Chapter 24: "The Pit of Voles"
The sign above the second entrance gateway in the hedge maze named the section "The Pit of Voles." There was a second line in smaller letters immediately below: "Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here."
Cheshire looked up at me. "This is not good." I didn't remember this sign from my last trip and neither did Cheshire. I thought that we needed a guide through this section, and just like that, one conveniently popped up. A young, handsome cowboy-type carrying a guitar.
"Y'all look a little lost," said the cowboy. He sure looked familiar.
"Didn't I see you in the Asylum? You sang the Hamster Dance for us all."
"It's your head, Missy. You asked, I came. Dean Reed's the name."
I nearly fainted. Mr. Reed described where we were.
"This is a weird place. It's like time is out-of-sync here. You'll see things in this maze that don't exist yet. I don't know how to explain it."
"Anything dangerous in this maze?" I asked.
"You'll see and hear things in this maze that will make you want to barf your intestines out, but there are no physical dangers that I know of. The real dangers will be when you exit this maze out into an open field. You know the place. It's where everyone says you fought the Jabberwock. Whatever that is."
"Let's get started," I said. Cheshire and I trotted along behind Mr. Reed into the maze. The first thing we noticed was little furry rodents scurrying everywhere.
"Forum voles. Nasty critters. If a newcomer shows up in their favorite haunts, they'll gang up on the newcomer and all start chewing on him at once. Keep your distance from them. You ignore them, they'll ignore you. My advice is to stay out of the forums."
I was about to ask what forums were, but I realized that I just didn't care. I kept on walking. Cheshire sauntered along beside me. We reached the first of the fan-fic writers. I hadn't realized that some of them weren't human.
"Our first fan-fic writer is Dark Geisha. That's him drooling all over his keyboard and banging away on the keys intermittently."
Dark Geisha looked like a werewolf or maybe the Big Bad Wolf from Little Red Riding Hood. He seemed unaware of our presence.
"Why would a male choose a name like that?" I asked Mr. Reed.
"I have no idea. He's not fooling anybody. He writes sexual domination fics and near-rape fics. Only a guy could write such lurid, nasty, vicious sex scenes. He wants to be the Marquis de Sade of fan fiction."
The werewolf began banging on his typewriter-with-a-screen-where-the-paper-was-supposed-to-be device. He was drooling all over the device as he typed. Suddenly he reached below his typewriter stand and grabbed himself. Mr. Reed looked embarrassed. The wolf was jerking off and coming all over his typewriter device while cackling hysterically.
"Before we leave, I want to at least give the big bad wolf his due," said Mr. Reed. "This maniac writes the most stylish porn I've ever seen. Better than most commercial porn. He does have talent."
I looked on as the big bad wolf whacked his schlong on his typewriter device. I looked at Mr. Reed in incredulity.
"This lunatic has talent? Really?"
We approached another fan-fic writer typing away in a disciplined manner on her typewriter device. This writer was the complete opposite of the first in appearance. Neatly dressed, blonde hair in a classic pageboy, she was elegant, prim, and proper.
"This one goes by the name Secretly Nuts. She has an extremely long and quite sophisticated uncompleted novel posted. About half-way through, she seemed to give up on it. Hasn't posted a new chapter in years. Recently she posted a chapter promising new updates, but she hasn't delivered on her promise. Pity. She was one of the few writers in her section who wrote well. She has a reputation as the Miss Goody-Two-Shoes of her section. Tries to keep things clean so the kiddies can read it."
I couldn't help staring at Secretly Nuts. "She looks like Doris Day. Such a contrast to that maniac we first encountered." Secretly Nuts looked up at us, smiled, and then turned her attention back to her typing. She had notes and sticky papers all over her desk.
Our next fan-fic writer appeared to be a young, teenaged boy. He was grinning wildly as he banged away furiously on his typewriter device. Every so often he broke out in a cackle as he stared at what he had written.
"This fan-fic writer is a thirteen-year-old boy. He writes fetish fiction even though he's still a virgin. Everything he writes is M-rated and is outright p*o*r*n. He relies on Wikipedia for all of his information about sexual fetishes. He just posted a toe-sucker in the Alice-in-Wonderland book section."
"What?," I growled. That was my section, wasn't it? I didn't want any nasty, disgusting toe-sucking fics in there. I had heard of toe-sucking. I had thought that it was a joke, at first. Hadn't these weirdos ever noticed all the crud underneath their toe-nails? Nasty! I fought the impulse to dump his typewriter device off his desk. We moved on.
"This is the Twilight section," announced Mr. Reed as we entered what appeared to be a vast wasteland of weeds and obviously well-fed and privileged upper-middle-class white girls. Each girl looked just like the others and typed away on typewriter devices that all looked identical. I looked about in awe at the utter sameness of everything in the area.
"Each one of these girls thinks she is so clever and original even though what she is writing is the same plot and same clichéd romance scenes that everyone else is writing. You can divide the stories up into three groups: Team Edward, Team Jacob, and Team Carlisle."
I yawned. I didn't give a shit. Then I saw the brunette in the middle of the crowd of typing clones.
"Who's the brunette just standing there without a typewriter device?" I asked.
"That's Kristen Stewart. She plays Bella in the movies."
"What's a movie?"
"Think of one as a rapidly changing series of photographs which give the illusion of motion."
"Okay. So who's Bella?"
"She's the romantic lead of the Twilight series of books and movies."
"She's a romantic lead?" I looked at Kristen Stewart. Long hair. Long face. Long nose. Pointy chin. Sour face. "You've got to be kidding."
"She's the romantic lead of the Twilight series. It's true."
"She looks like me at fifteen. No tits. No hips. No ass. No sex appeal."
"She's a romantic lead," insisted Mr. Reed.
"So guys are expected to make a fuss over her?"
Mr. Reed doubled over snickering. So it wasn't just me who thought that casting a woman who looks like a kid who never eats as a romantic lead was absurd.
"Pretty much everything about Twilight is absurd," said Mr. Reed.
"So why is it so popular? If people are writing fan fiction, it must be popular, right?"
Mr. Reed held his hands out in front of him. "Fuck if I know. Americans once bought packaged rocks as pets."
We moved on, and soon a malodorous scent assaulted our nostrils. Like what you'd find underneath an outhouse on a Kentucky hillside. We walked into a wall of flies. Mr. Reed waved his hands constantly in front of his face vainly trying to keep the swarms of bugs out of his eyes. He pointed straight ahead to what at first appeared an enormous pile of dirt.
"That's 'My Immortal.' Known to be the worst fan fiction ever written."
I stared as I waved away the swarms of flies. "It looks like a heaping pile of dinosaur shit. Smells even worse." Gas suddenly burped out of the pile and shot bits of shit in our direction. Mr. Reed jumped back. I got hit on my apron.
"Fuck!" I wiped my apron on the grass. Mr. Reed didn't miss a beat.
"Stories like 'My Immortal' are what happen when lovesick, self-absorbed, illiterate junior high school girls try to write fan fiction. Instead of torturing their classmates as they usually do."
"All stories by junior high school girls are this bad?"
"No, just the ones written by illiterate princesses."
"What do you mean by 'princess'?"
"Self-absorbed, privileged, clueless about what life is like for other people. Totally uninterested in anything that does not directly affect them. You know the type. Didn't you used to be a 'princess' yourself?"
That stung, but Mr. Reed was right. Before my house burned down, I was indeed a completely self-absorbed and selfish little princess. I was just like every other spoiled rotten little upper-middle-class girl. I wondered if I was totally to blame for being such a little snot. Or was my environment to blame?
"Don't blame yourself entirely," said Mr. Reed. "Anyone growing up in the stifling environment of the upper middle class is likely to come out completely self-absorbed. If you're lucky, a university education undoes some of the damage." Mr. Reed coughed from the odor and motioned for Cheshire and me to move ahead. Soon we entered what looked like the English countryside. Forest, brush, birds and butterflies, and an enormous gothic-looking castle surrounded by a moat in the distance. Mr. Reed held both hands up in the air.
"Welcome to the world of Harry Potter fan fiction. This is as good as fan fiction gets. That means that not all of it is crap."
I looked down at the ground. There were steaming little piles of crap everywhere.
"Watch where you step," said Mr. Reed. "The quality of fan fiction in the Harry Potter section may be above average, but there are still plenty of stinkers."
We arrived at a fork in the path with a small entrance gate over each path. The paths had pairings: Harry/Ginny, Harry/Hermione, Harry/Luna, Ron/Hermione, Ron/Luna, Draco/Hermione, Luna/Neville, and Hermione/Victor. There were a few small paths that had no entrance gate label.
"Those pairings are called ships for some reason," said Mr. Reed. "Notice off to your right side the two enormous monuments."
One monument had a plate that said "Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality by Less Wrong." The other monument was even larger and mentioned only "James Potter Series by G. Norman Lippert."
"Those two are fan fictions that are nearly as famous as the original works. It does happen occasionally. Every once in a blue moon, somebody writes a fan fiction of commercial quality."
I had just stepped in a shit pile. "Damn!" I wiped my shoe bottom on the grass. We chose to walk down the wide path that was "Harry/Ginny." Everywhere we looked, of course, fan fiction writers banged on those typewriter devices. Most of them were teenaged girls and young women. Every once in awhile, you'd see a little green monster or a crazed, drooling animal. I saw one animal that turned around every so often to projectile-shit on his typewriter device. Then he'd sit right back down and stick his fingers back on the shit-covered keys. He reeked.
We continued walking down the Harry/Ginny path and it was obvious that we had some distance still to walk. Mr. Reed kept looking to his left and right as we walked along.
"If you'll look over to your left toward those hills, you'll see the Lord of the Rings section of fan fiction. It's one of the biggest book fandoms. There are also movies for several of the books."
I picked Cheshire up and put him on my shoulder so that he could see. The Lord of the Rings fandom in the hills just seemed to go on forever. We continued walking, and a long series of hills became visible over to our right.
"If you'll look over toward your right, you'll see the fandoms for Naruto and Inuyasha which are in the anime/manga category," said Mr. Reed.
"What's anime and what's manga?" I was beginning to wonder if I were an idiot. Mr. Reed hesitated a moment before replying.
"Ummmm... Anime is Japanese animation and manga is Japanese comic strips. Animation is a comic strip in the form of a movie. Sorry, best I can do."
We kept walking eying the fan fiction writers in the Harry/Ginny path scattered about banging away on those typewriter devices. The steaming piles of shit that I had become used to seemed lesser in number than usual. There were flowers and even rose bushes scattered here and there which Mr. Reed identified as examples of good writing. It did exist even in The Pit of Voles. Oh, yeah. Those forum voles were still running around everywhere. We ignored them. Fortunately they did not stray on to the path.
The hills of the Lord of the Rings section gave way to an area that looked like manicured urban parks. Mr. Reed stopped to identify it.
"That park-like area just past the hills is the Buffy the Vampire Slayer section. That's one of the largest TV fandoms."
"What's TV?"
"You're better off not knowing."
We continued walking and I gradually started to feel a chill in the air. The colors faded and the sky slowly turned to black and white. The wind picked up, and I heard crows cawing.
"We are now leaving the Harry Potter fandom."
We continued walking, and the temperature continued to drop. The sky became darker, grayer. There were no brightly colored flowers or bushes in sight. Everything was shades of gray. We entered a cemetery full of large mausoleums. Gravestones circled the mausoleums. Barely perceptible shadows drifted among the gravestones and across our path. Smaller, unlabeled paths forked off from the main path that we followed.
"We have now entered the Realm of Dead Fandoms. The mausoleums are fandoms that were once vibrant and full of activity. Now they have perhaps one or two occasional writers who post a story or update. The gravestones are abandoned stories. Some of them have over fifty chapters. As fewer and fewer people commented on or even read the posted chapters, the updates became less frequent until the writer simply stopped logging on, never to appear again. These abandoned stories litter the entire site. You'll see the gravestones even in active fandoms such as Harry Potter. They tend to remain hidden in active fandoms because of all the work being posted by other writers."
We continued walking down the utterly depressing path until we came to what had to be the biggest mausoleum in the area. Shadows of long-ago writers drifted across the path. There was a well-dressed man leaning up against the mausoleum smoking a cigarette. I could see right through him. He saw us and addressed us.
"There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call the Twilight Zone."
"The Twilight Zone fandom has some of the finest writing in all of fan fiction," said Mr. Reed. "This is one of the few places in fan fiction where you will find original fiction. Like the TV program, writers sometimes incorporated social themes into their writing. They attempted to shock the conscience of the comfortable and oblivious. They poured their souls into passionate screeds for compassion, tolerance, and justice. I'll let Mr. Serling there guide you to some of the white roses of Twilight Zone fan fiction."
Mr. Serling led us to an enormous white rose which towered above all the others and began to speak.
"This rose is a story titled 'In Words There Is Power.' It has the finest ending sentence of any fan fiction in existence. It's a sequel to 'The Obsolete Man' and explains how the death of a mere librarian led to a revolution against tyranny. Every decade seems to have a new current event which makes this story just as relevant as when it was written."
Mr. Serling walked over to another white rose nearly as big.
"This rose is a story titled 'Number 13 Looks Just Like You!' It's an extensive elaboration of a similarly titled episode and explains how what seemed a tyrannical imposition of a totalitarian government was actually an imposition of the media, a gullible public, and peer pressure. Sometimes, it's not the government that is the problem. In a country with mass ignorance, it can be the people who are the problem."
Mr. Serling walked over to another enormous white rose.
"This one is titled 'The Glimpse.' A woman who has jumped from the side of a building has a glimpse on the way down of the life she would have had if she had not jumped. The face of the man who would have given her happiness turns out to be a shocking surprise."
Mr. Serling led us over to another rose.
"This one is titled 'What You Reap.' It's about a woman who is a buyer for a chain of discount stores. It's her job to find the cheapest source for various goods. The cheapest source for basic women's dresses turns out to be a factory in a wretchedly poor country where the employees are all sick. The buyer, of course, doesn't know that, and the illness comes into the buyer's country on the dresses causing an out-of-control epidemic which destroys the economy and kills millions. The buyer becomes a hunted woman when she tells the truth about the source of the epidemic, but she doesn't care, and for good reason."
Mr. Reed had his own comment about the last story. "It's a parable about the price of pitting people against each other in a global never-ending race to the bottom."
Mr. Serling walked us over to another white rose.
"This story is one of my favorites. It's a companion piece to my own 'Night of the Meek.' A dirt-poor waitress in a grimy diner in the abandoned, forgotten side of town is visited by an angel on Christmas Eve who offers her anything she wants. She wants to live in a world where there is no such thing as money, prices, or misery. The angel knows such a place, and it's a very nice place, but there's a price to be paid for entrance."
Mr. Serling walked us over to another mausoleum nearby. He leaned up against the mausoleum and lit another cigarette, tossing the butt of the old one onto the polished granite. He held his right hand out as an introduction.
"Good evening, and welcome to a private showing of paintings. Each is a collector's item in its own way—not because of any special artistic quality, but because each captures on a canvas, suspends in time and space, a frozen moment of a nightmare."
Mr. Serling walked over to the largest painting which showed a man on his back chained to a crude platform of rough, wooden planks.
"This ghastly closeup of a man who is about to have his right arm chopped off with an ax is titled 'Darwin's Feast,' and is the story of what can happen to a politician who preaches total self-reliance to the hungry and desperate."
Mr. Serling walked over to another large painting which appeared to show a priest playing chess with a businessman in a huge, elaborate Catholic cathedral.
"Appearances can be deceiving. This priest has just offered a deal to the Devil - a deal that the Devil would be wise to refuse. In 'The Devil and the Priest,' it's the Devil who endures a nightmare."
Mr. Serling took a long puff on his cigarette and then walked over to yet another large painting.
"This man with tears running down his face while holding a fruit in one hand and a brochure in another has just realized that he had found paradise and lost it. 'Abolition Day' tells the story of a man who briefly discovered an alternate timeline in which Abraham Lincoln - The Great Liberator - was not assassinated."
Mr. Serling tossed his cigarette down on the mausoleum granite and exhaled. He seemed depressed. He was surrounded by white roses, but none of them were new.
"I am a relic of a forgotten time," said Mr. Serling. "I lived when television could challenge the intellect, and spark people's imagination. That time is over. There's no room in the modern world of endless electronic gadgets for me. Television has become a wasteland, and I am a ghost."
Mr. Serling faded away into the monochrome background. Only the twirl of smoke rising from the cigarette that he had just tossed was evidence that he had ever been there in the first place.
Mr. Reed led us on through the realm of dead fandoms. Old classic books, old television series, old video games, old black-and-white movies - all dead relics of a simpler time when kids still played outdoors occasionally. Mr. Reed continued to lead and we approached a strange-looking place that was black and white, but with splashes of blazing red everywhere.
"This is the realm of the passionate ones," said Mr. Reed. "This is the realm of the intellectual types who attempted to shock the conscience of their readers. These are the writers who poured tremendous effort and bled their own souls into their offerings. In times past, they might have been published authors, but in an age where unsold books piled up in bookstores, they knew better than to try to sell their work. They wrote for the message itself, nothing more."
We encountered our first fan fiction writer in the section, a young woman. She was well-dressed and gave an image of earnestness. Her typewriter device and table, however, was covered in splashes of what appeared to be blood. The spattered bright red liquid was the only color visible in an otherwise monochrome scene. It seemed so out-of-place. She placed her hands on her typewriter device again, and the blood began to flow in droplets from her fingers as she hit the keys.
"This young woman goes by the name of 'GothicTemptress.' She wrote a socially conscious Twilight fan fiction novel titled 'Scintilla.' Yes, I know what you're thinking. You can't imagine a Twilight fan fiction with depth and intellect. Yet here it is. It has been translated into French and Russian. She hopes to become a commercially published author some day."
Mr. Reed walked some distance to a middle-aged woman hunched over her typewriter device. As before, blood flowed in droplets as her fingers hit the keys. Dried blood smeared her entire desk which was covered in sheets of paper with newspaper articles on them. A magazine hung over the edge here and there, and a few thick books were stacked on the right side of the table toward the back.
"This woman is infamous in her fandom. Almost none of the English speakers in her fandom reads her work, and yet she has her fans - in Russia and the former Soviet republics of Eastern Europe. She is known as 'The Red Alice' mainly for her rewrite of Dante's Inferno. She had a comic-style heroine kidnap the U.S. Senate and take them on a tour of Hell in hopes of scaring them honest. Her heavily researched novel was 150 pages of unfiltered rage and ended with the U.S. Capitol building in flames."
Mr. Reed's mention of "The Red Alice" gave me an ice cold chill down my spine. I wondered if she had anything to do with me. I decided I didn't want to know. Maybe there are things I'm better off not knowing - such as just what the hell are those typewriter-looking devices? Mr. Reed suddenly cupped his hands to his ears and listened intently down the path.
"We're close to the exit to this area. I can hear enemies waiting for us in the next area."
Mr. Reed picked up his guitar and began to play.
It's a raucous asshole party
A thousand bigoted hicks
All for Queen and Tyranny
Thump those Bibles dicks
It's a thousand assholes
Doin' asshole promenade
Step aside all good people
It's the assholes on parade
End of Chapter 24
This story is based on the characters created by American McGee. EA (Electronic Arts) owns the copyrights. Names of fan fiction writers except one have been altered. The pen-name "GothicTemptress" is real, and the name of her socially conscious novel, "Scintilla," is also real. Lyrics to "Assholes on Parade" were written by Pat MacDonald for Timbuk3 and were partially altered by Nikki Little. Rod Serling appears as himself.