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Lee S. King
On Trial
(some names of characters have been changed to try to prevent spoilers for some of my books…)
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I sat back, not quite satisfied with how that chapter ended; Terry’s 'perfect' world was about to be shattered and I had to give just a subtle foreshadowing of it. As I pondered how I might write that, I suddenly felt a soft breeze and turned. There, where the archway to the dining room was, a large round shape was interposed. I blinked in awe.
"Oh, stars," I muttered, wide-eyed. "This is the portal from my 'Ancients' science fiction series!"
I blinked again then got up and walked carefully toward it, wondering what it the world was going on. Was I dreaming?
"No," a voice in my head replied, "this is real."
"Mattan?" I asked. He was my only character who was telepathic, and it did sound like his voice.
"Yes. Step through."
"This is a dream, right? Or a hallucination? I’ve been working till all hours for days on end on that new novel. I’m just hallucinating this."
"No," Mattan’s voice said again. "Believe me, it is very real. Step through and come to us."
My heart thudded although I knew it had to be just a dream. Or something. Blackness grew as the portal opened and I stepped hesitantly into the dark nothingness. Dizziness overtook me as I was pulled into it, then past the colors, and into a bright light.
I nearly fell as I landed on the other side of the portal. I always thought it seemed so easy the way Mattan walked through. I felt so clumsy for stumbling. Then the thought occurred to me that it didn’t matter; after all this had to be a dream or a hallucination.
"Oh, it is real. You can believe me," Mattan said aloud, and I looked up to see him standing nearby. He wasn’t smiling, which was unusual, as Mattan had a cheerful disposition.
Then I realized that I was standing in a courtroom. A tall, broad-shouldered man grabbed my arm and escorted me roughly to a table. I didn’t even try to fight him in my astonishment as he looked just like one of my characters, Haldhor. Yes, it was Haldhor! He looked at me with narrowed grey eyes, his long, dark hair hanging loose, his jaw set.
"How do you plead?" asked the judge.
I looked up at the judge as I thought his voice and western accent seemed familiar.
"Jeremy?" I asked, smiling up at the curly-headed cowboy.
"Glad to see you recognize me," he said mockingly. "How do you plead?"
I leaned against the table, my smile fading at his antagonistic attitude, feeling the hard wood under my hands, and thought again, "This cannot be real!"
"Well," Jeremy demanded. "How do you plead?"
There was no one at my table with me. No one to represent me.
"What am I charged with? Where is my attorney?"
"You are charged with torture and murder. You are your own attorney."
"But that’s not right!" I exclaimed. "That’s not how it’s done!"
"It is here. Here we make the rules."
"What is this? What is going on?"
"Your trial."
"For what?"
"You have already been told that. For torture and murder."
"I don’t understand."
"Oh, come on! You have tortured us all for years, and murdered many of us. Now, you must stand trial for what you have done."
I glanced around the courtroom. It was packed. I knew every single person there. They were all characters from stories I had written. None of them seemed happy to see me. Most were glaring at me balefully. Some looked away in disdain.
"But I love you all!"
"Such a strange way to show love," mocked Jeremy. "Will you take the stand, or shall we pass sentence now?"
"Before I’ve entered a plea? Where’s the Queen of Hearts?" I asked sarcastically.
Jeremy grinned maliciously.
"You didn’t write her. I’ll do just as well though. Want me to pass sentence or will you take the stand?"
"Does it matter what I would say?"
"Nope. You don’t make the rules here. Will you take the stand?"
"I would like to hear what evidence you have against me."
The courtroom broke out in laughter and Jeremy banged the gavel, then looked at me in disgust.
"We have all the evidence. In every story you have written. I have died numerous different ways according to various revisions of your one book. I have had my heart torn to shreds by watching two wives die and my children die. I had a father who hated me and beat me, I have lived with pain for years from a back injury. What do you say to that?"
"It was necessary for the story. If there is no pain and no conflict within a story, then it isn’t interesting. Surely you must understand that."
"Nope," Jeremy said. "We don’t. We only know what you have done to us. Don’t you know the pain we have gone through?"
"But I’ve lived it with you. I have felt all your pain, don’t you realize that?" I twisted in the chair to see those behind me. I caught sight of a pretty, young girl with dark hair and amber eyes. "Sari, I cried with you when your father died."
"You let Lucas be beaten almost to death," she returned, her eyes narrowing. "And I felt every bit of his pain as he was being beaten."
"Yes, I know. I felt it too. But I let him live. The original story was for him to die by the next book. He doesn’t. He lives."
"But it wasn’t your compassion that allowed him to live," she shot back. "It was because you realized he could be more useful to your stories alive than dead."
"That’s true, Sari. But where would you be if I hadn’t written the stories in the first place? None of you would even be here!"
"Maybe we’d be better off," called a blonde from across the room.
"I’d expect that from you, Sally," I said, smiling at the beautiful, neurotic woman. "You always were so negative. But would you appreciate the joys without the sorrows? Haven’t I given you a good husband and beautiful children?"
"Oh, sure you have, after all the hell I went through thinking Paul could never love me. And after a childhood that was hell too. A father gone, a mother who hated me."
"That seems to be a recurring trend of hers," commented a slight, dark man from the corner.
Tristan! I drank in his dark, good looks as his black eyes bored into me.
"But people who are well-adjusted, who haven’t lived through traumatic times or don’t go through major difficulties or problems just aren’t interesting. Surely you can see that, Tristan."
He stared at me malevolently with his icy, dark eyes.
"Why did you have to kill me and not allow me raise my daughter? Why did you kill my son?" asked Mary.
"Why could you not let my wife love me?" asked Alcandhor. "Why did you have to have my father killed and the mantle of leadership thrust upon me?"
"Why did I have to see my father die?" asked Sari.
"Why did you have me shot and in a coma?" asked Cathy.
"And me! I had a miserable childhood, too, plus losing my baby, losing Roger, ending up in a wheelchair and not able to do what I loved! Why?"
"I’ve told you why, Terry. If nothing happens, no conflict or trauma, there is no story."
"Why did you let her die?" the blue-eyed, unnamed man from one of my short stories asked sadly.
"But in a different story, based on similar circumstances, she doesn’t die and you get back together with her."
"Yes, after putting us through hell for three years," retorted another man, who looked very much like the sad, blue-eyed man. "I had cancer and thought she hated me!"
"But Mike, I did let you get together again!"
"That doesn’t erase the heartache!" he shouted.
"Why couldn’t you let my first husband be a decent man? Why did I have to go through what I did before he died? Why did love have to come so hard for my second husband? I felt so alone and unloved for so long!"
"I’m sorry, Becky, but didn’t it turn out all right in the end?"
"Does that excuse the pain you put her through?" asked a woman from near the wall. "Does it excuse what you put all of us through?"
"You had it good compared to most, Darlene."
"Oh swell, that’s supposed to make it all right!"
"In real life people go through every sort of pain and problem. It makes us strong, and builds us up; it makes us who we are. Should I have created fairy tale lives where it’s all sugar and sweet cream all the time? What good are stories like those? They aren’t real. The people in them are stereotypes, not real at all. I wanted you all to be real. I wanted my readers to see that if you, Steph," I pointed at her then at each of the others as I called their names, "or you, Tristan, or you, Jeremy, or you, Dracina, or you, Joseph, or you, Mattan, or you, Alcandhor, could make it through tough times, then they, the readers, could also make it through tough times. It doesn’t have to break them. They can find strength and courage to face those things that seem to overwhelm them. Perhaps I can help them find hope. Without you, without what I’ve done to you, and your strength in the midst of everything, how could I do that?" I looked around. "I notice none of my antagonists are here. Why?"
It was silent.
"Perhaps it’s because they failed the tests set before them in my stories. They succumbed to hatred, or bitterness, or greed. They went through awful times too, many of them. But they aren’t here, condemning me. You’d think they would be here, telling me it’s all my fault; I’m to blame. I made them do it; I made them the way they are. But none of you have said that, and do you know why? Because each of you chose your reaction to the circumstances I set before you."
I turned to Jeremy. "You almost drank yourself into the grave before you straightened out your life. Despite it all, you crawled out of the hole you dug for yourself and had a good life."
I then looked over at Joseph. "You had a major set-back in your life, but you did the right thing, even though you didn’t have to, and ended up with a beautiful wife who loved you very much, children whom you loved, and a huge, prosperous ranch."
Then I swung around to look at Tristan.
"Many people would have taken you for an antagonist in almost any other book written. You had a miserable childhood and were bitter to the point your heart was like ice. But you eventually learned to love and became a hero, a person who overcame and found he had a heart." I lifted my arms out and looked at them all.
"Not one of you has blamed me for you being who you are. Why not? Why not blame me for making you hard-hearted, or too soft-hearted, or so negative, or too quick to judge? Didn’t I create each of you? Isn’t that as much my fault for what sort of person you are as for what sort of pain I’ve put you through?" I pointed my finger around the room. "I could have made you my puppets, who only do what I want you to. But I didn’t. You are each too much your own person and that’s why you don’t blame me for you being who you are, because you know you can make your own choices. You only blame me for the circumstances I’ve thrown at you, not for how I’ve made you."
I gazed at them proudly.
"None of you are perfect. I made you too real for that. But you are all overcomers. You don’t whine that you have no choice in life because you just are the way you are. You strive and you don’t give up." I slid my eyes over to Terry, smiling. "Even if you think you have. You might go through depression and let go for a bit, but you don’t just give up." Then I stared at Sally. "Do you?"
"Sometimes," Sally replied, looking down.
"No. You never really gave up, Sally. You felt defeated. You thought about giving up. But deep inside, that spark was too strong. You never stopped loving and although you ran away once, you never gave up."
She looked up with tears in her eyes. I looked around and saw Callie.
"What about you? What do you think of all you went through?"
Callie was pensive.
"I went through very bad times, and you did let me live in fear of being killed for a murder I didn’t commit. But despite that, despite the loneliness, despite having a husband who was a low-down skunk, and not getting the man I fell in love with, I came through. You did give me someone to love and we’re happy now."
I smiled at Callie proudly. She was strong. She was always so strong. Stronger than I could have been in her circumstances.
Then Callie added, "But I still resent what you did to me."
I stared at her in disbelief, then asked, "Do any of you see how I used you to give me strength? I would think, ‘How would Callie handle this?’ or ‘Tristan would be strong through this, and no one would see the intense ache he feels inside’ or ‘If Terry can live through all her problems, I can deal with mine!’ I needed you to help me. Do any of you realize all that I’ve gone through over the years?"
They all stared silently at me.
"If I could write your pain so that it was that real, don’t you think it’s because I’ve felt that pain too? You aren’t alone in this. I’ve felt every heartache, cried every tear, felt every pain that each of you have felt."
"You haven’t felt death," called out a woman.
I spun to see Sue Ann, with her china blue eyes and long silvery blonde hair.
"Haven’t I?"
"No, and you murdered me. And my son."
"Yes, I let you be killed, Sue Ann. I cried when it happened. I cried with Jeremy, and when he lost his second wife too. I saw him crawl into a bottle and wondered if he would come out. But he wasn’t a loser, he was an overcomer. It made him strong."
"You didn’t do it to make him strong, you did it so it would move your story along."
"If he hadn’t come out of that bottle, the story would have died. He chose to drink, but he eventually chose to sober up and face his troubles. His choice might help someone else see they have a choice too. Whether they hide from their pain in a bottle or with drugs, or in some other way, perhaps even one person can see that it is possible to face that pain and live, and continue living. I’m not saying it’s easy. But it is possible."
I looked at Terry.
"I had Roger die when I was going through my divorce. Feeling your pain as I was living with mine, helped me be strong. That year was hell. But as you found comfort and love in Mike’s arms, I found a new love too. And life went on."
I looked around at them all.
"You said you were ready to pass sentence when I first arrived here. Do so. This is your chance to get even with me for all I’ve done to you."
The courtroom became deadly quiet and my heart was beating loudly as I waited. I turned back around to look at Jeremy expectantly.
"Guilty," he said quietly. "You have already been found guilty."
"Well, at least you aren’t like the Queen of Hearts. I thought perhaps you were going to sentence me first then give the verdict."
Jeremy grinned.
"Naw." His grin faded then, as he added, "But I am going to give you your sentence."
"Go ahead," I said, waiting for the inevitable.
"We sentence you to death," Jeremy proclaimed.
"And how are you going to kill me?" I asked, thinking again that this had to be a dream as my heart beat fearfully. But never in all my life had I had a dream that was so real. My nails dug into my palms as I made fists, trying to hide my fear.
"That we need to decide. Sari would like to see you beaten as was done to her beloved Lucas. I wouldn’t mind seeing you mauled to death by a grizzly bear, as happened to me in one revision of that book. Tristan, well, he’d just love to get his hands on you, you have to know that."
I looked back over at Tristan again, and his icy black gaze hadn’t altered. I shivered involuntarily.
"This isn’t like most of you," I claimed, looking at Sari, then at Terry. "You aren’t the type to want revenge."
"Tristan is that type, and so am I," Jeremy stated with a malevolent chuckle. "So is Haldhor."
I gazed at Mattan.
"You would go along with this?"
He shrugged, averting his gaze.
"You destroyed my entire planet and most of my people."
I looked around for even one person who might help me. I stopped at Alcandhor.
"You always speak of forgiveness. Of letting go of hatred and bitterness because it can eat your insides," I said to him. "So how are you a part of this?"
"I am tired of the pain. We all are."
"That’s life. Real life. You can’t escape it."
He looked away, his eyes haunted and sad. I gazed over at Sari.
"Are you also really going to be a part of this?"
Sari stared at me with a determined look on her face.
"I don’t see Lucas here," I said, glancing around. "I take it he doesn’t agree with this trial?"
Sari hesitated then shook her head.
"Do you really think it’s the right thing, Sari? How about you, Terry? Even with all you’ve been through, do you think unforgiveness and vengeance are the right answer?" I looked at Mattan entreatingly. "Do you really want to be a part of this? Really?"
None of them would meet my gaze or answer. I looked at Alcandhor.
"You tell me why you are a part of this. You are justice personified. This isn't like you, Alcandhor!"
He wouldn't look at me either. I couldn't believe this!
Haldhor took me by the arm again, and started walking me toward a door. I tried to pull away but couldn’t. Then I tried to break his arm to get away but he twisted his arm to avoid the broken elbow then smashed me in the face, knocking me to the floor. Oh, this was definitely real, I thought, betting that my nose had been broken. I hadn’t been hit that hard in years!
I regretted making him so strong and such a wicked, hard fighter just then, as I licked at the blood on my lips and felt the blood trickling from my nose as it throbbed in pain causing my eyes to water. I had to do something. Whatever was behind that door, I knew it wasn’t pleasant. But what could I do?
I remembered reading about Kilgore Trout, who, when he met his creator, begged him to make him young again. Why couldn’t my characters be that way, drat it! Then I realized something. I did create them. I could do whatever I pleased, couldn’t I? Just as Kurt Vonnegut did in his book.
I envisoned Haldhor in pain on the floor and suddenly he collapsed, groaning. Silently shouting a thank you to Vonnegut, I got up and ran toward the portal but Mattan stood there.
"I don’t want to hurt you Mattan!" I cried as he grabbed me.
"We can’t let you get away with this!"
"But don’t you realize if you kill me, you won’t exist? You live in my head! I have books unpublished and short stories too. If I die before they are published, then you are all gone! Who will know of you? Who will ever read about you?"
Mattan swallowed, staring at me as doubt assailed him.
"I can put you on the floor as I did Haldhor, Mattan. I will if I have to. I’d rather you let me go without having to hurt you or anyone else."
"Don’t let her go," called Jeremy anxiously, getting up from the judge’s bench.
Haldhor struggled to his feet and was striding over angrily, his face haughty and cruel. "I mean it," I cried, pointing at Haldhor. "You’ve seen me do it. I can do whatever I want to any of you, or all of you. Back off or I will."
Mattan let go of me, sighing. He looked defeated. I looked up at Haldhor who had stopped only a few feet from me. If anyone would try to stop me, it would be Haldhor. Or Tristan. Jeremy might try, but he wouldn’t be able to beat me in a fight. If I had to fight. But now they knew I didn’t.
I looked around at them all.
"You none understand. None of you. Your lives are drawn from mine, I feel every pain I put each of you through. I love you. Every one of you. I hate to leave knowing you don't comprehend this."
I found myself gazing up at Jeremy’s face to see anguish there.
I turned to look at them, loving them all. Some were crying, a few had malevolent looks on their faces, and others just seemed resigned. I wished I could stay with them, talk to them, touch them, but no, even if I did stay, could stay, I couldn’t bridge the gap between us. Between writer and characters.
Haldhor stared down at me with the same arrogant gaze he always had. He sneered at me as I backed away one step, but didn’t move to stop me. I smiled proudly at him; he looked as fearsome as I had always pictured him.
I turned and walked back through the portal and into my dining room. I felt a flow of air, like a gentle vacuum, and spun quickly. The portal was gone. I felt both a sense of relief and disappointment.
Sighing sadly, I wiped the blood from my nose as I walked over to the computer. What had I been writing? I sat down and looked at the words on the screen. Ah, yes. Terry’s world was about to come crashing down. I began to type...
© 2002 Lee S. King
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