The Narrator Shares his Convictions
By: Keith R Wilson
Tags: Novel, Fiction, Derealization, Reality

The Narrator Shares his Convictions

Chapter 4

If the thought of the Lisping Barista’s wonderful body lying dead and dismembered disturbs you, Dear Reader, what can I say? You’re human; of course, you would feel that way. I wish I could say I felt the same, but I don’t; for I am not human. I am incapable of feeling anything at all.

Judging from my elbow patches and tweedy look, you’d think I was a professor of comparative literature. I must be on sabbatical because I have nowhere to go. When someone asks me something, I answer in a thoughtful, but incomprehensible manner, as if it’s more important to be clever than clear. I privilege sound over sense, erudition over having something to say. That’s how it seems, but I know the truth. I’m a fictional character named S. Harry Zade.

That’s right, I’ve been created by a man in dirty sweat clothes who hasn’t washed his hair in four days, gone punchy from too many hours staring at a screen. He’d just screeched at his wife because she knocked on the door to ask if he wanted breakfast. What was so important that he couldn’t be disturbed? He was conceiving me. He gazed at the blinking curser, cupped his hand ever so gently over the rounded form of the mouse, fondled the keyboard, and brought me into being. The imperfect man to whom I owe my very existence is a perfect prick.

There are some things that seem real. I remember a mother and a father. I felt lonely on the school bus when no one would sit with me. I got tense at tests and terrified in thunderstorms. I was overjoyed during my first kiss, orgasmic during sex, and heartbroken when ditched. I was proud to acquire a PhD. These are all indications of being real. I can remember them, but the memories are cloudy and incomplete. If I had to be honest, I can’t be sure whether these things happened, or I read about them. They could be the notes of a backstory my author invented and keeps in an old file.

There are books I’ve written and honors I’ve received. They say I’m famous, for an academic. My students rate me highly and my classes are always full; but I might as well be an empty suit or a talking robot. I’m a shell without a nut, a husk without an ear. The lights are on, someone appears to be home; but except for a few hundred dusty novels and my opinion of them, there’s nothing there. I’ve been an actor who’s played a part for so long, I’ve forgotten who I am.

It’s like I’d been forgotten in a drawer, my author on a long digression, a parenthetical parable, or a superfluous sermon. Metaphors piled till I couldn’t move. Alliterated allusions abated my breath. An editor should have crossed me out. Then something happened. It might have been inspiration, some may call it transformation, to me it was revelation. I was cut and pasted, rearranged and restated, and placed where I belong. I found myself at the Epiphany Café, overhearing an attractive young woman astonishingly say yes to a geeky guy.

How can I believe I’m fictional? Isn’t the least complicated explanation best? I see no reason it must be so; things can be complicated as well as simple, as anyone who has ever done their taxes can attest. But the best argument for it is a straightforward, yet disturbing perception. I do not feel alive.

No, I don’t feel alive; I feel as if I’m alive, with an emphasis on the as if. There is nothing of me inside. It’s been that way for a long time. I never understood why until it occurred to me that I could be fictional.

Even if I wasn’t sure I was fictional, I’d believe it anyway. The consequence of not taking my fictionality seriously would be severe if it was true and trivial if it was not. If I insisted that I was an ordinary professor of comparative literature on sabbatical and went back to doing whatever professors on sabbatical do, then I’d be in big trouble with my author. He’d be likely to replace me with a character who performs as he’s told.

On the other hand, if I was a professor on sabbatical, mistakenly believing I was fictional, I’d be neglecting nothing, for if there was anything I was supposed to do while on sabbatical, I don’t remember what it was. I could even claim that taking a turn as a fictional character was my sabbatical. I’d already spent most of my life talking about literature, it’s time for me to be literature and investigate it from the inside.

I conducted an experiment. If I was fictional, I wouldn’t have a body.

I let loose a silent but deadly fart into the café. It felt good. There was a sensation of relief and a hidden vanity in the action, a surreptitious satisfaction of boldly giving birth to a bursting baby bubble. At the same time, I was pleased that its arrival was not accompanied by trumpets that would’ve blown my cover. I took clandestine delight in watching my neighbors crinkle their noses and look slyly around. They shifted uncomfortably in their seats, hoping no one will suspect them. They weighed the pros and cons of packing up their laptop and moving, versus waiting for the smell to dissipate.

You be the judge. Did I capture the experience of furtive farting? If so, I thought, how could I not be real?

But, that’s no proof at all, I concluded. It’s possible to imagine a body quite vividly. Rather, my Author could imagine what my body does and, presto, I’m doing it. So, you see, I have the evidence I need that I’m a fictional character. The next question is: how about all these others at the Epiphany Café; are they fictional also?

All I need to do is look around at their crinkled noses and say, of course they’re real. They evidently have feelings and the feeling they are currently having is the most troublesome feeling possible. They are overcome by disgust.

Be that as it may, from what I can tell, no one here with a real body wants anything to do with it. The Geeky Guy moves around with as much grace as a marionette. All the scribes at their laptops seem to have forgotten that they have bodies as they squint into the virtual world, drink too much coffee, and hold their arms in uncomfortable positions till they get tendonitis. Then there’s the Lisping Barista, who seems to have fought a war against her body, as wonderful as it is; defacing it with permanent graffiti, revising it with piercings, and slicing it to ribbons with a razor. All these real people do their best to be disembodied, fictionalizing themselves into fictional characters. But then, when the awful day comes and the Lisping Barista’s body is torn to pieces and eaten by animals, all the real people will be horrified, proving how real they always were.

You, Dear Reader, turn yourself into a fictional character, too. Just think of the many poses you take. Sexy with your boyfriend, prim with your parents; studious with teachers, goofy with friends; a hard worker, a lazy slouch; fun here, serious there. Which, out of that expansive cast is your true self? The one you go to bed with at night? Do you look the way you think you look when you look in the mirror? You are full of fictions. Buddha said it best: the self is an illusion. He might as well have said a delusion, a painted smile on a sad clown, a fudged report, a generalization, a weak end of a flashlight beam, shaking on the trail where the woods are full of monsters.

Normally, real and fictional people do not interact in such a way so that, when a fictional character orders a double shot non-fat macchiato, the barista will hear him. In most cafes no one can observe the fictional character drink his coffee. But, as I’ve said, the Epiphany Café is no ordinary coffee shop, nor is Kenilworth a typical small New England town; it is an enchanted place where the real and the fictional interact.

Being fictional gives me clarity and singleness of purpose I wouldn’t have otherwise. It’s revealed by my name. If you sound it out, S. Harry Zade becomes Scheherazade, a clever allusion to the storyteller of Arabian Nights. Apparently, I’m meant to narrate this story. Perhaps it’s this very virtue, the ability fictional characters have of knowing the meaning of their lives, that causes real people to fictionalize themselves.

Be that as it may, this narrative imperative worries me. Like the Lisping Barista, I could end up dead. Failure to produce a steady flow of entertainment can send me to the chopping block. I can be rubbed out and made to disappear more easily than if I was real, for it’s not necessary to dispose of a body when it can be done in by a delete key.

I must continuously tell stories or die. I need constant stimulation, a steady flow of material, story leads, and compelling characters. The Epiphany Café is just the place for this.

This is why it meant so much to me when I overheard an attractive young woman, the Lisping Barista, say yes to the Geeky Guy, even though she was not saying yes to me. I knew I would have a story to tell. I did not know what a story it would prove to be.