Preliminary BS

Hello, Elaeri.

Hey. What's up? Do I know you?

No. But I want to know you.

That's got to be one of the most straight-forward lesbianic pickup lines I've ever heard.

Oh, come on. That's not what I meant.

Sure it's not. What, does the bandanna make me look too dykey? Is it the cutoffs? The ill-fitting sweatshirt? The biker tattoo, chain-greased onto my scabby, too-thick leg?

I've never heard anyone describe their legs as being "too thick."

Well, come on! Look at them. They should be longer. The rest of me is long. It's like during puberty I was growing at a perfectly normal rate above the torso while everything below remained in 4th-grade proportion.

That's not true. Are you always this hard on yourself?

Yeah, I tend to be. Well, if you're a girl that looks and acts like I do, you generally have to be hard on yourself. It's like a defense mechanism against the truly horrible things people decide they just have to fucking say to you. I mean, I've been teased my whole life. Even in college. If it's not the thickness of my legs, then it's the pockmarks on my face, and if it's not those things then it's "oh-she-must-be-a-dyke-because-she-doesn't-act-like-your-traditional-airheaded-broad" and on and on and so forth. I know I'm not good-looking. I know I don't have a whole lot going for me in the whole personality department, either. I'm just a tragic failure at this "human being" thing. I swear, if someone did a DNA diagnostic on me, or whatever the fuck you wanna call it, I'm no science major, they'd find out that I'm not even really a homo sapien. I've never felt like one, that's for damn sure.

The good news is that I never have either. In fact, your general outlook on things - namely yourself - seems to be strikingly similar to my own. I mean, my own about myself. Not about you.

You better not be talking shit about me already. We just started talking.

I know, I know. Look. I need to know who you are, what you look like, what you think about, what you believe in, what keeps you up at night, where you are, where you wish you were...y'know, the whole nine yards and all of that crap.

And why is that?

To put it simply, you're my main character. And I need to know you - like truly, fully, really, in every respect know you - if I'm going to write about you. Or rather write as you, because you're just going to have to be my narrator and all of that. Okay?

Uh...slow down a sec, chief. Why exactly is it that I get stuck being your narrator? I never signed up for this shit. And honestly, being a narrator sounds like it's way more work than I'm willing to do pro bono. Because I'm sure as hell that you aren't going to pay me a red cent to provide my first-personly perspective on everything. Isn't that right?

This isn't about the money, Elaeri! It's about the clarity of the artistic vision and all of that happy altruistic shit. Come on. You're all I've got in a lot of ways, y'know?

Don't dump the Morey shit on me just yet, guv. We've barely even met.

Well, we don't need to really meet, do we? I mean, I know I've been initiating this whole love-in, share-in thing, right, but I think I know the truth about you. As in, the most fundamental, crucial truth. And would you like to know what that is?

Not particularly, but I'm sure you're going to tell me.

You, Elaeri Endwell, are me. You are simply just me. You are Turquoise. I'll just leave it at Turquoise for now because heaven and hell both know we don't need to go broadcasting my real name all over this stupid blog that no one looks at anyway. I mean, we're not going to be like perfect clones of one another or anything like that. Not that there is such a thing as a perfect clone anyway...but yeah, I digress. Um, so, you're me. The writing writer and all of that. And your circumstances are going to be just a little bit weird, and you're going to develop this strange ability that's going to severely fuck up and maybe even marginally improve your life, and --

Whoa. Hold the phone, chica. You're saying that we're basically the same person, and that this literally makes me nothing more than a figment of your fucked-up imagination?!

Uh, yeah. Maybe not in so many words, but...yeah. I invented you. You've been with me for a while. I don't know how long; as long as there's been a first-person narrator in the shit that I write. I don't know when I started doing that. Middle school, maybe.

And this narrator of yours...she's always been me?

In some form or another. I think the whole "Elaeri Endwell" name-change was fairly recent. You were June Lanegan before that for a long while.

So what prompted the change?

Well, your parents were hippie-artists now and all of that, so they had to give you this really creative outlandish name to help carry on their drugged-up legacy. And I think the last name is just that subtle dash of symbolic foreshadowing that will ultimately protect you from being eviscerated at any point in the foreseeable future. So you can thank me for that last bit.

Consider yourself thanked. Man. This is all kind of heavy.

Yeah, I'd think finding out that you were the figment of someone else's imagination would be a little hard to digest. But look. You have a lot of reality about you, too. I mean, you're almost entirely based on me. I've tweaked a few things to make you more interesting, like the whole parent stuff...and nothing else is really coming to mind at the moment, but I haven't fully drawn you out yet, either.

What's there to draw if I'm essentially just you? Do we have all of the same favorites? Do I have a bizarre preference for the color blue? Am I an even more religious devotee to peanut butter?

Uh...wait a minute. How'd you know that?

I think the whole you-are-me-I-am-you thing works both ways, doc.

Oh, and that's another way in which you're going to be different. You're going to have the ability to be sharp-witted and jivey without making much of an effort. It's going to be natural for you. You're going to have all sorts of cute, clever little dialogic (I don't think that's a word, and Firefox is in agreement with me there, but I'm using it anyway) nuances at your fingertips. Or maybe your tongue-tips, or tip...yeah, that kinda fell through. Whatever. You know what I mean.

Am I a better, faster, stronger version of Turquoise, then?

Not really. I'm going to almost-fatally-but-not-quite flaw you. Can you use "flaw" as a verb? You can now. And of course I have some of my own AFBNQ flaws. And you'll probably wind up exhibiting some of those throughout the duration of your existence, too.

Oh, hurray, flaws! I can never get enough of those. As if my legs and my face don't have enough between them already...

I think you can stop it with the whole "taking it out on yourself for not being a robotically-engineered beauty" shit, too.

Why? You do it all the time, if I'm not mistaken about what it says here.

So? I'm the author. I make the decisions...wait. What do you mean, "what it says here?"

I don't know. It just slipped out. Look, forget it. Um. So what did you want to know about me when you sat down to type all this shit out?

Hm. I guess I really just wanted to know if you'd be okay with developing the ability to kill people by simply speaking to them. Well, after you've distinctly uttered twenty-five words to them, that is.

Oh, wowie! Just what I always wanted! A quick-fix means of eliminating my enemies and people who just generally piss me off! I'd be more than okay with it, actually. No sarcasm. Seriously.

Well...there's a catch.

There's always at least one.

The catch is, you can't control it. Like, you can't decide who dies after you say twenty-five words to them and who doesn't. Everyone you say twenty-five words to will die. It's just that simple. Well, later on in the storyline, I'm planning to have at least one person who's immune to that show up, but for right now, no one has immunity. Everyone you give more than the time of day to shall perish. On the spot. With no traceable cause of death. Au naturale, if you will.

Um, well, jeez. That sounds kind of lame. And burdensome. I think I'll pass after all.

Hm. I guess I shouldn't have made it sound like you have any choice in the matter, huh?

WHAT?! Are you saying that you're just going to do this to me, and there isn't a damn thing I can do to stop you? Well, yeah, dumbass! Why the fuck did you ask me for my opinion in the first place? Do you know how hard it's going to be for me to get a job now?!

Ugh. Look, Elaeri, I'm sorry I momentarily made it sound like you had a choice. But you don't! This is the whole crux of my story, the whole nexus of the damn thing! I need you to do this for me and to be a good narrator and a protagonist that the reader will want to sit down and dine with at least once or twice. I need you to be brain-pickable. And I need you to be able to kill people by just uttering twenty-five words in their general direction! Is that really so much to ask for?

YES! YES IT IS! It's way more than what I signed up for!

Wait...wait. You signed up for something?

Uh, no. I guess I didn't. Well, not literally. But I materialized here when you started typing this all out, and I guess that materialization was like my wordless consent to conversing with you, or something. Whatever! The point is that I didn't think this little chit-chat of ours would devolve into...into this! Into me randomly developing this ability to vanquish people with just...just words! Did it occur to you that speaking is a fundamental part of being human?!

Correct me if I'm wrong, here, El, but I'm pretty sure you said you weren't human anyway.

I did? Oh...yeah, I did. Well...come on, Turquoise. You don't really expect me to do this. You can't. Right? Uh...oh, fuck, man! I don't know! Work with me!

I'm sorry, Elaeri. But this is how it is. You're my protag. My narrator. And you need to kill people with the power of speech.

So "Enjoy the Silence" by Depeche Mode must be my new personal theme song, right?

It must be. I'm afraid it can be no other way.

...Alright. Fine. I guess you have to come to terms with the shit you can't change, or whatever that Irish prayer thing is that you see on old ladies' doormats. That serenity B.S. You know.

Yes. I know.

Could you at least explain to me why I developed this new ability of mine? Is there some kind of freaky accident? Do I get struck by alien lightning? I mean, I need an origin story and all of that happy-crappy, don't I?

Quite frankly, Elaeri, I don't know why you can do it. I'm hoping I'll figure this out at some point. But of course I don't even really need a reason as to why you'll be able to take people out with nothing more than your words. You know why?

Why?

Because I'm the author.

You're the decider.

Right. I decide what's right for this book.

Good Dubya impression there.

Thanks.

Um, look. Can I go now? I mean, I need to acclimate to this whole new "superpower" shit and all of that. Maybe I'll meditate or start getting into hard drugs or blow my fucking brains out or something.

I'd prefer it if you went with the "or something." Well, meditation would be fine, I s'pose. Just don't get too blissed out 'cause I'm gonna come a-knockin' again pretty soon.

Great. That's really encouraging. Well, uh, I look forward to, um, seeing you again and all that.

Right. Smashing. So are we all set then?

Yeah. We're on the same fucking page, man.

Groovy. Later days.

Mm. Bye.