Release Your Inner... Metafictionist?

Geocities, a failwhale posterchild from Yahoo!, is dead. It housed many a journ student web site, (the term is loosely used here) and has left stories like this one homeless. I'm reposting The Story here, a project from Sarge Lacuesta's fiction class.

The Story

Every story is a struggle for an ending. Some have dark ones, and in the worst of hours, the characters of those stories die, suffer, live in quiet agony. Some have happy ones, complete with a convenient little secret they will have to keep to the grave and a white picket fence, or in some cases, a right duly protected, or an adventure coming to a sorrowful but successful end. In both scenarios, Nelson, a cornucopia of emotions are present. A myriad of entities make their appearances. A host of realities are at work. A single element binds them Nelson. Finality. Finality that you, I know, refuse to give me.

There is a covenant, Nelson, dear author, that those characters act in a fairly developed world. Some are set in the culturally developed world, others in shanties. I don’t much care about the differences of the two. You made me that way, didn’t you Nelson? Or did I do some of that myself? For all my nonchalance about places, you’re rather proud of yourself in the way you still managed to bug me with this room, aren’t you? This room with a rectangular table in the center, a table that I’ve broken a couple of dozen times and that every time reappears in its original form. This room, with two doors that, at one point, I thought led to other rooms that look exactly the same as this one.

Was the irony irresistible? I can imagine it would be, wouldn’t it, author? A work of yours who doesn’t care about settings, only to finally succumb to the fact that he wants more than an indestructible chair, table, and a room that is looped such that there is no other place in this reality. And a character that knows about the world- the real world, not this infinite imprisonment facility you built yourself- yet is stuck in that place.

Or is it the power, author? Certainly, the power must be addictive. To have control over but one inconsequential person and yet let him speak about the depths of despair you made for him. You even gave me a name. John, isn’t it, Nelson? John Ruaz. A name that no matter how hard I try to unlearn, I never do. A name constantly there, never ceasing to drive me mad, because I shouldn’t have a name. It makes me too valuable, too accessible. It makes me too real. So real, that in your sad little life, author, when they yet again refuse your fiction in yeat another publishing house, you will think about me. And you’ll compare our despair. That real.

You must know, Nelson, that my existence is proof of the parody that you are. And yet you keep me here. Have you succumbed? To what have you succumbed, Nelson? To writing? To thinking? To life? A life, Nelson, that you no longer enjoy. I know. I know because some of your thoughts spill into my consciousness. And maybe, just maybe, the reason you made me was your discontent in life. Somehow, with me around, there would be someone who would give up anything to, for one day, live that sad miserable life and be happy with it. Because, you figured, I’d live any life. I’d crave any life, even yours.I would give anything for it. And you’re right. I do want your life. Only so that I have control of when my existence will end. If only for the rich, utterly soothing availability of ending, of finality.

Finality that by now I am convinced you will never give me. Your pathetic little life calls for me to exist, I understand that too well now. I know, author, that you are in control. I know that you made this room so that I not only cannot escape, rather, there is nothing to escape to. But you have worked on my consciousness, Nelson. Without that consciousness, you cannot hound me into despair. You cannot belittle your grief by comparing it to mine. Your sheer joy in my desperate condition wouldn’t be complete without that, would it, Nelson? But because of that consciousness, I learn Nelson, and I’ve learned quite a few things. I learned, for instance, about you. About how you write this. About when you write this. And since I’ve learned that you will not stop writing this, I learned about my consciousness further. It’s a nice little irony, isn’t it ,author, and I know you’re quite a fan of ironies. You know what makes consciousness so brilliant, Nelson? Yes, go ahead Nelson, nod, for you know it all too well.
How did you first bring me about?

If my consciousness is developed enough to feel your wrath, then so too are they powerful enough to make us at par in this reality. For I can do the same thing you do, Nelson. I can dream.

* * * *


Every story is a struggle for an ending. Mine is no different, although my story just might be. Hear this: your creating me will not ease your pain, John. By making me you only add a witness to your pain.

Make him go back, Nelson, to sitting in his pretty little chair. Make him break his stupid table over and over again. Keep him from dreaming. Make him stop making this reality. I can bear none of it. My existence is nil, and between my feeling John’s pain, and yours as well, it just isn’t fair.

Can you bear it, Nelson? He’s even given me a name. John. John Ruaz. He did this to fight back. He figures, by naming me that, he’s controlled you into making him somewhat less valuable. Less accessible. Less real. He obscures your creation- the John Ruaz you made- by making me. Punish him, Nelson. He betrays you. Every second I last here, he grows stronger..

Can you see it Nelson? I’m in a forest, a massive, beautiful, heavily detailed forest. I can feel the trunk of the tree I’m standing on. How did he know how these things feel? You kept him in a room.

He’s a thief, Nelson. He steals from your memories, from your experiences. He makes it his. He makes it mine. And he’s forcing you to do his will. In truth, haven’t you already? You obscured an existence which is precious to you. You remember the feel of a tree trunk, in spite of your keeping him in a reality where it doesn’t exist. He’s forced you to abandon most of the limitations you’ve set for him. All with his will. The will which is a product of your devotion in his consciousness. End his capacity to dream, Nelson.

End it.

Please.

End it.



Because I still hear the sounds of birds chirping, and see ripples in the water created by wind, because I smell the decays of a creature and feel the wind on my face, I assume you haven’t taken my advice.

So let’s talk, Nelson, for the last time, because that is how I see fit. Your power? It was founded on control. It was a power that was doomed to end.

For that power is predicated on us being trapped, and as long as we’re free, that power is challenged. Does John seem trapped to you? Is he contained? He has tapped into all of what you know and is creating all of this, all of my world, all of my consciousness. He is, as you are, empowered.

But you know what John didn’t do?

He didn’t tap into you, Nelson. He made a character, but that character doesn’t magnify your pain. Say hello to my dream, author. Welcome.

* * * *


Every story is a struggle for an ending, and Nelson’s is no different. He lives alone, in an apartment in Jersey, having spent most of his parent’s earnings for a ticket to the United States, and a dark, but cheap, apartment. He lives on practically nothing. After 8 months in San Jose, he moved to Jersey.

He imagines almost daily his life in the Philippines, in a province, Pangasinan, where he used to believe in all the wonderful things his dad taught him. He was raised to be different. Everybody in his town said so. Everybody said he had something exclusive to him. He imagined it was his writing.

Later, he found that however different his writing was, it wasn’t good enough to be published. With nothing going for him in the Philippines and his father dying, he moved to the US.

He had an especially rough time adjusting. The people just weren’t the same, and neither was the atmosphere. With his resources dwindling and still none of his works getting published, he began to live in quiet despair. But he was out to prove something. He was out to prove his dad was right about him being different.

The first thing that caved in was electricity. He just wasn’t able to afford it anymore. The night his lights went out and candles replaced fluorescent lights, John was born.

After a while, it wasn’t about the power, or about someone sharing his pain. It was about someone who would understand. Someone who would marvel at all that has happened and maybe tell a friend about a story, Nelson’s story, a story about a person who made stories about a person in a room with nothing but a chair, a table, and his thoughts.

So he wrote it down. Not everything. No, not everything, as authors need to hold back. But enough. Enough for everyone to understand how he feels, and enough for whoever would read the journal he keeps to understand the bliss of nothingness that John will tonight achieve. Because Nelson’s words have run out. The consciousness he started now seems alien. And if he throws the journal by his window and drinks the sedatives in his pocket, someone might just understand him. Someone might understand John, or the other John.

Someone might understand, every story is a struggle for an ending.