I’m in danger. Insert Ralph Wigan’s son on the bus. That irritating meme was all that was currently running through my mind.

I had originally thought this would be cool. Being able to meet my characters in real life? Getting to see them and speak to them? Is that not what every author or creator dreams of?

But I hadn’t been kind to them.

They stood facing me, more than one of them glaring at me, the anger on their faces clear as day.

Alex was the first one I noticed, not unsurprisingly, she was probably my most fleshed out character. She was also the angriest of the room.

I had wrote her into being with odds already stacked against her, a telling no doubt my all the anger I had bottled up for so long. She was my purge and by large the most volatile because of it.

The glare she levelled at me was enough to make my knees want to buckle. Her green eyes, her most striking feature, burned with a fire that nobody else in the room could match.

Gabriel stood next to her, Alex and he were a pair, unromantically linked by the hand fate had dealt them both.

If Alex was my anger made real, then Gabriel was that tiny bit of self control and understanding made flesh. He was the calm to her storm. But even so he still looked at me displeased.

Even Gabriel, ever as sweet and as calm and rational as he was, was still frowning at me. His forehead wrinkled from the pulling of his eyebrows.

Both he and Alex were enterally young, their fate long ago sealed by the story I had put to paper years ago.

Adam, another character I had created, who’s story linked very closely with Alex’s was noticeably absent, but I wasn’t surprised. After Alex’s transformation Adam had become an unwilling victim to her old life. It was understandable he wasn’t here, in this room.

Sam was also missing, Alex’s love interest, Sam only existed in a couple of niche drafts. I was tempted to flesh her out but having yet to do it, it would have been wrong for her to be here yet.

Alex and Gabriel were the main reason I was here, looking at both of them, and I had no words.

I couldn’t defend my actions to either of them. And even if I tried would they accept my reasons?

I pondered that question for a while but in answer I doubted they would have.

Alex’s jaw was tight, her hand’s clenched into fists and her once green eyes I had told you about earlier? They now flashed red, blood red. A sign her vampire urges were just under the surface.

Gabriel was the only reason she was still relatively calm. I knew that fact like the back of my hand.

A movement just to the left of both of them drew my eye and I must have made a small sound of surprise as they turned to stare at me.

Next to Gabriel and Alex, stood another two of my characters. Cathy and Jo.

Characters I hadn’t thought of in years, hadn’t wrote of in even longer, they now stood in front of me.

They had been two of the characters I Ahmad very first created. A small romance plot where they had met again at their high school reunion.

The story had never been completed or even written with any great skill or passion, but I remembered them fondly.

I no longer even had the work I had put into them, before abandoning them both.

Unlike Alex, they weren’t glaring at me, but the look of sadness and disappointment they both had was as equally cutting as the anger was.

There are of course others, the woman who drove the car and met her love interest, the daughter of a crime lord who rescues an innocent bystander from her fathers cruel clutches. The cop who becomes a glorified baby sitting.

All characters I had started to create and tell a story with, and all forgotten about.

“Why?!” Alex demanded, bringing me back to the present.

I of course wanted to answer her, give her, them all, an explanation.

But my voice was empty. I could only look at them and silently plead my guilt to them.

It wasn’t their fault after all. They had just been unlucky enough to have me as their creator.

They had, unfairly, been the purge of my own emotional failings and now they were upset and angry with me, as upset and as angry as I had been at the world.

My throat was tight and hurting, my eyes burned with what I knew to be tears.

Alex may not have been moved by any display or emotion, but I hoped the others would be more accepting of my feelings.

I still tried to reign in my emotions and was proud I seemed to be able to. At least until they became blurry before me.

The picture they had created now swam before my very eyes with my own tears.

My body began shaking violently, physically telling me to get out and away from the source of danger it had perceived was in the room.

“Don’t cry!” Alex raged. I was vaguely aware, through my tears, of Gabriel laying a comforting arm on Alex’s, calming her down.

But only for her, only for each other. I had no comfort, nor did I deserve any.

I could only stand there, in silence, while tears fell from my eyes and my body trembled from fear.

If I had no answer for my character then at least I could accept their anger and hurt.

It was the least I could do.