[Path, Mysterious]

  I look off into the darkness, I call her name Laura Eriksson, hello Laura, Laura

  “Who the hell are you?”

  “My name is Rose, I’m the author, I started writing your story the other day. The day the priest came in.”

  “I don’t have enough problems, now I’m a sixty six year old woman with an imaginary friend. Oh shit I have Alzheimer’s, my crappy life now became a thousand times worse.”

  “Laura you are not crazy you don’t have Alzheimer at least as far as I know you don’t. I’m an author and I wanted you to be my detective in a mystery story I was writing. But I was traumatized by some events, a minor war by Earth’s standard and I think my trauma bled through onto you. See my dragon, Draco was almost killed when the army opened fire on him with machine guns. The bullets themselves couldn’t hurt him except for his wings which got shot up pretty bad causing him to crash and almost killing him. Anyway I work in a bookstore and I just think that I dumped all of that trauma on you and I’d like to make it right.”

  “How are you going to do that? Do you plan on making all the people of Earth readers again?”

  “No I am sorry I can’t do that, Earth isn’t my intellectual property. I don’t know who originally came up with Earth as a fictional setting, it goes way back, probably whoever created Babylon, all that mythological stuff just kind of feeds on itself. It was way before Homer. I’m not the person to ask, I’m an author not a literary historian.”

  “An author, what have you written?”

  “My first book was Juliet and Ivy: A Love Story, my next novel was ‘The Slutty Princess’, my latest was ‘The Disappearing Tower of Tregaron’.”

  “I don’t read porn.”

  “No if you mean the Slutty Princess it’s not porn, she never has sex on page. It was about how a supposedly ‘good alignment’ could do the worst thing. A paladin sets out on a quest to save a virgin princess, he finds out that she is not a virgin and abandons her to wolves. It was my rant against religion.”

  “Well at least my imaginary friend dislikes religion as much as I do.”

  “I can prove to you, I’m not imaginary.”

  “Oh yeah how are you going to do that, author me a new president and get rid of the lunatic who’s in office. His whole platform about tearing down the government, he took it literally and tore down half of the building that the leader lives in. He keeps telling everyone that he deserves a peace prize but yet he keeps bombing countries and threatening others.”

  “No, like I said, the Earth isn’t my intellectual property, yes I’d love to write that bitter little man out of office and out of Earth history but I just can’t. But you, I can help you. Your eidetic memory is a problem for you. You’ve read all the novels by your favorite two authors. Well tell me what happens in the first Hitch Hiker’s to Arthur or tell me the plot of the Light Fantastic?”

  “I don’t remember, yet more proof, that I have Alzheimer’s.”

  “No it’s proof that you don’t, why would Alzheimer’s wipe only the first novels from the series that you love. Is it logical that a disease could perfectly wipe only one novel out of forty one. Go on check your memory, you remember the other forty books perfectly. Check, I'll wait.”

  “Yeah that’s weird but it doesn’t prove that I didn’t lose the memories then come up with this fantastic story to explain why I lost the memories when the most logical reason I lost them is Alzheimer’s.”

  “Alright, is Alzheimer's selective? Does it let you choose the memories you lose? I believe that is a no. Now think of a book you wish you never read because it was just a waste of your time. I wish I’d gone for a sewer tour instead of sitting here reading this.”

  “The single worst book I’ve ever read is “Fifty Shades of Grey”, such a sensation when it was released I just had to find out what all the hype was about and being a horrible completist I read the entire first novel.”

  “Alright now think through the plot, have you forgotten one line of dialog?”

  “No I haven’t, I know the entire book cover to cover.”

  “Would you like to forget it?”

  “Yes of course I would.”

  “It’s gone, go ahead try to recall it.”

  “No, it’s gone, I remember sitting down to read it, but I can’t even recall the cover. But how is this possible?”

  “I told you, I’m the author, I can change things in your personal story, I can even take you out of that story and put you in another where you love the setting. How would you like to live in Rivendell, Regency England, Hound of the Baskervilles, Oz, Terminus. Or if you like I could put you in one of those generic small town cozy mysteries, no politics at all, you couldn’t get any news on the state and federal level at all even if you tried, Radio, TV and newspapers only carry local news. You could run a bookshop, one in which people still come to browse and buy physical books. You could be the detective or the detective's best friend or just a background color character who runs that shop that only sells genre books. You could have a fall from a ladder in the store, when you are shelving ‘The Tales of the White Hart’. You bump your head, you completely forget your previous life and all the books that you’ve read, you only have vague impressions. You remember loving the Wyrd Sisters but you can’t recall the plot.”

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  “You really could do that?”

  “Yes, if it's something that you’d want, I’d be happy to. Like I said, gritty realism just isn’t for me and I never should have subjected you to it. I want to make it right. You don’t even have to decide right now, I can give you time to think about it. You can reread ‘The Light Fantastic’ or ‘The Hitch Hikes Guide to the Galaxy.”

  “Would I still be so angry all the time?”

  “I don’t think so, with no worries over politics, we could also leave churches right out of the story. You live in a town of mostly rationalists who feel no need for superstitious beliefs, the few priests, preachers who have tried to sell their shell game to the town, to divide the town on sexual preferences or a woman's right to choose have been chiefly ignored. So much so they eventually just move on to a town where they are better able to exploit the population by dividing them. Of course it’s a cozy mystery and we’ll need murder victims in each book, so we could always murder one in the second chapter, then you could solve the case by the end.”

  “Holy crap that sounds wonderful, but I wouldn’t be living in reality.”

  “No, but you are not living in reality right now, so you might just as well live in the one that you choose.”

  “My world really feels real.”

  “Well that’s the hope isn’t it, you write a story even if it’s a fairy tale you want to give it that detail, the characters that make it come alive. When I was a little kid Wonderland certainly felt real for me and Middle Earth feels as real to me as the town I live in. But I think I can prove it to you that the Earth is fictional. I know you follow the news, so you saw the story about Paula Becker. How she foiled Trump’s plan to declare Martial law and become a dictator at the end of his term?”

  “Yes of course, then there was a story about her appearing in Boston a month or so later, then just vanishing, a supposed magic trick.”

  “That was no trick, she brought a doctor to Boston so she could run some blood tests, that really happened, but the whole Trump, dictator that was a novel written by Paula Talbert, starring Paula Becker. It’s confusing I know, I don’t know why Talbert couldn’t come up with a different character name. They say that an author lives through her characters, but it would have been easier for everyone if she’d name Becker after a Pamala or something. But my point is she and McCracken live here in Emain Ablach. If you’d like to meet her or McCracken or even Henry or Martha they all moved here after the events in the novel.”

  “So you can just haul me out of my crappy reality into yours where I can meet the real Paula Becker.”

  “Yes, if you’d like me to.”

  “Sure why not in for a penny in for a pound.”

  So I pulled her into the back of the bookstore.

  “Rose, get out here now, and bring your new ‘friend’.”

  “I’m sorry about him, Laura, but don’t mind him, his bark is much worse than his bite. Come on, first I’ll explain what is going on to him then I promise I’ll take you to meet Paula Becker.”

  “Why is that tree using a Kobo?”

  “That’s Elma, she loves to read, but as you can imagine she has an aversion to paper, at first we were printing everything out on papyrus. But after her friends saved my life I wanted to give them a thank you gift and I thought of e-readers. Elama, say hello to Laura will you?”

  “Rose as you can see I’m trying to read, Sparky doesn’t want me using the Kobo out front and you’ve been talking to yourself for hours, I would have gone out into the lane and read, but it’s still raining. Why don’t you put a magical field out front so I can read undisturbed. Hello Laura, it's nice to meet you. I hope you didn’t come here for peace and quiet because you won’t find any here.”

  “It’s nice to meet you Elma, what are you reading?”

  “ “Malice in Maggody" by Joan Hess. It's very good. I love the protagonist Arly and the ridiculous town with all the weird characters, that Arly lives in.”

  “Rose. NOW.”

  “Coming Sparky.”

  We walked out of the backroom into the store proper. Mossbeard was sitting at the counter working on a drawing, later I’d learn that it wasn’t so much a drawing as a map of our five estates, that he was going to be managing.

  “Sparky, I’d like to introduce Laura Eriksson, you probably remember that I was writing a story about her the other day. I just contacted her this morning to apologize and to see if there was anything I could do to make it up to her.”

  “Ms Eriksson, I wish to apologize for the actions of my apprentice. She has to stop yanking people out of their lives.”

  “Sparky I did no yanking, Laura and I were chatting and I was just trying to prove to her that I was telling the truth. She thought she had Alzheimer’s so it was important and I owed her.I offered to move her to a nice cozy mystery or fantasy town, but she didn’t want to leave ‘reality’ so I needed to prove it. I’ll bring her to the bakery and introduce her to Paula then I’ll settle you in any cozy reality you choose Laura.”

  “Is that a garden gnome?”

  “Just a gnome, Laura, Mossbeard say hello to Laura will you please.”

  “Sure, Rose, hello Laura it’s very nice to meet you. Are you the new manager for the vineyard?”

  “No, Mossbeard, she’s a bookstore owner from Earth. She is here visiting. What are you drawing anyway, aren’t you supposed to be out at the estates.”

  “I was waiting for you, I’m drawing a map and we need three more portals.”

  “That’ll have to wait, we’re going to the teahouse for lunch.”