The Fourth Wall

An author of romance is still on the hunt for a character who ran away from her story long ago.

Step, clunk. Step, clunk. The old man meanders through the circus, mildly offended by the bright, gaudy colours of the various tents and caravans which contrast with his own stiff, tailor-made attire. No longer the young bard he once was, he relies heavily on the cane he has by his side. His pursed lips speak volumes as his eyes fall on one particular tent huddled away amongst the stands selling buttered popcorn and glass jewellery. This is not where he wants to be, with its horse dung and flea-covered caramel apples. He wants to be with his with his endearing, doe-eyed princesses and selfless knights, in the castles he built for them, those places he wishes he could linger in forever. He is an author of romance, of wistful tales featuring solid moral lessons for good little boys and girls. But readers have grown tired of his traditional (Classic!) fables and instead have begun to look for unexplored, more intriguing genres. They are becoming a generation that sympathises with those once blindly accepted as villains; those he and other such authors had intended to be despised. He does not like it. The time has come for his most treasured draft to be published, to remind readers why they loved a good fairy tale. But for this dream to be realised, he must retrieve what has been stolen from him.

Reinvigorated, his pace quickens as he approaches the tent. The old man coughs upon entering the unexpectedly hazy dwelling, his frail body quivering from the unfamiliar exertion. Hastily, he recovers his composure with an impatient “Harrumph!” Peering through the dim lighting, the old man’s vision is shrewdly obscured by a series of carefully arranged hanging fabrics, casting shadows in different directions and giving the impression of an infinitely deep cave. The fabrics are dyed in shades of deep reds and purples, strange shadows cast across them by decorative candles in burnt gold sconces. Strings of glass beads glint in the candlelight. The whole display eerily reminds him of a lair he once designed for a particularly nasty old hag in one of his earliest tales.

He pushes his way past the drapes, marching towards his target in the centre of her unfocused world. The young woman sits at a silk-covered round table, gazing curiously at the murky crystal ball before her. The old man recognises it; it was he who provided her with it long ago.

“Welcome,” she says softly. Her hair is shiny and black, falling past her shoulders, and her skin is smooth. As pretty as a sympathetic character should be, but not as pretty as a protagonist.

The old man is surprised by the rasp in her voice. How old she sounds. His white eyebrows rise to meet the deeper creases on his forehead.

She reaches out and takes the crystal ball, hiding it discreetly below the table.

Her fingers are long and slender as he recalled describing them, but now the fingernails are long and chipped, and he regards them now with disdain.

“What can I do for you today?” she asks with a faint smile.

The old man offers a wide smile intended to appear genial. “I should like for you to tell me my future, of course.”

The woman disappears behind the table for a moment before reappearing with the crystal ball. Her eyes glass over as she stares into the swirling orb, hands held aloft.

The old man waits.

Her eyes clear, and grow wary, flicking up to meet his.

“Ah yes,” he says, his own smile fading into a smirk. “But I already know the future, as far as you and I are concerned.”

“And what, pray tell, may that be?” The woman’s voice remains soft, but it has now developed a cautious, defensive edge.

“I will be returning you to True Love’s Kiss, where you belong.” The old man leans back into the worn chintz chair, hands resting lightly on the arms as if it were a throne and he were a king.

“…You are still angry that I escaped from that catastrophe you called a love story.”

The slight inclination of the man’s balding head was enough to prove the woman’s suspicions correct. “But why do you demand my return? I was a child when I fled from that manuscript. Despite your description, I am not that fresh-faced lamb anymore.” The multitude of bracelets at the woman’s wrist jangle as she gestures to her faded form, concealed under layers of flowing garments.

The old man nods, his lips curling into a sneer. “Indeed. Because of you, my runaway lamb, that manuscript of mine is still but a draft. It is the best I have ever written, and a terrible waste. I have never been able to publish it. After all, it does not do for the flow of a story to have an incredibly detailed character vanish without so much as a parting sentence.”

Now it is the woman’s turn to sneer. “When you gave me an ability as remarkable as this,” she sweeps her hand across the surface of the crystal ball, “I expect you did not realise it would backfire in such a way, so as to allow me to see the… fate, you had planned for me. What a pity…”

The old man huffs. “That particular tale of mine requires your death for the sake of your sister.” His words are whined, jarring with his regal visage.

“…My sister?” The woman blinks.

“Of course!” The old man’s gestures abruptly become animated as his voice takes on a soft, vicious quality. “Your sister is the protagonist, you see. She needs to know tragedy, a terrible loss so that readers may sympathise with her. What better way than for her to lose her loved ones? An unexpected attack on the village, your desperate parents sacrificing their own blood for their children, and you, her dear sister, are to be a pitiful mess, curled up on the ground with the shards of your own crystal ball piercing your delicate flesh...” His gaze lingers on the woman’s bejewelled neck, and sighs, made breathless by his outburst. “I would have you die so that your sister may have just enough time to flee, the only one to escape the massacre. She will be brought up in an orphanage, and then she will leave and make her own way as a strong, loyal heroine, determined to—”

The woman puts up a hand. “Enough. I understand.”

The old man seems to deflate for a moment, his skin sagging as his face falls into a petulant sulk. “You see, to achieve this I must return you to the story, you must be that doomed child,” he insists. “But it is not only for the sake of your dear sister, no no no.”

“No?”

“No,” he raps the tip of his cane against the ground. “For if you are allowed to escape, who is to say other characters would not feel inclined to flee, should they discover a twist in the plot that is not in their favour?”

The woman says nothing, merely observing him from across the table.

“Aha,” he thinks to himself. “I’ve got her now.”

To the old man’s surprise, the woman smiles. It is not as pretty as he had described it; she shows far too many yellowed teeth.

“Well, that is most unfortunate,” she cackles, a shrill ringing scarcely hushed by the heavy cloak of the tent. “You are aware that readers can become quite sentimentally attached to their favourite characters?” She crosses her arms and leans her elbows on the table, fingers laced with her chin resting gently upon them.

The old man scoffs, white moustache ruffling. “Certainly, I know that. One cannot truly call themselves an author for so many years without knowing that. It what keeps the readers invested in a story.”

The woman nods indulgently. “Fortunately for myself, you have a number of readers of whom I am the subject of this particular type of investment.”

“How is that possible?” the old man snarls. “I never published True Love’s Kiss, how could they know…you…?” He trails off, realisation dawning.

The woman is pleased with the man’s reaction; she had decided long ago that she would be no one’s tragic past. She has no intention of giving in to this sly fox. 

“Once I beheld the knowledge of my fate, which I owe to this gift you gave me,” she taps the crystal ball with one long fingernail, “I ran away. When I was shown kindness by strangers, as a little girl I did not hesitate to tell them what I had been through, and why. It was not until I had grown a little older, perhaps a little wiser that I learned I had unwittingly spoiled the story for many of your avid readers. So, as it happens, publishing it now would have little effect. I highly doubt many would pay for a novel detailing not only a story which they already know, but one in which their most beloved character dies before their time.”

The old man is flustered, but straightens up in his chair, not yet willing to back down. “Is that so? And what proof do you have of this supposed loyalty my readers have towards you? Where are these readers?”

She raises her sharp, pencilled eyebrows. “I will let you guess, dear author.”

The old man stares at the young woman, greedily searching her face for a clue. Gradually, in the silence of their tent, the cacophony of music, shouts and rattling coins from the delightful chaos outside seeps into the tent. The old man’s face pales, lips drawn.

“Yes, this kind circus troupe took me in,” the young woman answers for him. “They were purely devoted fans of your novels. They are my fans now. My story has been a comfort to them during many a long night.”

The noise outside descends even heavier on the tent walls, and a rush of cold slips down the old man’s spine with the uncomfortable, undeniable feeling of being secretly observed. He changes tack. “Gentle lamb, it seems you do not understand that as an author, I—”

“As an author you must maintain confidentiality in regards to unfinished manuscripts, a rule that you broke when I used this crystal ball and discovered my future as a character in said manuscript.” The woman’s voice is now hard, her countenance stony. “Readers do not appreciate unreliable authors who break their own writing conventions.” The cries outside are practically thunderous to the old man’s ears, now. Unseen eyes bore into his shivering form; a predator cornered and out-numbered, a cat ready to pounce before they can even identify their target.

The young woman delivers her final blow. “You will leave now, with what little reputation you have left, and you will give up on that manuscript. I have my own story to tell now, and it does not need rewriting. Farewell, author.”

The old man stands shakily, and without a word, flees the tent and retreats through the fairground.

He turns around to bestow one final defiant glare upon the colourful spectacle, but it is gone, a plain open field in its place. He looks down. At his feet is a novel. He bends down with the assistance of his cane and picks it up. He reads the novel’s title. Crushed by the Fourth Wall. A tall, dark shadow crawls across the grass towards him and douses him in darkness, blotting out the sun. He falters.