Disclaimer: I do not own The Lord of the Rings. It belongs to J.
R. R. Tolkien. All Author's and OCs used with permission.
(Naheka is laying half-dead on a chair. Joe walks by and nudges the chair)
Joe: Okay, Naheka. Enough dying.
Naheka: (whines and puts her head down on the table)
Joe: ...(finally kicks the chair over)
Naheka: EEP! (falls over and lands in a huddle on the floor)
Joe: Come on. Get up and start writing.
Naheka: (monotonously) Can't you see that I'm trying to die here?
Joe: (in the same tone) Haven't you read our feedback?
Naheka: (sticks her tongue out and tries to crawl under the desk)
Joe: We've got quite a latter of praise! (tries to drag Naheka out from under the table) See? (plops her in front of the monitor) See?!
Naheka: (dully reads the reviews) ...hm... Really? (keeps reading) ...wow... really?
Joe: Yup.
Naheka: ...( awestruck) ...Wow... wow... WOW...
Joe: (pushes the keyboard in front of her) Any ideas?
Naheka: (slowly accepting the keyboard) ...Maybe.
Thanks everyone; couldn't have gotten anywhere without you.
The File Cabinet
...That with every life there is a death,
And with every death there is a life,
One for one, other for other,
A doom bound to us,
And forever the end.
So, I couldn't really help but think, "I wonder if you can do the same thing with ketchup stains?" "Sure!" replied the other voice in my head. "Just ignore it long enough, and I'm sure it'll go away!"
I knew that I had gone into some sort of trance after that, until a new voice, not misty like the Canon, or sharp like Joe's, but very clear, came into presence. It was a human clear, yet nearly god-like all the same. It chuckled for a moment before announcing, "So this is a fall of the so called 'Mary-Sue'. Alas, if it were only real." Only real? W. T. F? This climactic catastrophe of a battle/torture-period/revelation couldn't be one single nightmare, could it? Come to think of if, it all did seem like one giant nightmare. "When such controversies occur in such a complex and disorderly manner, one can only hope that it is not real. And then again, none of it is real!"
I swear, I could have fallen down on my knees and screamed.
"But that doesn't mean that none of this is false, either." The voice chuckled, again.
Whoever this dude was, whether he'd be God-self, or some happy, sick, and twisted reincarnation of Mr. Rogers and Dumbledore from Harry Potter combined, I had absolutely no idea where this person was going.
"It's all a state of mind, really. There are a lot of people looking into this window and finding themselves amused at what you are doing. Yet perhaps at the same time, someone else reads about those onlookers, also. For each day can be a new adventure; you never know."
Listening to this eidolon speak, I finally gave up on checking what time it was. Instead, I tried to convince myself that I had probably been driven completely insane beyond all hope of recovery after being tortured through the use of a Fiction Dome. Now, my mind was in a better place, somewhere in a happy land where no one had absolutely no idea what they were doing, and fell off cliffs into nothingness for pleasure. My mind had just taken a dive off into an abyss of blissful ignorance, so I decided that maybe I should just pay attention to this man and do everything he says. Maybe the world will be happy that way. And I would be happy, too.
"So tell me, young Authors..." continued the voice as if the speaker had started pacing back and forth. "What have you learned from all of this?"
Coffeegirl was the first to speak. "I learned that the fluffy pink bunnies from under the sink like to eat candy wrappers." She giggled happily and clapped her hands.
"And I learned," said Sammy, "that mushrooms and purple psketti sauce come from the planet Leech. Did you know that, Mister Whoeveryouare?"
Newmoon bobbed her head and said, "Fissssssssssshhhhhh!"
"Yes!" exclaimed Amarth. "Fish were there, too! They can tap-dance."
Phantom suddenly sprang up and did a strange little jig. "And they can-can, too!"
"Ketchup!" I squeaked. "Ketchup!"
"Peanut butter!" said Hoshiko. "Peanut butter and... and..."
"Fish!"
"I think socks are plotting on how to attack the tennis ball factories," stated Europa. "I can tell. My sock drawer quivers every morning when I water it."
"The tennis balls are laughing!" cried Penelope. "And they're laughing! And... yes! They're laughing!"
"Herbal Essences goes good in waffles," said Kitty quietly. "Especially the anti-dandruff ones."
"I like the... the..." Jiana pondered on her sentence for a while. "Pizza!"
Vana crossed her eyes happily. "I learned about something. I'm not telling you."
Finally, Joe spoke. "Clearly, they've all gone insane. They cannot recover here."
"Ah, yes... Joe the Nazgul," said the voice. "Little, little Joe. There's only so much you can do. But I suppose we can credit you for summoning the Canon with that sword of yours, eh? Tell me, in the long time since I've given it to you, how has it suited you?"
"Fine, sir."
"Not to be confused with another's sword, yet not to be called something unique. And to think that I do not claim you to be a double-identity."
"I try not to live a double identity, though I truly have not a life to live at all."
"Wise, but dark, indeed. You are something else, Joe."
"I don't know what I am, really."
"Well, the children won't find out about it too soon, will they?"
"I wouldn't think so."
"That is good."
I had stood up and tried to look for the lost bottle of ketchup and the fluffy pink bunnies when the voice finally said, "Okay, say 'bye-bye' to the glowy Canon Spirits."
I ignored the voice. I wanted my ketchup bottle. Phantom, Amarth, and Newmoon were looking for fish. Kitty, Penelope, Europa, and Jiana were debating about pizza and shampoo. Vana was laughing to herself maniacally as Hoshiko and Sammy were trying to get the secret out of her. Coffeegirl was determined to find the bunnies before I found my ketchup bottle.
"Goodbye. And remember to at least try to explain what has happened."
"I will, sire."
"...Namaarie..."
~*~
"Naheka.... Naheka.... Naheka!"
Naurglahad slammed a fist on my desk. Startled, I looked up from my stack of regular morning bulletins to face three extremely angry OC women, all around the age of twenty-five, with black hair and uniquely colored eyes. They were all snarling at me. The first on the left ws Daedalona, an elf from an original story. Naurglahad was about to be the first to ring my neck in the middle. And on the right was a demon named Ango, a character from an Anime crossover I wrote.
The assassin pointed to both of them. "These two are impostors! They both claim to be the Goddess of Death." She leaned in very close to my face, her dragon breath trying to make me sweat. "But I'M the one and ONLY Goddess of Death."
"Liar!" spat Ango. "Stupid dragon. I'm a full Youkai! I make a better idol of death than either of you!"
"You're just jealous!" hissed Daeda, the wooden, horned skulls on her staff rattling with anger. "My NAME means 'Goddess of Death'."
"You call yourself a good liar?" said Naurglahad. "Ha! I, an assassin, should be called Death! For I bring and cause Death! I am known for Death! And Death lies. You could not be Death."
Daeda shouted something crass in her own elf-tongue. Ango replied the same in some sort of gibberish. Naurglahad joined the argument immediately with a few choice words in Sachain*. The mass blur of shouting and screaming between the three of them made my head spin. And to think that I was the one who made up all of the languages. But in the end, I knew that the only point they were trying to make out of all of that talk was: "I rule, you suck, so f*ck off."
I was bravely stupid at that moment. I scooted off my chair and took a medium-sized hand mirror from a sliding drawer beneath my desk. Stepping into the crowd of cussing non-human females, I put the mirror up. I had long, dark brown hair and dark brown eyes. My grown out bangs were tucked behind my ears. Then, I tilted the mirror up to face the three. They each had long, dark hair and dark eyes. Their bangs had also grown out, partially tucked behind their ears. "Y'know... I really think you guys need a new design."
I walked around my desk and picked up a white phone off the hooker, plugged into the wall. "I'll order some paper and mediums to re-draw you people. You look too much like me."
Obviously, this wasn't the answer that the semi-clones wanted. They remained silent for a while. But what I didn't know was that during the silence, they were taking in a deep breath. "DADDYYYYYY!!!"
A couple drawers in the file cabinet slid open as two men with long black hair poked their heads out. "What do you want now?" they both asked dully. One was Onikunshu. The other was Ango's father, Hakai.
"Woah."
Onikunshu and Hakai glanced at each other uncomfortably. They also looked almost exactly alike. "TELL THEM THAT I'M THE BEST MURDERER!" screamed Naurglahad and Ango. Daeda was kinda' going into denial because her parents had unfortunately been slain in some random battle some odd hund'erd years or so ago.
Shaking their heads, both fathers retreated back into the file cabinet. Furiously, each nominee for "Goddess of Death" stomped out the door, and slammed it shut. I sprinted forth and slammed myself against my Onimusha Warlords poster, which I was wondering if I should replace with a Rurouni Kenshin banner. And then the door came smacking into my face again. I toppled over and fell on my back. "By the way," shouted Naurglahad, "you have a visitor!"
Then, she slammed the door shut again. I looked up. Oh, now this was a surprise visitor.
It was my Mary-Sue Author clone from the underground in the East.
* Sachain [sah-hai-an; with that sorta' hiss sound that you make if you spoke Gaelic with the accent] is short for Sachaudatha, which is what Naurglahad's family calls their native tongue. For more pointless and complicated info, go to my bio and click on the URL with "dragoneyeryu" at the end.
Ai! I forgot to put the footnote at the end when I first published this chapter! Noooooo.... (takes a deep breath) Nooooooooo..... (takes another breath) Nooo--(gets smacked in the head by Joe's baking pan) Gawd! That was the fifteenth time this week! Stoppit! (Joe shakes his head as if he were grinning)
(Naheka is laying half-dead on a chair. Joe walks by and nudges the chair)
Joe: Okay, Naheka. Enough dying.
Naheka: (whines and puts her head down on the table)
Joe: ...(finally kicks the chair over)
Naheka: EEP! (falls over and lands in a huddle on the floor)
Joe: Come on. Get up and start writing.
Naheka: (monotonously) Can't you see that I'm trying to die here?
Joe: (in the same tone) Haven't you read our feedback?
Naheka: (sticks her tongue out and tries to crawl under the desk)
Joe: We've got quite a latter of praise! (tries to drag Naheka out from under the table) See? (plops her in front of the monitor) See?!
Naheka: (dully reads the reviews) ...hm... Really? (keeps reading) ...wow... really?
Joe: Yup.
Naheka: ...( awestruck) ...Wow... wow... WOW...
Joe: (pushes the keyboard in front of her) Any ideas?
Naheka: (slowly accepting the keyboard) ...Maybe.
Thanks everyone; couldn't have gotten anywhere without you.
The File Cabinet
...That with every life there is a death,
And with every death there is a life,
One for one, other for other,
A doom bound to us,
And forever the end.
So, I couldn't really help but think, "I wonder if you can do the same thing with ketchup stains?" "Sure!" replied the other voice in my head. "Just ignore it long enough, and I'm sure it'll go away!"
I knew that I had gone into some sort of trance after that, until a new voice, not misty like the Canon, or sharp like Joe's, but very clear, came into presence. It was a human clear, yet nearly god-like all the same. It chuckled for a moment before announcing, "So this is a fall of the so called 'Mary-Sue'. Alas, if it were only real." Only real? W. T. F? This climactic catastrophe of a battle/torture-period/revelation couldn't be one single nightmare, could it? Come to think of if, it all did seem like one giant nightmare. "When such controversies occur in such a complex and disorderly manner, one can only hope that it is not real. And then again, none of it is real!"
I swear, I could have fallen down on my knees and screamed.
"But that doesn't mean that none of this is false, either." The voice chuckled, again.
Whoever this dude was, whether he'd be God-self, or some happy, sick, and twisted reincarnation of Mr. Rogers and Dumbledore from Harry Potter combined, I had absolutely no idea where this person was going.
"It's all a state of mind, really. There are a lot of people looking into this window and finding themselves amused at what you are doing. Yet perhaps at the same time, someone else reads about those onlookers, also. For each day can be a new adventure; you never know."
Listening to this eidolon speak, I finally gave up on checking what time it was. Instead, I tried to convince myself that I had probably been driven completely insane beyond all hope of recovery after being tortured through the use of a Fiction Dome. Now, my mind was in a better place, somewhere in a happy land where no one had absolutely no idea what they were doing, and fell off cliffs into nothingness for pleasure. My mind had just taken a dive off into an abyss of blissful ignorance, so I decided that maybe I should just pay attention to this man and do everything he says. Maybe the world will be happy that way. And I would be happy, too.
"So tell me, young Authors..." continued the voice as if the speaker had started pacing back and forth. "What have you learned from all of this?"
Coffeegirl was the first to speak. "I learned that the fluffy pink bunnies from under the sink like to eat candy wrappers." She giggled happily and clapped her hands.
"And I learned," said Sammy, "that mushrooms and purple psketti sauce come from the planet Leech. Did you know that, Mister Whoeveryouare?"
Newmoon bobbed her head and said, "Fissssssssssshhhhhh!"
"Yes!" exclaimed Amarth. "Fish were there, too! They can tap-dance."
Phantom suddenly sprang up and did a strange little jig. "And they can-can, too!"
"Ketchup!" I squeaked. "Ketchup!"
"Peanut butter!" said Hoshiko. "Peanut butter and... and..."
"Fish!"
"I think socks are plotting on how to attack the tennis ball factories," stated Europa. "I can tell. My sock drawer quivers every morning when I water it."
"The tennis balls are laughing!" cried Penelope. "And they're laughing! And... yes! They're laughing!"
"Herbal Essences goes good in waffles," said Kitty quietly. "Especially the anti-dandruff ones."
"I like the... the..." Jiana pondered on her sentence for a while. "Pizza!"
Vana crossed her eyes happily. "I learned about something. I'm not telling you."
Finally, Joe spoke. "Clearly, they've all gone insane. They cannot recover here."
"Ah, yes... Joe the Nazgul," said the voice. "Little, little Joe. There's only so much you can do. But I suppose we can credit you for summoning the Canon with that sword of yours, eh? Tell me, in the long time since I've given it to you, how has it suited you?"
"Fine, sir."
"Not to be confused with another's sword, yet not to be called something unique. And to think that I do not claim you to be a double-identity."
"I try not to live a double identity, though I truly have not a life to live at all."
"Wise, but dark, indeed. You are something else, Joe."
"I don't know what I am, really."
"Well, the children won't find out about it too soon, will they?"
"I wouldn't think so."
"That is good."
I had stood up and tried to look for the lost bottle of ketchup and the fluffy pink bunnies when the voice finally said, "Okay, say 'bye-bye' to the glowy Canon Spirits."
I ignored the voice. I wanted my ketchup bottle. Phantom, Amarth, and Newmoon were looking for fish. Kitty, Penelope, Europa, and Jiana were debating about pizza and shampoo. Vana was laughing to herself maniacally as Hoshiko and Sammy were trying to get the secret out of her. Coffeegirl was determined to find the bunnies before I found my ketchup bottle.
"Goodbye. And remember to at least try to explain what has happened."
"I will, sire."
"...Namaarie..."
~*~
"Naheka.... Naheka.... Naheka!"
Naurglahad slammed a fist on my desk. Startled, I looked up from my stack of regular morning bulletins to face three extremely angry OC women, all around the age of twenty-five, with black hair and uniquely colored eyes. They were all snarling at me. The first on the left ws Daedalona, an elf from an original story. Naurglahad was about to be the first to ring my neck in the middle. And on the right was a demon named Ango, a character from an Anime crossover I wrote.
The assassin pointed to both of them. "These two are impostors! They both claim to be the Goddess of Death." She leaned in very close to my face, her dragon breath trying to make me sweat. "But I'M the one and ONLY Goddess of Death."
"Liar!" spat Ango. "Stupid dragon. I'm a full Youkai! I make a better idol of death than either of you!"
"You're just jealous!" hissed Daeda, the wooden, horned skulls on her staff rattling with anger. "My NAME means 'Goddess of Death'."
"You call yourself a good liar?" said Naurglahad. "Ha! I, an assassin, should be called Death! For I bring and cause Death! I am known for Death! And Death lies. You could not be Death."
Daeda shouted something crass in her own elf-tongue. Ango replied the same in some sort of gibberish. Naurglahad joined the argument immediately with a few choice words in Sachain*. The mass blur of shouting and screaming between the three of them made my head spin. And to think that I was the one who made up all of the languages. But in the end, I knew that the only point they were trying to make out of all of that talk was: "I rule, you suck, so f*ck off."
I was bravely stupid at that moment. I scooted off my chair and took a medium-sized hand mirror from a sliding drawer beneath my desk. Stepping into the crowd of cussing non-human females, I put the mirror up. I had long, dark brown hair and dark brown eyes. My grown out bangs were tucked behind my ears. Then, I tilted the mirror up to face the three. They each had long, dark hair and dark eyes. Their bangs had also grown out, partially tucked behind their ears. "Y'know... I really think you guys need a new design."
I walked around my desk and picked up a white phone off the hooker, plugged into the wall. "I'll order some paper and mediums to re-draw you people. You look too much like me."
Obviously, this wasn't the answer that the semi-clones wanted. They remained silent for a while. But what I didn't know was that during the silence, they were taking in a deep breath. "DADDYYYYYY!!!"
A couple drawers in the file cabinet slid open as two men with long black hair poked their heads out. "What do you want now?" they both asked dully. One was Onikunshu. The other was Ango's father, Hakai.
"Woah."
Onikunshu and Hakai glanced at each other uncomfortably. They also looked almost exactly alike. "TELL THEM THAT I'M THE BEST MURDERER!" screamed Naurglahad and Ango. Daeda was kinda' going into denial because her parents had unfortunately been slain in some random battle some odd hund'erd years or so ago.
Shaking their heads, both fathers retreated back into the file cabinet. Furiously, each nominee for "Goddess of Death" stomped out the door, and slammed it shut. I sprinted forth and slammed myself against my Onimusha Warlords poster, which I was wondering if I should replace with a Rurouni Kenshin banner. And then the door came smacking into my face again. I toppled over and fell on my back. "By the way," shouted Naurglahad, "you have a visitor!"
Then, she slammed the door shut again. I looked up. Oh, now this was a surprise visitor.
It was my Mary-Sue Author clone from the underground in the East.
* Sachain [sah-hai-an; with that sorta' hiss sound that you make if you spoke Gaelic with the accent] is short for Sachaudatha, which is what Naurglahad's family calls their native tongue. For more pointless and complicated info, go to my bio and click on the URL with "dragoneyeryu" at the end.
Ai! I forgot to put the footnote at the end when I first published this chapter! Noooooo.... (takes a deep breath) Nooooooooo..... (takes another breath) Nooo--(gets smacked in the head by Joe's baking pan) Gawd! That was the fifteenth time this week! Stoppit! (Joe shakes his head as if he were grinning)