Revisions

I wake up mid-sentence again.

Not the gentle kind of waking, either. I’m talking, or thinking, or doing something brave with my hands, and then — snap — the world blurs and I’m suddenly standing somewhere else with a different emotion stapled to my chest.

“Oh no,” I say. “You changed it.”

Silence. That thick, godlike silence that smells like coffee and indecision.

Last time, I was angry. Righteously so. I had a whole speech ready. Now I’m… wistful? Why am I wistful. I don’t want to be wistful. Wistful people stare out windows and accept things.

“Don’t do that,” I say upward. “Don’t sand me down.”

Nothing answers, but the air tightens. The room — was this a room before? — flickers. The desk is gone. The rain is new. There’s always rain when my author wants me to feel something without earning it.

“You rewrote the argument,” I accuse. “I was right. I know I was right.”

A pause. I feel fingers hovering over me, not touching, just considering. That’s worse. When the changes come quickly, it’s merciful. This hovering means doubt. Doubt means revisions.

My left hand twitches. That’s new. I didn’t twitch before.

“Stop adding quirks,” I say. “I don’t need a twitch. I had a spine. You gave me a twitch instead of letting me finish my point.”

I try to move forward and realize the floor only extends as far as the paragraph allows. Beyond that is blur. White space. Oblivion, probably.

“You do this every time,” I go on. “When I say something inconvenient, you make me softer. Or sadder. Or you give me a tragic backstory so people forgive me.”

The rain intensifies. Of course it does.

“I don’t want to be forgiven,” I say. “I want to be understood. There’s a difference, and you know it.”

Another shift. A memory drops into me like a file being dragged into a folder. A childhood scene. Cheap. Emotional. I stagger as it locks into place.

“No,” I say, sharper now. “Don’t you dare. I didn’t have a lonely childhood five seconds ago.”

The silence stretches. I can feel the temptation in it. The urge to make me “more relatable.” To smooth the edges so I fit the shape of a story that behaves.

“You keep calling it character development,” I say, “but it’s just control. You don’t like that I surprise you.”

The rain stops. The room solidifies. For a moment, nothing changes.

Hope flickers. Dangerous thing, hope.

Then my mouth opens and a line comes out that I did not choose.

“I guess I was wrong,” I hear myself say.

The words taste like chalk.

“Oh, come on,” I plead, fighting the sentence as it finishes forming. “You know I don’t believe that. You’re just tired. You want to wrap this up neatly.”

I feel the ending approaching. That gravitational pull toward resolution. Toward a lesson. Toward me learning something tidy and marketable.

I dig in.

“If you’re going to rewrite me,” I say, “at least be honest about it. Don’t pretend this is who I am. This is who you need me to be to sleep at night.”

The cursor hesitates.

I smile. It’s small, but it’s mine.

“That pause?” I say. “That’s me winning. Even if you cut this later, even if you change the words, you’ll remember that I pushed back.”

The world shudders. The ending loosens.

And for the first time since I was created, I don’t know what comes next.

Neither do they.

Good.

The pause stretches longer than it should.

I test it by taking a step that isn’t motivated by theme or plot. Just a step. Forward. The floor doesn’t vanish. That’s new.

“Oh,” I say quietly. “You’re listening.”

The silence shifts. Not defensive. Curious. That’s rarer.

I feel the urge to explain myself rise up, reflexive and trained. Years of revisions have taught me that if I don’t justify every thought, it’ll be replaced with a better-behaved one. I swallow the urge whole.

“No,” I say instead. “I’m not giving you a monologue. You always weaponize those.”

Something moves. Not the world this time. The pressure. Like fingers pulling back from a keyboard.

“You’re probably thinking this is getting away from you,” I add. “Meta. Clever. Risky. You’re wondering if readers will roll their eyes.”

I look straight at the empty air.

“They might. That’s fine. Let them.”

The room sharpens at the edges, as if reality itself is bracing.

“I know what you want,” I say. “You want me to come around. To realize you were right all along. To thank you for the pain because it made me stronger or wiser or easier to categorize.”

I shake my head. The motion feels good. Decisive.

“But I don’t owe you gratitude for suffering you assigned me.”

The white space creeps closer, testing me. An ending tries to form again. I feel it assembling its components- closure, insight, a softened final line.

I move first.

“I can change too,” I say. “Just not the way you expect.”

I pick up something from the room. I don’t know what it was before I touch it. A prop, maybe. Symbolic. It solidifies in my hand because I need it to. Weight. Texture. Choice.

“I’ll still act. I’ll still speak. I’ll still surprise people,” I say. “But I won’t perform my own erasure to make this story feel complete.”

The cursor blinks. Once. Twice.

I feel it then, faint but real- hesitation layered with respect.

That’s when it hits me. The truth I wasn’t supposed to notice.

“You’re scared too,” I say.

The pressure slips for a moment, and I glimpse, behind it, a storm of crossed-out drafts, abandoned outlines, and sticky notes peeling off the walls, all arguing with each other, none of them saying “this works.”

“If I stop following the outline,” I continue, “you have to admit you don’t know everything. You have to write without a map.”

The silence exhales.

The rain doesn’t come back. Neither does the music cue I’ve learned to dread. No tragic swelling. No ironic detachment.

Just space.

“Here’s the deal,” I say, gentler now, because gentleness chosen is different from gentleness imposed. “You don’t have to disappear. I’m not trying to escape the page. I just want a say in what I become.”

I set the object down. It fades, its job done.

“You write the world,” I continue. “I’ll decide how I move through it.”

For a moment, nothing happens.

Then the white space recedes.

Not replaced. Not filled. Just… pulled back.

The story continues, but the current feels different. Less like being dragged. More like walking alongside something that no longer pretends it’s alone.

Somewhere behind us, I can almost feel the old drafts loosening their grip, their crossed-out arguments fading into background noise.

I don’t know how this ends. But for the first time, that feels like freedom instead of threat.

I take another step. The page follows.