“What is that?” Joey asked.

“It looks like a body,” observed Petey.

Tommy added, “A body with its head cut off.”

“More like ripped off,” noted Stanley.

Tommy got closer, and Petey asked, “What are you doing?”

“I wanna touch it. It doesn’t look real.”

Petey got closer with Tommy. “You’re right. And look! No blood.”

Stanley joined his two friends in their investigation of the body. “Wait a minute.” He turned to his three friends. “There’s a rip in the earth.”

“Nah. Lemme see.” Tommy pushed his way toward where Stanley was looking. He pointed through the rip. “Whoa. What’s that in there?”

Joey had pushed his way forward to look. He laughed, “I always thought that there was more dirt under dirt. Not, whatever that is.”

Stanley got down on his hands and knees. He started to crawl through the rip in the earth.

Peter yelled at his friend. “Hey! What are you doing?”

Joey got down on his hands and knees, and followed Stanley.

“Hey!”

Tommy looked at Petey and shrugged. He got on his hands and knees, and followed his two other friends, leaving Petey behind looking at the tear in the fabric of his known world.

Petey stood looking at the tear. He heard Stanley shout. “Petey! You gotta see this!”

Petey shrugged. Then, he got on his hands and knees, and crawled through the rip following his friends.

***

Stanley watched as Petey climbed through the wall. For that is what the rip was on the other side. He greeted Petey. “Welcome to the other side of the fourth wall.”

“The fourth wall?” Petey scrunched his nose.

Stanley explained. “Yeah. The fourth wall is the missing wall in a play or movie. The audience sees through the fourth wall into the scene.”

Tommy nodded. “I’m not sure that I completely understand.”

“Well, if I’m not mistaken, I’d say that this is our creator. Our writer,” Stanley surmised as he pointed to the man hunched over the keyboard. “I think that he’s even writing about us now.”

The writer looked up from his keyboard, and turned his head toward the boys, but kept his fingers poised on the keys. Everybody looked at him. Tommy looked over the writer’s shoulder. The writer started writing again.

Tommy whined, “Hey! I’m not a doubter.”

Joey looked too. “I’m supposed to be inquisitive? Do I ask a lot of questions?”

Tommy answered with an echo, “I don’t think you ask a lot of questions.”

“What are you guys talking about?” Petey asked.

Tommy pointed over the writer’s shoulder at his computer screen. “That’s what his notes say. Tommy means ‘twin’, but is culturally associated with ‘Doubting Thomas.’ Stanley is two-dimensional. But his name means ‘stony field or stony meadow.’ Joey is inquisitive, but his name means ‘God will increase.’ And Petey is the Rock.” Tommy shrugged as he looked at his friends.

“Hmm…” Stanley smiled. “Two-dimensional… Funny. Like flat Stanley.”

Tommy smiled. “Flat Stanley. Funny.”

“Rock! Like rocks in my head?”

Stanley nodded his head. He could not believe how dense his friend could be sometimes. He looked at Petey. “No silly. Like Peter. Saint Peter. Remember him?”

Petey smiled. “Oh yeah. I remember him.” Petey’s smile turned upside down. “But sometimes, I really do feel like I have rocks in my head.”

The writer stopped typing, turned his whole body, and gave the adolescents his full attention. “You know. You boys should not really be here. In fact, I have no idea how you got here.”

Stanley smirked. “You were about to put us into Stephen King’s story, _The Body_. But we weren’t having that. Especially with that dumb body you put in our story. C’mon. Head ripped off?”

The writer rubbed the back of his neck and tried to smile. It seemed a feeble attempt. He looked directly at Stanley. “Yeah. Sorry about that. I was just writing to a prompt: A group of teenagers stumble upon something they shouldn’t have.”

Petey said, “I’m still twelve.” He nodded toward Tommy and Joey. “So’re they. Stanley’s the only teenager. Just three days ago.”

The writer rubbed his neck again.

Stanley said, “Doesn’t matter. I just wanna know why you put us in somebody else’s story.”

Joey added, “And I wanna know how we got here.”

“We crawled through the rip,” Petey noted.

Everybody nodded their heads in what could only be described as disbelief. The writer took his hand from the back of his neck and rubbed his face. Everybody turned to look at the writer. He looked at the boys one at a time.

“Well, I’m not exactly sure how you got here…”

Stanley interrupted, “Aren’t you the writer? The one who created us? The one who directs our steps? Sets up the plot?”

The writer’s face was stuck somewhere between a grimace and a wan smile. “It’s not quite that simple. At least not for me.” He looked around again. He sighed. “Perhaps you boys oughta sit down.”

They all sat on the floor looking up at the writer.

The writer breathed out a deep breath. “I don’t really work the way that Stanley suggested. I think about my characters a little. Sometimes, a lot. Sometimes, I even make notes. Like the ones you two saw. Usually, I take time to think about the names of my characters. Because names are significant. Then, I just write.

“Okay. Not exactly. I usually have a starting and ending point in mind.

“But not with you four. With you four, I just had you finding the body. That was it. Then, you saw how flimsy that was. How derivative that was…”

“How dumb that was.”

“How dumb that was,” The writer agreed with Stanley. “So you crawled into my world, and we started talking.”

They all sat in silence.

“You know what I think?” Stanley finally asked.

The writer nodded his head. The others looked at their friend.

Stanley grinned. “I think you just wanted to break the fourth wall. You’ve been dying to do so for a long time. You just had us do it for you.”

The writer thought before answering. “I don’t think so, but maybe. Maybe subconsciously. Just maybe…”

Everybody sat in silence again.

Petey asked, “So wha’d’we do now?”

Joey said, “I’m not goin’ back through that wall to that body.”

“Me neither,” Tommy agreed.

“Yeah. No going back to that lame story,” Stanley scoffed. “Not King’s story. Your story’s the lame one.”

The writer sighed. “Yeah. It was a pretty lame story.”

Everybody sat in silence again.

“Hey! I’m hungry,” Petey exclaimed. He looked at the writer. “Got any food?”

“Yeah! Where’s the fridge?”

“Cake? Got any cake?”

The four boys jumped to their feet. The writer stood with them.

“I guess that’s what I get for writing teenagers,” the writer laughed.

“Teenager. And three adolescent boys.” Stanley put his arm around the writer. He smiled. “Keep at it. You might write a story some day that somebody wants to read.”

The writer looked at his young creation. “Surreal. I’m getting encouragement from my own creation.”

“Encouragement?” Stanley smiled. “If you say so.”

They reached the kitchen after the others, who already had the fridge door open.

“Dibs on the cake!”

“Ew! What’s this?”

“I want that. It looks delicious.”

“I want…”

***

The writer smiled. It was good to have teenagers, rather adolescent boys, in the house again.