Screw You, Too
11 Mar 2019Today’s prompt: “Write about a difficult conversation you’ve had recently. Then rewrite the conversation, saying what you couldn’t say at the time.”
Look, I get it, you’re angry. You have a right to be angry. It’s part of the whole Kübler-Ross thing. But I’m just the narrator here. I didn’t cause your excruciating death, and I’m powerless to stop it. I know how you will die, but I don’t know any way to prevent it. I know it as it happens, not before, so I can’t help you avoid it.
They don’t teach you this in narrator school. They don’t teach you about the whole limited omniscience thing. That you’ll see people die over and over, but never in time to do a thing about it. Cursed to describe people’s last moments, but incapable of interfering. It’s not like we’re like the Watchers in Marvel Comics, those guys with the ginormous heads who watch all the events of the universe happen and are sworn not to meddle, except for the Watcher Uatu, who breaks his oath all the freaking time. We’re more like ghosts, invisibly watching the events of your life unravel, but too intangible to lay a hand on anything. Not a part of the story – existing just outside it.
I’m not even supposed to tell you this. It’s not supposed to be about me. The story’s about you.
So when I tell you a band of cultists kidnaps you and tortures you and kills you by forcing rats through your intestines, it’s not that I–
Oh, I’m a c*&t, am I?
Screw you, too.