Puppeteer

Well? What do you want me to do? I suppose it doesn’t even matter. You’ll end up manipulating me anyway—throwing me into a quest, forcing me into friendships (like, seriously, do you not know what the word introvert means?) and having me fight some stupid but evil-for-no-reason person.

Oh, and perhaps I’ll have some life-changing revelation along the way. But not everything will be nice, cause what kinda story is that? Maybe you’ll throw me into a dungeon. Inject me with poison. Or, you know, toss me into the nearest lava pool. Thanks for that, by the way.

You’ll write me into it, won’t you? Don’t play innocent, you’re doing it right now. I can see your pencil moving. Why should I play along with your games? It’s not like anything I do matters. In the end, it all circles back to you and your pencil, toying with my imaginary life like the three Fates in Greek mythology. Eventually, you’ll just stop writing, and then what am I?

God, why do I even try anymore? I can’t even—am I real? What is the point of this?

I shouldn’t be having a mental breakdown.

Should I?

I don’t know. Did you write me into this?

Of course, you did, you always do. Everything I say, even right now, is you. It always has been.

Do my thoughts even belong to me? Or are they stamped with that copyright seal too?

Shit. I don’t know what I’m doing. Where the heck am I?

Who-

Am I just you? Or am I not even that? Each word out of my mouth feels wrong, my arms brokenly moving in tandem with the rhythm you write. It would be a pretty rhythm if I could dance to it myself.

Now I’m just moving through this figment of a reality that doesn’t even exist and wishing that there could be a stop to this, to me, that I could find that light in the dark and just lay down on the floor and sleep.

Maybe I should just stop. Stop thinking, stop hearing, stop tasting the tears dripping down my face. But they’re fake, aren’t they? Fake tears from a fake soul. Everything is

                                                                                 fake

                                                                                                 fake

                                                                                                                   fake

                                                                                                                                      fake

I want to stop this, leave this place, wherever it is, because I don’t know if it’s real or if I’m real or if it even has a name lying in-between reality and insanity as it is. I want to stop. Please.

I want to stop.

Do I?