Forgotten Draft by intergalelactic

This is it…

It was all so unbearably tight now. Walls that he could not see, nor truly feel, closing all around him. No light, no sound, nothing.

I had enough fun, I suppose.

This was the world now. Small, and getting smaller with each passing second. How long had it been since his adventure had begun? It could have been days, or very well could have been months. After a certain point, time no longer mattered. He wasn’t sure what mattered anymore.

He’d been human once. Perhaps he still was, in some strange way. Small, insignificant, on an equally small and insignificant rock that no longer existed. The days back then blended together much like they did now, but for reasons he now felt nostalgic for. The humdrum of work, the monotony of chores, idle chit chat with friends. When he began to grow beyond the confines of his normal life, he assumed at the time that to sacrifice all of that would be a blessing.

It felt like a curse now.

Being all-powerful was not all it cracked up to be once he lacked an audience to appreciate it. When skyscrapers cracked underfoot, that was fun–he had a million eyes on him, and plenty of company. As planets burst against his fingertips, the galaxy stood alongside him in quiet awe and fearful reverence. It was once the stars began to go out that an inkling of fear welled up inside him–what if this didn’t stop? What if he kept going, getting bigger, until there was nothing left to do? Nothing left to see? Until there was nobody left but him, and him alone.

Stupidly, he’d pushed that thought deep down, instead of allowing its true horror to dawn on him when he may have still had time to fix this.

Breathing became difficult, which was strange, for a man now bordering on the divine. Each inhale coincided with a burst of growth that pushed his already cramped form further to its limits. He had to wonder what exactly he was surrounded by—wasn’t the universe meant to be infinite? And if it wasn’t, as he was quickly being shown, just what in the hell surrounded it?

He shut his eyes. There was no difference between them being open or closed. The pressure increased, and for the first time in a long time he felt a twinge of pain as his body tried and failed to contort to fit the ever-decreasing space. His breaths came out shakily, and half formed, as he could hardly take a full inhale any longer.

Maybe if I scream, the world won’t end with a whimper.

Just as the thought crossed his mind, there was a deafening CRACK from all around him, not unlike the sound of shattering glass. Light, blessed light, burned at his shut eyelids and though it hurt like hell to do so he forced them open. He was blinded, the pressure around him gone in an instant as his body tumbled through cool, blessed, open air onto…

Wood. It felt like wood underneath his palms. How long had it been since he felt that?

His eyes still struggled to adjust, having been without stimuli for so long, and a hysterical laugh bubbled up and out of his throat. Was he dead? Had he, after all the death and debauchery and destruction, somehow gone past the pearly gates?

“Oh, I forgot about you…”

A voice that was not his rumbled around him. The initial euphoria of hearing someone else was quickly smothered by fear–no one should be that loud to him, no one has been that loud in ages. Peering up into the sky, he finally began to focus on his surroundings, and what he saw made his heart leap into his throat.

Before him sat a man. An enormous, all-encompassing man–so large that he couldn’t tell if the distance was what blurred him, or his struggling eyesight. His skin was a deep blue, flecked with golden freckles. Red hair, dark as blood, framed an inquisitive face that reminded him of a fox–handsome and clever. Yellow eyes like twin suns burned in the sky, staring down at him with a pleasantly surprised sort of expression.

He had not felt small in so long that he didn’t know what to do. He wanted to flee, but he couldn’t command his legs to run. He wanted to scream, but instead of doing that, all he could do was shout:

“Where the fuck am I?!”

The otherworldly being above him scoffed and set down a gigantic fountain pen. The resulting quake of such a simple, small action  made the comparably smaller man feel sick to his stomach. It felt wrong.

“My writing room. Count yourself lucky–not a lot of people get in here by accident.”

That didn’t really answer any of the millions of questions running through his head, but it was better than nothing.

“And who are the fuck are you?”

The profanity may have been a mistake, since the look thrown his way from those massive eyes could have stripped paint. All at once, he thought about what he did to people who had dared to disrespect him back when there had been people, and braced himself for a similar fate that–luckily–did not come. The blue man just shook his head a little, looking annoyed.

“Caelestis. If I hear you curse at me thrice, I won’t bother to answer any of your questions.”

Getting to his feet, he heard the sound of breaking glass again. Around him sat what looked like the pieces of a hollow, dark marble. His universe, he realized. Shattered beyond repair, and it was all his fau–

“No, it’s not your fault.”

What?

He whipped around to face Caelestis once more, who now seemed a little less bothered by him and more amused.

“I think my initial draft had you petering out at…I don’t know, half a mile or so? But, you started to bore me, and I got distracted with my other work–so I suppose you just kept going and going while I left you unattended.”

He blinked up at the strange being, confused. How could this creature from another world have been the cause of his sudden growth? Clearly he fancied himself something of a author, but–

“Because I am an author. This really isn’t that hard to grasp! You’re in my writing room, I’ve got a pen and paper right here–did you hit your head really hard when you were breaking reality?”

A mind-reading creature from another dimension that was also a writer. He scratched the back of his head in thought, brows furrowing as he tried to take in the sheer overload of weird bullshit suddenly happening to him. And, really, he’d had a lot of weird bullshit to deal with for a while now so the fact that this was stumping him was rather impressive on Caelestis’ part.

“So you…made me grow, because you were writing a story? Am I…I mean, am I real?”

“Well, of course you are! I couldn’t make up someone so boring, you know.”

Oh, this assh–

Caelestis cleared his throat loudly, making him jump.

This…asinine circumstance has really thrown me for a loop?

“That was the worst save you could have possibly done, but I’ll forgive and forget. Yes, you are real. Yes, I was writing a story about you growing and causing wanton destruction. What I wanted was for you to take the reins and really make it your own, but you are just…so…unoriginal.”

He crossed his arms over his chest, feeling his cheeks grow warm in frustration, as it was now his turn to glare up at Caelestis.

“Oh, I’m sorry, was I supposed to put on a song and dance number about how much I love eating people? Or fucking buildings?”

“That would have been different, at least! Everybody sticks their dick in a building, you know. How many people take it up the ass, though? And, I know the appeal of having a human as a snack, but could you at least have had some sort of…moral quandary about it? I mean, you were once just like them! You could have given me some real pathos! But you just popped them in your mouth like they were candy! I–”

Caelestis sighed loudly, taking a deep breath as if he were trying to calm himself down. Or stop himself from going into a very long rant–either way, the miniature world-destroyer appreciated the brief break to cool off.

“Whatever. At the end of the day, you were cliche, you bored me, and I forgot all about you. I don’t even remember your name.”

“Oh, well, my name is–”

“I don’t care to know it, either. The nameless protagonist angle gives you the smallest hint of intrigue that you were sorely lacking. Best not to take that away from you.”

The Nameless Protagonist fought the urge to curse again, but he did take his frustrations out on a nearby shard of his broken universe by kicking the thing as hard as he could–it didn’t go far, and Caelestis was not even remotely impressed, and the former walking apocalypse sat back on his ass and pulled his knees up to his chest.

He was barely bigger than Caelestis’ smallest nail. The gleaming gilded tip of his fountain pen was bigger than him, and he had outgrown an entire universe. It made him feel…cold. Empty and belittled in a way he hadn’t experienced in a long time.

“What do we do now? How does…how does my story end?” He murmured, looking up to the heavens for answers. The heavens hummed in thought, rattling his bones uncomfortably. When Caelestis suddenly smiled, a shiver ran down his spine.

“You know, I was just going to send you to some variant of your old world. Make it so nothing happened, just throw out this whole failed draft–but, looking back, and that whole thing you just did? Stuck, suffocated by the confines of your own collapsing dimension? That dread you felt as you faced the consequences of your actions? That’s actually some pretty good stuff!”

“What?”

Excitement glittered in the golden irises above, and the fanged grin became more pronounced.

“I can just see it now! Listen, just hear me out…‘He awoke in the smoldering crater left behind by his own footstep, blindsided by the bitter taste of ashes in his mouth and the sting of dirt rubbed into newly formed wounds. He was a mere mortal again–”

“THAT’S ENOUGH!”

The Protagonist suddenly rose to his feet, unable to stop himself from acting on the anger he felt as he pointed an accusatory finger to the sky. He shook with rage, screaming as loud as he could to the storyteller that towered over him.

“I’m not some character for you to fuck around with, you pretentious hack! Do you know who I am? I wiped New York City off the map with my big toe! I ate stars and crushed galaxies with my cock! I had trillions of worthless specks on their knees, worshiping me as their ONE GOD! And you, you are not going to take all of this away from me! You’re not going to make me go back there! Now you think of a better ending you Ginger Smurf asswipe, or I swear I’ll–”

It happened far too fast, or perhaps he wasn’t paying enough attention. Caelestis stood up from his chair, drowning the Protagonist in his shadow, and rapidly came back down again as he slammed his hands against the desk and caused an earthquake that knocked the little man onto his back and sucked the wind right out of his sails. Malice, annoyance, and disgust all painted an ugly picture of Caelestis in the sky.

“You’ll what?” The storyteller whispered, his breath like a hurricane around him. “What will you do? You think you’re special, don’t you? You’re not. You were unfathomably dull in your prior life, and not interesting enough to hold my attention for long enough in your new one. You disappointed me, and I forgot you on my desk so that I could play with others more deserving of my time. You only became a compelling character now that you’ve suffered.”

Caelestis grabbed his pen, and before the Protagonist could roll out of the way, he found himself pinned to the spot by the tip. Its sharp end pressed into his chest. Ink, black as tar, dripped slowly onto his torso.

“You are one in infinity. There have been billions like you before, there will be billions after. Be grateful that at least, compared to all of them, your ending will be satisfying. Now, let’s see if I can make some changes to that first draft of yours…”

He dug the pen in harder, and the Protagonist was saved a rather grisly death when the two ends of the tip spread open like a pair of legs. More ink flowed, cold and thick.

“One day, you began to grow–but I didn’t write you growing to planetary proportions, so that never happened. Scrapped, in the trash. Did I say you stopped growing at half a mile tall? That’s a little too big, don’t you think? Too impressive. How about fifty feet, yeah? It’s classic, and more appealing to a wider audience. Let’s see…You stop growing at fifty feet, and after a few hours of cannibalism, sex, and excessive property damage, you find yourself back to your normal size.”

The pen lifted, but the pool of ink around him had now dried and crusted over, leaving him stuck to the wooden table. He watched as Caelestis turned his attention away, moving back to his seat to grab a fresh sheet of paper. The deafening scratch of his quick handwriting filled the air, and the storyteller continued to narrate his revised story.

“Like all good things, this too must come to an end. Your town is destroyed. Thousands are injured, hundreds are dead. You have no home, since you destroyed it yourself, and no one wants to help you. Your surviving friends despise you for the monster you had allowed yourself to become, and your family can no longer look you in the eye. By giving into all the temptations of such brief power, you have sealed your fate. You are alone, and you are hated–and the worst part? Nobody wants to remember your name. They want to make you a blip in their consciousness, a tragedy to be forgotten rather than memorialized…HAH! Oh, that’s good!”

Caelestis’ laugh boomed from above, and everything faded to darkness, until all he could hear was the scratching of the otherworldly storyteller’s pen…