A Cursive Tale

“Tarquin, are you there,” Hyacinth whispered. The darkness was overwhelming, she quite literally could not see her fingers in front of her face. I mean they were in front of her face now, and she was wiggling her fingers, but nothing. She strained her ears, every sense she had on high alert. Had they actually managed to lose the creature this time? She stumbled forward, hesitatingly putting one foot in front of the next as she stretched her hands out and did a cautious 360-degree circle with her arms, trying to get a feel for the space. “Tarquin” she whispered again more desperately this time. She took a few more hesitant steps and then cried out as the ground before her seemed to give away, and just when she thought that this was it, after all their efforts, this was how it was going to end, alone in the dark, their mission unaccomplished, she felt those familiar strong arms grab her safety harness and…

“Mom are you up there...Maaamm …can you come and help me…..”

“Oh botheration, what is it Christy” the author hollered down to her nine-year-old son.

“I need help with my homework”

“Can’t your dad do it?”

“I already asked him, he said he is heading out to cut the grass, so to ask you”

“Bloody likely,” she thought to herself, two can play at that game. “Tell him I will come down and help you when I hear the sound of the lawn mower.” Chuckling to herself she hoped fervently that the schoolwork would be the lesser of the two evils on this scorching Saturday afternoon, as she really felt she was getting somewhere with this story at last. She was just rereading the passage and about to continue when she heard the blasted machine starting up and cursing them all reluctantly left her desk and headed downstairs, leaving the word document open on her laptop.

“Oh botheration”? I mean is that even a word?

“Now, Hyacinth, be nice.”

“Don’t call me that Tarquin dear” she replied saccharine sweet, “it is bad enough to be left hovering over a black abyss without being addressed by that ridiculous name”

“So which name will I call you?”

“OMG take your pick! I’ve totally lost track at this stage! I mean how many versions of this “epic” of hers has there been so far.

“Four, I think, let me just skite back through the drafts, yea this is the fourth. The first was.. “

“No don’t tell me, I want to see if I can remember. Ahh yeah, her ‘Laura Croft – Tomb Raider’ reboot, and I was Laura, because she didn’t like the name Angelina, huh she guffawed in disgust, but she sees nothing wrong with Hyacinth …go figure.”

“Oh, yea and I was Alex, Daniel Craig’s character”

“OK, so Laura and Alex it is. So does that mean we have the divine Daniel to thank for our existence then, Laura mused. I mean If Author hadn’t been so devastated by the whole James Bond implosion thing, she would never have been looking at his past films and had her “great idea”

“Yep, I guess so,” Alex agreed.

“I really loved that draft wasn’t it the longest one so far?”

“Hold on, I’ll just check,” and Alex was off again on his curser, speeding his way back the twenty-four pages in the folder entitled NEW NOVEL, to return breathless milli seconds later, “Yep, 12 out of 24…... Are you ok down there,” he peered down sightlessly into the black hole.

“What do you think! how long do you think she will be.”

“No idea, Author has never written about “homework,” so I don’t know.

“Why did she give up on that draft I wonder?”

“Ah, I can answer that!”

“Of course you can nerd,” Laura grumbled, “That’s how she wrote you, a regular MacGyver, whilst my role is to run around in constant need of rescue…like now and tell you what a hero you are.”

When there was no reply Laura gritted her teeth, yea a regular MacGyver with the sensitivity of a bleeding prima-donna.

“Alex,”

“Yes,” came the short reply,

“Sorry I was techy, Laura cringed at the required self-abasement. “Do you think you could do that “copy and paste” thing and move us to a sunnier location on one of the drafts, this darkness is really getting to me.”

“I’m not sure that is a good idea,” Alex replied petulantly. “I mean that’s ok on the odd occasion that Author leaves the laptop on overnight, but she could be back at any stage, and I would have to move the whole paragraph, and what if she comes back and it is missing?”

“But the speakers are on full so we will hear her on the stairs, anyway she will just do a search and move the paragraph back assuming some keyboard error.” “Pleeese” she begged, “I meant “nerd” as a compliment, I have no idea how you have figured out how to do all the things you do, it is genius really.”

“Well, it’s not easy,” said Alex somewhat mollified, so which draft do you want to go back to.”

“I don’t care, anywhere that’s not a dark hole will do.”

“Ok hold on, I just need to find a spot and I will be back.”

 He was longer this time and the few seconds it took felt like eons. He had never been this long before. What if he never came back. What if she was to be left here alone with no agency to change anything about her situation, powerless, at the mercy and whims of a mysterious author whose great plans and ambitions made absolutely no sense to her, without the familiarity of her Alex to make it all bearable. Then thankfully he was back, and her fears receded.

“Ok are you ready,” Alex’s newly scripted American twang, still strange to her ears after the crisp upper-class speech of his previous incarnation, was ringing in her ears as the weird dragging sensation of the copy and paste process took over and then suddenly there it was: the brilliant light of a beautiful summer’s day. They both stretched out on the luscious long grass, relishing in the color of flowers and the sound of birdsong.

“Ah Alex, you are my hero,”

Laura looked over at her fellow character, who although having gone through many hair, eye, and complexion color changes was still the ruggedly handsome man, that thankfully was the limit of Author’s imagination, and sank contentedly into the green-scented meadow. She lifted her slim, tanned arm and admired the way it gleamed healthily in the sunshine, such a lovely change to the “pink and pearly white” description of her previous incarnation where Tarquin and Hyacinth hailed from, Author not having time to think of new names for them yet.

 “I kind of liked living in Georgian London,” she announced.

Alex gave a snort of laughter “No you did not”

“Oh, yea I forgot, well blame Author as usual. If she had wanted a heroine with such a tiny waist, why did she write me as an over rounded young lady with too much flesh to fit into those damned corset things.”

“Well seeing as I was a spy in the guise of a dastardly highwayman and you were a maiden in league with the Irish rebellion of 1798, I guess I was supposed to kidnap you, and then all that lovely flesh of yours would be released from its bondage into my hands so to speak,” He grinned over at her wickedly.

“Yeah, chance would be a fine thing, Author is so fixated on “action," we are lucky to get an occasional “whimsical smile” along with the ubiquitous “strong-armed embrace”.

“What script are we in anyway, oh yeah and why did she stop the first draft, remember you said you knew, Mr. Know it all, she joked to herself.

“Well, you might not have noticed, but she had the movie running on the split screen as she was writing it, and when she realized her “epic” was just a verbatim copy of the actual movie she reluctantly had to abandon it. We are currently in her next attempt, her “Resident Evil” homage that once again, thankfully for us, ended up the same way. So, there is no threat of some flesh-eating zombies emerging out of the undergrowth to devour us. With that, he pounced on her and she screamed in alarm and then screeched with laughter as they tussled playfully before settling back into the meadow slightly breathless, her hand in his light hold.

“What was our mission supposed to be in that one?”

“Mission! Jeez, when has that ever made an iota of sense? “It’s just you and me lover against the world, in whatever guise she fancies at the time.”

I really wish they hadn’t brought out that new Aiien Romulus movie though. I saw the trailer and that creature is terrifying. Even if she has decided to reset the location to “a cave system in a faraway galaxy” instead of a space ship it still gives me the creeps.

Alex raised himself up on one shoulder and looked down at the feisty if somewhat cautious little companion that was his ally in this strange malleable world of theirs. “Well, I agree the creature in the film is terrifying but the creature she actually wrote, as in “the horrendous monster approached them all fangs and claws and gave a hideous roar,” could be a 6-inch lizard from the nearest pet shop. Anyway, it’s not real babe. Just words.”

She let her annoyance at the word babe slip, another nod to his new American persona.

“But it’s our real isn’t it,” she argued earnestly, “It is the only truth we are allowed, what is written in these pages. immutable, sacred almost, and we have no agency, no power to change anything.”

“There you go with your agency nonsense again,” he snorted, (a favorite word of Author) “That’s not how books work, they are not fixed and immutable, because everyone who reads them experiences them differently. They pick and choose the passages they like; they interpret the words to tie in with their own view, or other points they want to make. They quite literally see what they want to see and ignore the rest.”

 “But then is nothing real? “

“Well of course: the laptop is real as well as the word program we are written on, the desk is real, and the floor/ceiling below it. But words are like a river that just flows into any crevice or container that will hold it, they are defined by the space they fill and the elements that surround it, be they still or stormy. I mean...” Alex sat up fully and Laura sat up to join him intrigued at his sudden burst of excitement.

“I mean he turned to her, his blue, sorry brown, eyes gleaming. Author never wrote that speech, he looked at her in amazement. I did! Don’t you see we can use all these words to write our own story, our own ending? Author can spill out whatever words and ludicrous plots she likes, but she can’t stop us from creating our own stories from the chaos she has created.

“Huh, unless she deletes us altogether,” Laura replied unimpressed

But Alex’s enthusiasm for his subject would not be dampened. “Yeah and how often has she ever emptied the recycle bin,” he countered.

“True, but It’s just that, creating our own story, that’s kind of scary, I mean I complain about Author, but she created us, I don’t see how we can exist without her.

“So, you like it when you end up dangling over fathomless pits and being chased by a slobbering monster.”

“No not really, but anyway as Author is physically writing the story in the “real” world I don’t see how your revelation that we can write our own story is even doable. Surely, we can’t do both at the same time.”

“That is exactly what I am saying. Author hits the keyboard and writes the words “The ground before her seemed to give away,” but we are not governed by those words anymore, they are literally just words on a page but we, he squeezes her hand reassuringly, we can be writing a new story for ourselves somewhere else in these 24 pages and she will never know.”

“I don’t know Alex," Laura shook off his hand, "I know since that power surge you can do amazing things, but to write a story in direct opposition to Author, is a bit too much for me to think about now. Yeah, I know I didn’t like the dark and the monster was scary, but you know Author, she will soon get tired of this draft like all the others, and things will be better.”

“But it will never be as good as if we write the story for ourselves!”

“Yes but, I don’t know, give me time, I’m not as brave as you.”

“That’s not true babe,”

Laura gritted her teeth, and just kept herself from shouting, and don’t call me babe”

Alex continued unabashed, “That is just the role Author gave you, there is more to you than that”

“Jeez Alex you are wrecking my head, she flopped back down on the grass. I just want to lie here and absorb some rays, why don’t you spread your radical message to some of the other folders. Surely, they would be better able to “create their own reality” with Author’s attention focused on us.”

“Ok, good idea, hold on and I’ll see who is nearest.”

She wished he had been gone longer this time as his conversation had become too unsettling.

“Well, did you find a convert” she enquired of him a bit too sharply when he returned but he was too absorbed in his revelation to take his usual offense.

“Afraid not, poor fellow is rightly screwed, all alone, first draft, two paragraphs and all set in the Artic with a thesaurus of words to describe the cold surrounding him, some poor souls are just not given much to work with.”

“The stairs, quick Alex I can hear Author on the stairs, Laura jumped up in alarm.

“So”, came the implacable reply.

Alex, please can we just go back now. Look, just for a while ok, we can do this another time, surely there is no rush, I mean she gave a nervous laugh it’s not like we are going anywhere. Alex, quick she will be here any minute. Alex….”

Author climbed back up the stairs restored to good humour. The grass was cut, the homework done, and she had persuaded hubby to do the dinner. Delicious hours to herself to whip this story into shape. She really must think of new names for her characters, she’d have a peek at Alien Romulus on Wikipedia later and look for some good ones. She sat down at her desk and reread the five pages. Funny she could have sworn that she had written another paragraph, maybe she just hadn’t saved it, and now she would have to try and write it again from memory.

“Oh, botheration.”