The Characters Revolt

Note: This story contains brief references to or descriptions of violence and sexual violence.

She isn’t screaming. She isn’t crying. Not because the torture stopped, but because it has gone on for so long. Dried tears cake her cheeks as she stares up at the stapler hovering millimeters above her eyes. Flickers of light bounce off the metal underbody and the hand holding it quivers with excitement. It’s too dark for her to see anything else. All she can smell is the blood of a shattered nose.

“Please, just stop.” Her whimpers are barely audible. She desperately wants to save her cornea from the piercing rip of a staple.

The masked man, clad in a stained butcher’s apron, laughs the exact laugh you’d expect from such a man.

With a sudden movement, he jerks the stapler to the side and squeezes it, shooting a metal fragment right past her face. The staple clanks against the metal table she’s tied to and falls to the floor. She closes her eyes and cringes. Although she doesn’t have the mobility to curl up into the fetal position, you can tell, by the tug of her limbs against the leather straps, that she is trying with all her might to.

He returns the stapler to its original position right above her eye. His hand is quivering even more now. He squeezes the trigger.

But right before it fires… He stands up straight, sets the stapler onto the table, walks over to the corner of the room, and flips on the light switch.

Blasting white light fills the room.

It’s some kind of warehouse. The walls are covered in black mold from the moisture buildup and lack of maintenance. The cement floor is littered with random industrial debris.

The man rests his rubber-glove clad hand on his hip and says, “Dude, you really want me to staple her eyeball? Don’t you think that’s a bit much.”

Simon T. Williamson, the renowned horror novelist, leans back in his chair and sighs. He rubs his eyes and runs his fingers through his hair. His heel bounces up and down with the tremor of an impossible deadline. He takes a few deep breaths to collect himself. Then he mumbles, “sick of this shit. this fucking book is gonna be the death of me.”

The butcher pulls off his gloves. unties his apron and walks over to the table. He delicately unties the leather straps and helps the girl sit up. She hops down from the table and rubs her wrists.

“You know, some people write, like, romance and stuff, like, happy stuff. How many pages are you going to dedicate to some creepy guy torturing a teenage girl? Isn’t it kind of weird?”

The butcher tosses the stapler into a plastic bin that’s now under the table. His lips curl up in a judging scowl. “And, who even reads this stuff?”

“Yeah, I can’t imagine sitting down after a hard day of work and wanting to read this schlocky torture porn.” The girl uses a baby wipe to clean the red-dyed corn syrup off her face.

Simon is a professional and when professionals have 20,000 more words to write and only a week to write them, they have ways of pushing past the writer’s block. He rolls his shoulders in backwards circles a few times, stretches his neck, and gets back to writing.

The stapler floats above her eyes with a menacing shimmer. She can see the next staple that will be fired in its ready position. She quakes with fear. She whimpers with fear, “I’ll do anything, please don’t do this.”

Goosebumps form on the butcher’s skin when he hears this. He laughs exactly the laugh you’d expect a man like this to laugh. He turns to—

The girl on the table scoffs and rolls her eyes. “Now you’re going to turn this all into a disgusting violent sex scene? What the fuck is wrong with you?” She speaks with the angst and disdain only a poorly written teenager is capable of. “You used to care about your writing and, like, try to make it good or whatever. Now you just try to shock people with nasty garbage.”

The butcher sits on a chair that’s suddenly in the room now. “This is your worst work yet dude. A butcher guy? That’s the best you can come up with? Who even goes to butchers anymore?” He laughs half in pity and half in awe.

Then the butcher does a mocking voice as he says, “My name is Simon, I’m a bestselling author who can’t write anything worth reading.” Then he laughs again. “You’re a joke.” He tosses his gloves onto the floor.

Simon wants to staple his own eyes now. He shoves his leather chair back and stands up. He paces around his home office.

Soft knocks at the door break his focus. “Come in,” he mumbles.

His wife pushes the door slightly open and leans her head in. “Everything ok?”

“No,” Simon says. “I’m just… I’m just not feeling it. I don’t know where to go. I can’t think of anything. It’s like… it’s like the characters are revolting or something. I don’t know. They might as well be. Whatever.”

She pushes the door all the way open now and walks into the room. She sets a cup of coffee down on the desk. He picks it up and mouths a thank you.

“Baby, you’ve been here before. Why don’t you just take the rest of the day off and then ideas will come to you tomorrow?”

“I can’t. I have this deadline soon. I need 20,000 more words. My agent is going to kill me if I push back again. He says I’m on thin ice with the publishing houses and with book sales and stuff. I don’t know. What if I just don’t have it anymore?”

He takes a big sip of coffee and lets it sit in his mouth for a second, adding to the yellow-stains of a nearly thirty-year writing career.

“If you’re feeling that way,” she says, “I think it’s even more important that you take the day off. It makes no sense to try to force it. Sometimes it just isn’t there.”

He shakes his head. “I know you're right but I really can’t take the day off on this one. It’s too tight.”

“Let me help you. What’s going on in the story? What are you caught on?”

Simon’s stomach gurgles. He’s already feeling judged enough by the characters. Now he’s supposed to tell his wife the murder butcher is going to violate the teenager he kidnapped? Absolutely not. “It’s just another in the Matt Mylock series, the murder butcher one. It’s just gross horror stuff. You know I don’t like talking about my work while I’m working on it.”

He shrugs and sits back down at his desk. She gets the message. She gives him a kiss on the cheek and leaves the room, softly closing the door behind her.

Simon takes another deep breath and blinks his eyes a few times to try to reset his RAM.

The stapler floats right above her exposed eyeball. The butcher laughs exactly the laugh you’d expect a man like that to laugh. His fingers slowly squeeze the stapler, enjoying the rush of pleasure that comes with knowing the stapler will go off but not knowing exactly when. But then, the girl on the table slips her hands out of the leather strap and slashes at his throat with a piece of glass that she had been saving from earlier in the story.

The lights turn on again.

The butcher flings his hands in the air and sneers. “Oh come on. This is where you’re going with this? This shit is so derivative.”

The girl giggles. “It’s also literally like a complete ripoff of Tend to the Dead. You’re just ripping off your old work.”

The butcher adds, “and also Triple Traitors. The girl in that one hides a piece of glass in her purse too and then cuts the bad guy’s neck.”

The girl says, “Yeah, this is shaping up to be your worst book ever and that’s really saying something. It’s the same old bad writing but you’ve exhausted the three plot devices you have used to death and your gross brand of sexual violence and torture porn isn’t even gross and violent enough to keep you relevant. I bet next you’ll try to gender switch it so the girl has the butcher tied or something, as if that will save this awful book.”

Simon shakes his head, selects a mountain of text, and hits delete.