I began to write feverishly, as if the words I had trapped so long inside had suddenly decided to burst forth from behind a dam, as if there were a lake of them waiting to explode outward and subsume everything beneath. After a while I began to lose track of what I had slobbered into the page, the world becoming the crimson glow of breath breathed into characters moments before mere dust at my fingertips. They spoke, they lived, they changed and became different from when they began; they were all little bits of me, but none fully me. They bore my signature but not my name, they thought the thoughts I never thought to think. I spoke into them, they spoke into me, and I changed and became different from when I had begun them. They became dangerous, they became volatile, they became a catalyst, they became all manner of metaphors. In their eyes I felt myself a shallow, indifferent creature, content merely to sun myself only to crawl under a rock again come nightfall. As the minutes wore into hours, the day ended and I had not yet stopped writing. The names grew, they lived and died. I penned their minor epics, I pressed the keys that brought them to life. When they finally expired or when I finally grew tired of keeping them alive, whichever came first, usually the latter, they faded away as gracelessly as they had entered my world. And as the minutes wore away, the minutes I had left to create them, I felt myself growing thin. I slept and dreamed of them, I think, though I can hardly remember. When I woke I read what I had written and did not recognise it; this wasn’t me, this couldn’t be me. It was, of course, and it was not. The minute hand swung to its appointed mark and I left. Since then I have never peered into their souls again. They, thankfully, have not deigned to visit mine.
Posted on 2008-04-01 by ddeboer	This entry was posted in main and tagged microfiction. Bookmark the permalink.