Life at the house of Dave was better than she expected. The fridge (not the refrigerator, no one called it that for some reason) was always stocked with food. Sometimes it was noodles in little white paper boxes with strange red lettering on them, sometimes it was sandwiches, and other times it was a greasy mess of cheese and sauce called pizza.

She also quickly learned that the strange rectangle in the living room was called a Teevee, and it showed a feed of what their creator was doing with his day. Most of it was taken up by staring at other Teevees. Sometimes those Teevees showed cartoons which she learned quickly were called anime, and other times it showed strange places and things which she always had to ask Dave to explain to her.

Most of the time the Teevee was pretty boring, so they passed the time by playing games, or talking about what life would be like if they finally got their stories told.

“If I ever get out of here, I want to go to college,” Scarlet said.

Dax sat with his sword in his lap, looking down at it wistfully. “I want to be the Wizard king.”

“You say that all the time Dax. You don’t even know what the Wizard King is,” Scarlet said, crossing her arms and blowing a puff of air to move her bangs out of her eyes.

“Sure I do. The wizard king is the strongest Wizard in the whole world, and that makes him king. The current wizard King is an evil man named…um… well, I don’t remember his name, but he’s pure evil. He killed my whole family.”

“Well, my family is dead too! You don’t see me complaining about it all the time,” Scarlet said.

Dave sighed. “The Bastard killed all of our families. Even Rava here has lost loved ones to him.”

“Why do you think he does this to us?” Rava asked.

“Don’t rightly know,” Dave said. “I suppose he thinks it makes us more interesting. That’s the best I can come up with.”

Dax sulked into his chair by the couch. In the background the Teevee played an image of the creator stuck in traffic.

“What about you Rava? What would you do if you ever got out of here?” Dave asked.

“I don’t know. I guess I would want to reclaim my kingdom from my evil brother.”

“Besides that,” Dave said, shaking his head. “That’s the path that the Bastard made for you. Try to think about what you would want outside of what he wants for you.”

Rava struggled to come up with an answer. And that caused her a deep level of discomfort she didn’t even know was possible. “I guess... I guess. I’d like to know what it's like to be in love.”

“See, now that’s a good answer,” Dave said.

Dax perked his head up and tried to puff out his chest.

Scarlet shook her head. “Try again sweetie. All men are pigs. Especially these men.”

“Hi Scarlet, would you like a banana?” The Banana Man asked.

“See what I mean?” Scarlet gave The Banana Man a squinty-eyed look of disgust.

“Aw he’s just kiddin’,” Dave said. “For me though, I like to keep it simple. I don’t need nothin’ special. I just want to know the end of my story.”

Dax flipped his hair to the side with a swish of his head and snorted. “Ha. Good luck with that. It’s been two weeks since he last tried to write anything.”

“Don’t I know it,” Dave said. “And more than anythin’, I know if anyone is gonna see their endin’ it ain’t gonna be me. You all though, you might have a chance. If you can just develop as people, become someone that the Bastard wants to write about, maybe you can get the endings you all deserve.”

Rava looked at the strange bunch of characters sitting around the couches in the living room, and then to the Teevee. The traffic had ended and now the Bastard was watching a show called Naruto while eating a stuffed cheesy crust pizza.

“Ooh pizza’s here!” Dax said, running to the fridge. A moment later he appeared back in the living room carrying a cheesy crust pepperoni pizza.

“Anyone want a slice?” he asked.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

Rava screamed and pulled at her hair. “I can’t do this anymore!” She stood up and ran to the door.

“Now hold on Rava. Calm down. You’ll be okay.”

“No, I’m not okay. We’re kept in this insane asylum all day watching the Bastard do nothing with his life. All he does is eat pizza and watch cartoons. I can’t take it anymore. I’m leaving.”

“You’re welcome to leave any time you like. But you know there ain’t nothin out there for us.”

Rava pushed on the screen door and looked at the forest. She remembered the horrible boredom and the monotony of the endless woods, and she almost wished for that blissful ignorance again. She wished to be back in the dreamlike state she had been in while ambling along by herself. Perhaps it was better than this place, she thought.

“Hey wait, I think he’s actually going to write something!” Dax said pointing at the Teevee.

Rava closed the door and scrambled over to the Teevee as everyone turned their attention to watch.

“You think he’s gonna write about me?” Scarlet asked.

“No way,” Dax said. “C’mon make me the WIzard king. Make me the freakin’ Wizard KiNg,” Dax said while cheering at the Teevee like it was a gladiator match he bet a lot of money on.

“Hush up now, you might scare him off,” Dave said.

Rava watched the Teevee and saw the Bastard staring at a blank page, his fingers resting on the keyboard.

Then he wrote: It was a dark and stormy night…

Outside, there was a crack of thunder and a burst of rain that battered the windows.

Then he deleted the words and replaced them with: It was a sunny summer afternoon.

The storm dissipated and birds began to chirp once again, as sunshine poured in through the window.

“The heck is he doing?” Dave asked.

The Banana Man tried to hand him a banana, but Dave refused.

Then the Bastard typed out another two sentences, stopped, deleted them both, then rewrote them two more times before he was satisfied. Then he wrote a whole paragraph in under a minute without stopping. Some of it was interesting, some of it was a bit garbled with bad sentence structure and grammar.

Dave scanned the words on the page and cursed. “Damn him, he’s writing something new again. Everybody brace yourself, we might have a new arrival.”

The Bastard continued to type for another half hour until he reached a point where he seemed to hit a wall. He stared at the blinking cursor for another ten minutes, then he slammed the lid of his Teevee shut and stormed off again, returning to the couch to watch more Naruto.

Outside Rava heard someone yelling in the forest.

“Hello, is anyone there?”

Dave went to the door. “Y’all hang back. I’ll go see what this one’s all about.”

Rava and the others peered through the window and saw Dave step onto the veranda, as a man in a white button-down shirt and black pants appeared outside.

“Hands up!” the man called. He pointed a shiny silver object at Dave. Rava had recently learned these were called guns. They were kind of like canons but tiny and could kill a man in a single shot.

Dave put his palms up, obeying the man’s orders. The man was tall and lanky. He had thinning dark hair and deep bags under his eyes.

“Now there ain’t no need for violence. My name is Dave and this is my house. We don’t want no trouble now.”

“Maybe you should have thought of that before you killed my wife, you bastard!”

“Now I don’t know what the heck you’re talkin’ ‘bout. But if you want to tell me all about it, I’m happy to get you some iced tea and we can have a chat right here on the porch.”

“Can it, you piece of shit. I’m taking you in. You killed my wife! You killed her dead!”

“I ain’t done nothin’ like that. Now let me ask you this: What was your wife’s name?”

The man with the gun pointed it aggressively at Dave. “I don’t know, you bastard. Because you gave me amnesia!”

The man lunged forward at Dave, charging at him and swinging the pistol like a club. Suddenly, he slipped and landed hard on his back, with his head cracking into the guard rails of the porch.

Rava looked down and saw that the man had slipped on a banana peel. She looked at

The Banana Man who nodded back at her with a wink.

“Thanks Banana Man,” Dave said. “That one was a real nutcase.”

“I’m The Banana Man, and he really needed a Banana.”

“C’mon. Dax. Help me with this guy. We gotta get rid of him before he wakes up.”

Dax ran outside and helped Dave pick up the unconscious body of the man. They stuffed him in a wheelbarrow and pushed off towards the forest. Rava watched as Dave and Dax disappeared into the forest, leaving her alone with The Banana Man and Scarlet on the porch.

The Banana Man went back inside, as Rava leaned against the rail and let out a deep sigh. Scarlet walked up next to her and leaned against the rails too.

“Where are they taking him?” Rava asked.

“Oh, they’ll probably dump him in an empty village and spin him around a couple of times.”

“There’s villages out there?” She asked.

“All the worlds we come from are technically out there. Most of them are empty though, or filled with wack jobs like the one you just saw. But I don’t want to talk about that. This is the first chance you and I have alone together. I want to talk about something other than men.”

“We weren’t talking about men. We were talking about empty villages.”

“Oh, same thing,” Scarlet said.

“No, it isn’t.”

“Whatever.”

“Fine, what do you want to talk about then?”

“I don’t know, girl stuff. Makeup or something. What is your opinion on dresses?”

“Dear god, you really were written by a man,” Rava said.

“So were you!” Scarlet retorted.

“Oh my god. You’re right.” Rava’s eyes widened with exasperation.

Scarlet sighed and then wilted over the railing. “Maybe we should just enjoy the fresh air in silence. How about that?”

Rava smiled. “Yeah I think I can do that.”

Together they watched the sunset and enjoyed each other’s company in silence. A few hours later Dave and Dax came back from the forest covered in sweat, and looking exhausted. Then they all went inside and enjoyed a meal of cheesy crust pizza and iced tea.