“What the hell am I doing here?” Malakai cried. “I was just enjoying burning in Hell, a second ago!”

Malakai was the next character that was summoned. He had a particularly tragic story, next to Loretta Winfried and Susan. He had played a minor part in his brother’s death, and the guilt had stayed with him for his entire life. The guilt was even enough to make him want to stay in Hell, when he rightfully belonged in Heaven.

“You were what?” Loretta said. “You went to Hell?”

“Yeah,” Malakai said. “I was burning in eternal flames.”

“Oh my god,” Loretta cried. “How did it feel?”

“Painful and amazing at the same time.”

Loretta turned pale.

“Anyways, what is going on?” Malakai said. “What am I doing here?”

“Alright so-” I began.

Ten Minutes Later . . .

“This is all kinds of fucked up,” Malakai said.

“I agree,” Theodore said. “We are in a huge pile of fuckery.”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “All of you won’t remain here forever. You will only stay in this world for an hour before returning to nonexistence … I mean back to your own worlds. So far Malik, Theodore, and Richard have roughly half an hour here, while Loretta and Daviron - wherever he is - have a little less than forty.”

“Could you bring us back now?” Gabriel asked.

“Yes,” I said. “But Loretta would return right back to moments before her execution. Susan would return right back before Ted kills her. Theodore turns back to a home where his aunt enables his toxic self-destructive behavior. Daviron returns to a world where-”

“I got it,” Gabriel said. “Most of us besides me have shitty lives that you wrote for us.”

“I apologize for what happened to you all,” I said.

No I don’t, I thought.

Suddenly, someone else was summoned. I saw Tatum, a teenage girl.

“Oh my god,” she cried. “I was literally walking out of the movie theater just to be here? What is going on?”

“Um,” I began.

10 Minutes Later . . .

“You have to be shitting me,” she said. “So I got magically warped away into the evil clutches of a madman who created me? WILL SOMEONE PLEASE SAVE A DAMSEL IN DISTRESS?”

“We’re all damsels in distress here,” Malakai said. “Or a swain in distress?”

“Are you a Drama student?” Gabriel asked Tatum.

“Yes, how did you know?”

“My girlfriend, Naomi, took some drama classes and practiced on me,” Gabriel smiled. “I respect drama, you know. It takes a lot of hard work.”

“It does!” Tatum cried. “Staying in character is super hard! Making sure my acting comes across as authentic and not annoying or bland. My family always writes me off as a drama queen without considering the nuances.”

“I feel you,” Gabriel said. “I had special visions and everyone wrote me off as a weirdo whenever I told them about it. People can’t appreciate something new because they are too foolish to understand. Or they are jealous of us for being unique.”

“Yeah,” Tatum started blushing. “That was kind of hot.”

“NO,” Gabriel yelled. “I am twenty-two right now, and I have a girlfriend. I believe I mentioned Naomi.”

“My bad,” Tatum said. “Geez chill. Also by the way you reacted, you must’ve been super triggered. Maybe you do-”

“Shut up before I strangle you.”

“Oh dearest no!” Tatum cried. “You mustn’t hurt me for I am a fair maiden.”

Gabriel ran toward Tatum, and Tatum cackled as she ran away.

“What is going on here,” a voice I hadn’t heard before. Before me was Joel Archer, a character who had the ability to smell something pertaining to the future.

“Same question,” another voice said. I saw a man who reassembled Yash, a brilliant character who developed a device that allowed one to glance into their past lives.

“You know what?” I said. “Let’s put that on hold. I’m tired of answering the same question over and over. You’re here cause I sent you here. Enjoy. Believe it as some wacky dream or whatever.”

I had been trying to conduct the spell of summoning my characters in the stories for years. And now that I had finally done so, it didn’t feel satisfying at all. I couldn’t establish any semblance of a civil normal conversation with any of my characters … and it was because I was the villain.

I had never considered that my characters would genuinely hate me. And I don’t blame them in the slightest. I wrote some characters to be executed or brutally murdered. I wrote some characters with tragic stories. The only character I wrote to have somewhat of a happy ending was Gabriel and Yash. I guess Tatum also counts because I wrote her to be a normal dramatic girl with nothing crazy that happens in her past or her future.

Why did I write so many characters with awful stories? Perhaps because my own life sucked. I often accidentally made tons of devastating spells as a child. One time my parents forced me to eat my vegetables. I didn’t want to do that so I turned my vegetables into vanilla cake. My parents admonished me, so I turned their grilled chicken into live chicken. I also frequently set their clothes ablaze.

As I got older, I was known to be socially inept. Nobody wanted to talk to me, and I was too afraid to talk to others. This progressed into adulthood. I wanted to pursue a professional writing career, but nobody read my stories.

Naturally, I felt miserable all the time, and I channeled all this miserable energy into my stories. I wrote characters who suffered like me, or worse. My writing provided an outlet for me that made me feel a bit better. This was generally a good thing, but now that I summoned my characters, they were no longer names on a page. They were live, flesh and blood humans with feelings. And I was the one who made their lives hell.