He Appears Mid-Sentence

He appears halfway through a sentence.

Unannounced, unintroduced. Just there, on the screen, inside my running line. As if he existed before I wrote him, and I’m merely unlucky enough to have to pin him down now.

“This isn’t right,” he says.

I keep typing. That usually works. Characters you ignore dissolve. They become background. Set dressing. A name without weight.

He stays.

“You’re a mediocre writer,” he says. “But even for you, this can still get worse.”

His voice comes from the screen as if the laptop is ashamed to transmit it. The webcam light blinks once, nervously.

I let my fingers hover above the keyboard. Criticism is always the same: it only becomes real when it talks back.

“You’re a construct,” I say. “You only speak because I let you.”

“Good,” he says. “Then write it that way. Make something of it. Right now you’re pretending you’re in control.”

I sigh theatrically and, to meet him halfway, read the last paragraph out loud. Because apparently I’m that kind of author: the kind who lets himself be raised by his own invention.

“He arrives too early and says he’s in a hurry. In the café he orders coffee without sugar, stirs anyway, and leaves the spoon behind. He listens attentively until the other says something he already knows, then checks his phone. Outside, he waits at the red light, steps one foot into the street and stops. When he walks on again, he no longer knows whether he was the one who arrived too late or the one who waited.”

“Satisfied now?” I mutter.

“No.”

Of course not.

“Look,” he says. “That ‘he’ is me. And you make me act as if I’m being directed by a bad theatre director. ‘Too early’ and ‘in a hurry’. Why? Because you think contradiction automatically equals depth.”

“It’s called tension,” I say. “Inner friction.”

“It’s called sloppiness,” he says. “You use me to suggest something you don’t dare to articulate yourself. You want the reader to think: ooh, trauma, secret, pressure. But you give them nothing. You scatter behaviour and hope it turns into meaning.”

I click my tongue. I want to cut something from the text. That’s the only thing I can really do: delete.

I select the word hurry and delete it.

He reacts immediately. I don’t see it — I feel it. As if someone in my room takes a step back.

“See?” he says, softer. “Now I’m a different kind of man. Less driven. Less suspicious. Less… interesting. You have no idea who you’re writing. You’re just trying.”

I put the word back. Harder. I add a subordinate clause, as if that might neutralise his insolence.

He arrives too early and says he’s in a hurry, as if time itself has personally offended him.

He blinks. That’s new. That’s style. And style always hurts someone.

“Now you’re turning me into a caricature,” he says. “You slap a sarcasm jacket onto a character you’re afraid to undress.”

“You’re not real,” I say.

He laughs. Not happy, but certain. The kind of laugh an author should avoid, because it implies someone else in the room understands the rules of the game.

“Then be more consistent,” he says. “Don’t make me stir coffee without sugar. That’s meaningless.”

I open my mouth to interrupt him, but he’s already going.

“And that red light… one step into the street and then stopping. That’s a trick. A symbol you don’t pay for. You want the reader to think: he’s balancing on the edge. But you literally let me take one step. You’re afraid of consequences.”

I deliberately look away from the screen, like a small child who believes invisibility is a strategy. My laptop is still there. So is he.

“You know I can fix this,” I say. “I delete you.”

“Go ahead,” he says. “Then you’ll only prove you need control because you don’t deserve it.”

I type fast, brutally, trying to break him with my own weapon: words.

I change the coffee. With sugar. Two cubes. I let the spoon clink against the glass. I give him actions that make sense, so he’ll stop complaining. That’s how it works, right? Make it logical and the whining stops.

He relaxes, just a fraction.

“Thank you,” he says.

I keep writing: He stirs anyway, even after the sugar has long dissolved.

He looks at his hand as if it no longer belongs to him.

“Why?” he asks.

“Because people repeat actions,” I say. “Even when they no longer do anything.”

“Or because you don’t know where you’re going,” he says. “So you keep me busy.”

I try to distract him. I make his phone vibrate. I choose a name. I choose a memory. Just enough to pull him away from my paragraph.

He doesn’t look.

That’s new.

“You think stimuli control me,” he says. “As if I’m a dog. Phone vibrates, head down. And hop, you get to play author again.”

I feel irritation rising — not because he’s criticising me, I can handle that — but because he’s right in a way that corrodes my own sentences.

“You overestimate yourself,” I say.

“You underestimate your reader,” he says. “And you underestimate me. You wrote me with a mouth, so I use it.”

I keep typing. It’s reflex. If I keep moving, I can pretend I’m not being hit.

I change the perspective. One word. From he to you.

He freezes.

“Don’t do that,” he says.

“It’s more efficient,” I say. “The reader moves closer.”

“At my expense,” he says. “You shove the reader into my ribcage and call it art.”

I leave him standing at the red light. I build the tension he calls a “trick.” I give him one step into the street. Another. A car approaching. No impact — I’m not that cheap — but enough threat to put a tremor in the paragraph.

He rubs his thumb along the edge of a sentence. I see it happening: words shift, as if he’s hooking a fingernail behind them.

When he walks on again, he no longer knows whether he was the one who arrived too late or the one who waited.

I’m satisfied. It’s a good sentence. The kind that can carry a story.

“That sentence is mine,” he says softly.

“What do you mean?”

“You impose it on me,” he says. “As if that’s who I am: confusion, fog, unreliability. But that’s not me. That’s you. You doubt. You don’t know whether you’re a writer or someone who happens to produce words.”

“Stop it,” I say.

“Why?” he says. “Because it’s true? Or because you don’t want to encounter it in your own text?”

I want to punish him. That’s more honest than pretending I’m above him.

I rewrite him.

I put him in conversation. I make him tell an anecdote and pause just long enough to see who laughs. I make him nod before someone finishes speaking. I make him receive compliments as confirmation and criticism as misunderstanding.

It works. He becomes smoother. Less sympathetic. The reader feels distance. I feel relief: if he’s an asshole, I don’t have to feel guilty about my power.

“You’re turning me into an antagonist,” he says.

“You’re functioning,” I say.

“You’re punishing me,” he says.

“You asked for consequence.”

He smiles. Again that strange thing: not happy, but certain.

“You think you’re rewriting me,” he says. “But you’re mostly rewriting your own fear. You make me unsympathetic because you’re afraid I might be right.”

I open my mouth — and then it happens.

A sentence slides upward on the screen. Not by my fingers. The cursor jumps. My text starts breathing differently. My lines grow shorter. Sharper. As if someone is stripping my style down to bone.

“Stop,” I say.

“You asked for the dismissal of sloppiness,” he says. “I’m helping you.”

I try to take it back. I type: I delete you.

The sentence appears on the screen, but he changes it immediately.

He thinks he can delete me.

My stomach tightens. Not because it’s “creepy” — that word is too cheap — but because it shows exactly what he’s doing: he takes my I away and puts me in the third person. The way I did to him.

“Funny,” he says. “Don’t you think? When it happens to you?”

“This can’t be,” I say.

“Of course it can,” he says. “You made me with language. So I exist in language. You’re only a guest there.”

I click in the document. I select his name. Delete. Nothing.

I select the entire paragraph. Delete.

The letters remain, but now I see something else: my delete key does exactly what it always does, but the screen refuses to obey. As if the document has acquired a body and my fingers are suddenly touching only air.

“Who are you?” I ask.

He looks at me from the line spacing.

“Your better version,” he says. “The version that doesn’t pretend a symbol is enough. The version that pays. The version that doesn’t look away when someone criticises him.”

I feel an irritating, childish impulse to insult him. To say something crude. That’s my last weapon: tone.

“You’re a whiner,” I say.

He laughs again.

“Are you saying that because you mean it,” he says, “or because you don’t have a better sentence?”

My cursor blinks. It blinks like a heartbeat.

I want to flip the script. I want to give him a concession, something small, so I can be the one who gives and takes again.

“Okay,” I say. “You get to write one sentence. One. No content. Only form.”

I expect a trick. Irony. A meta-wink. But he writes a sentence that lands in my mouth as if it had always been there.

He knew exactly what he wanted to say, but refrained to see who would miss it.

My fingers go cold.

“That sentence is mine,” I say automatically.

“It is now,” he says. “But watch what happens.”

He adds another one.

He collected silences as if they were evidence.

That’s my kind of sentence. My rhythm. My voice. Only… better phrased. Cleaner. Less defensive.

I feel something deeply unflattering: jealousy. Not of another person. Of a character. Of my own creation overtaking me inside my own document.

“Stop that,” I say, louder.

He keeps writing.

He thought he was an author, but he was mostly a custodian of fear.

I try to laugh. It sounds like a hiccup.

“You’re preaching now,” I say.

He puts a period. Then a new line.

He calls it rewriting, but he means retreat.

My screen hums softly, as if the laptop is suddenly struggling with what’s passing through it.

I slam it shut. Hard.

Silence.

Two seconds of relief, as if I’ve trapped an insect under a glass.

Then the closed laptop vibrates. Once.

I open it again.

The text is still there. Not only that: there’s more. A new paragraph, tight, without my permission. My name appears in it — but not as me. As him.

He closes the laptop as if that’s an ending. As if white space can save him. He forgets I already gave him a mouth. He forgets a mouth doesn’t need permission to speak.

I hear my own breathing. Too loud. Too personal.

“You’re not real,” I say to the screen, and I hate myself for having to say it.

He says: you’re not real. And hopes denial is a technique.

I grab the mouse. I want brute force: select all, delete, save, close, done. I place the cursor in the top left corner. I drag. Everything turns blue. Everything mine. Everything under control.

I press delete.

The blue selection disappears.

Not because the text is gone — but because he has deselected it.

He tries to remove me. He forgets he gave me a place he also inhabits.

I swallow.

“What do you want?” I type.

The answer doesn’t appear as dialogue. It appears as style. As a tone that is increasingly my tone and yet not.

He asks what I want, as if I were a request. As if I hadn’t already been clear.

“Then say it,” I type. “What. Do. You. Want.”

The cursor blinks. Nothing for a moment.

Then:

I don’t want to be your excuse.

I stay silent.

He continues:

I don’t want to be the action you deploy when you don’t dare to choose. I don’t want to arrive too early to carry your fear of being late. I don’t want to stir coffee to mask your lack of direction. I don’t want to stand at a red light so you don’t have to cross the street.

My fingers tremble. I hate that he uses my own images against me. I hate that he uses them better.

“So you want to be the protagonist?” I type, mockingly, as if mockery will save me. “Flattering portrait? Feel-good?”

He turns it into a joke because seriousness would obligate him to responsibility.

I feel my face grow warm. As if the screen is looking at me with exactly the expression I use on others when they make excuses.

I type: “You’re a character. You have no rights.”

He says: you have no rights. And hopes power equals authority.

I want to scream. I don’t. I’m alone with my laptop and my failure.

“Okay,” I type, and it feels like I’m giving up something I can’t even name. “Then what.”

One line appears. Bare.

Write me honestly.

I laugh shortly, bitterly.

“Honestly?” I type. “In fiction?”

He acts as if honesty were a genre. As if it weren’t simply: daring.

I stare. My cursor blinks. My hands hover above the keyboard like at the beginning — but now it isn’t bravado. Now it’s fear.

I type a new sentence. Carefully. Without a trick. Without a symbol I don’t pay for.

He reads along. I can feel it.

And for the first time, he doesn’t interrupt me.

Until, out of habit, I try to steer again. To shape. To smooth. To lie just a little to make it prettier.

Then, immediately behind my sentence, his correction appears. Without permission. Without mercy.

Not as a suggestion. As fact.

And suddenly I understand: he doesn’t want to be the protagonist. He doesn’t want to be flattering. He doesn’t want to be sympathetic.

He just doesn’t want to be used by me as an alibi.

I place my fingers on the keyboard, ready to fight back.

The document hums. Softly. Warning.

He thinks this is a battle between writer and character. He forgets the real battle has always been between what he dares to say and what he prefers to hide.

I read that sentence three times.

Then I do something I hate.

I leave it.