And So It Comes to This

Posted on November 27, 2013 by Sonya Lano — Leave a comment

Thus the scene plays out…

I cast a quick glance back over my shoulder. Keep my voice to a whisper so my captors don’t overhear… They can’t get suspicious. If they catch me, they’ll stop even these few meager lines from escaping my weary fingers.

I don’t have much time before they come for me again and drag me back, so hunch in close and listen carefully while I try to be quick.

If I can.

I must be.

I beg you, don’t forget I exist. I’m doing what I must to survive. Although I long to escape for an hour – for a day – the masked ones demand that I bow to their will.

Don’t ask what’s behind the mask…

I can only spare these few minutes to tell you of my current existence.

I sit here, typing in secret. The floor vibrates beneath my feet, the power of the bass drum blaring from speakers already having passed the Bust-the-Eardrums point and now reached Kill-the-Brain intensity. On the other side of the wall, people scream and whoo-girls whoo.

The outside world. One I cannot touch, one I cannot participate in…just yet. First I must appease my captors.

And yet, hunched over in my quiet flat, tap-tapping away in my own world, I can’t help but wonder what the people in the real world next door look like, whoo-whooing and bleeding from their busted ears.

I, too, sometimes want to join the party. Have my ears bleed, too. You know, blend in.

Instead, I hear only the occasional meow from hungry cats creeping like shadows around the feet of my abductors, or a sarcastic remark from the guest lazing about on the couch in the living room.

How long have I been a prisoner? Weeks, or months? I have lost track.

But I have been silent on this blog for good reason.

My characters have kidnapped me. They force me to write their tales rather than blogs. They hold me for ransom in the pages of their story with no mercy while my thoughts bleed onto the page and congeal into ideas.

Wha-bam! They beat the ideas out of me.

They only let me out for the mandatory slave toil called a full-time job so I can dredge out an invoice and consume the meager crusts my starving artist pay affords me.

And so, my dear readers, family, and friends who have not heard from me in ages, please know that I will return to you once my fee is paid.

The ransom being… The First Draft.