a decision that never arrives. I want to scream at the sky, demand the next part, but I know it’s useless. I am whatever the author decides I am, and today they don’t seem to know either. I glance down at the pages in front of me, and they’re different now—new headlines, new scandals. My role has changed, but I haven’t been informed.

The rewrite hits like a hard shove, and I’m somewhere else entirely. Now I’m a dockworker unloading crates from a freighter that’s been docked for too long. The river stinks of oil and dead fish, and my back aches from the weight of boxes marked with symbols I don’t understand. I haul them from the belly of the ship onto the dock, and the crates shift and clatter, the contents inside whispering secrets I’m not supposed to know.

The other dockworkers avoid my eyes, their faces turned away as if ashamed of something. There’s an air of waiting, like everyone’s on the verge of saying something important, but no one does. I feel the author’s indecision in the way the crates shift in my grip, as if they might vanish or turn into something else at any second. My hands are calloused and strong, but they don’t feel like mine. They’re someone else’s idea of what a dockworker’s hands should be.

I catch flickers of other scenes in the corner of my eye, places I might be instead. For a moment, I’m sure I see the musician version of myself watching from the next pier over, playing a saxophone that bleeds black smoke. Or maybe that was never real. It’s hard to say. Sometimes the lines blur so badly I don’t know what’s happening and what’s just another draft, another version discarded on the cutting room floor.

The city itself mirrors my existence: a work in progress, perpetually under construction. Streets lead nowhere, dead-ending in barricades and signs that say “Coming Soon” with no indication of when. There are half-built bridges that stop mid-air, their ends dangling over the water like the author ran out of interest before finishing the job. I walk these streets, lost in the layers of what was, what is, and what could be.

Once, I tried to leave the city. It was a whim—a hope that there was something beyond the ever-shifting skyline. I got as far as the train station, a grand old building of iron and glass, but when I tried to board, the train doors wouldn’t open. The schedule board flashed destinations I’d never heard of—*Ivory Spire, Northern Wastes, The Edge of the Map*—but none of them made sense. The ticket booth was staffed by a man who looked half-finished, his face blank, his eyes empty. He didn’t respond when I asked for a ticket, just stared through me like I was the unfinished one.

Now and then, I hear rumors about other people like me—characters stuck in the in-between, caught in the spaces between drafts. Sometimes I think I see them: figures on rooftops or shadowed alleyways, moving in ways that suggest they’re just as lost, just as rewritten as I am. Once, I met a woman named Rivka, who claimed to be a detective. We shared a drink in a dimly lit bar that flickered between being a speakeasy and a dive, depending on how the author felt about the scene.

Rivka said she was hunting someone—or maybe something. Her story kept changing. One minute, she was tracking a serial killer; the next, she was looking for her missing partner. She wore a trench coat that was always just a little too big, and her eyes darted around like she was trying to catch the author in the act of rewriting her.

“Do you ever feel like you’ve been here before?” she asked me, her voice low and rough, like gravel grinding underfoot.

“All the time,” I replied, though I wasn’t sure which version of myself was answering. “It’s like living in déjà vu.”

She nodded, sipping her drink—a whiskey that tasted like it was made of forgotten moments. “I think we’re stuck in some kind of loop,” she said. “The author keeps rewriting, but they can’t decide what they want. We’re the rough drafts that never make it.”

We sat in silence after that, two incomplete people in a city that didn’t care. I haven’t seen her since. Sometimes I think about her, wonder if she’s still out there chasing shadows or if she’s been rewritten into something unrecognizable, lost in the shuffle of half-formed ideas.

I’m afraid of what happens when the author gets bored. Will they leave me in this version forever? A nameless dockworker in a city that doesn’t care? Or worse, will they erase me completely, abandon this whole world and move on to something new? I’ve seen hints of it—the moments when everything goes still, the city silent as if holding its breath, waiting for a next move that never comes.

The city’s heartbeat slows when the author’s attention wanes. The neon signs flicker, their messages muddling into nonsense. Streetlights buzz and dim, casting everything in a sickly, uncertain glow. And then there’s the feeling—like standing on the edge of a cliff, wind whipping at your back, knowing that at any moment