I chased the same route every day for that month. Down through the woods at the back of the guesthouse, into the Valley of the Girls just as the sun was coming up. That’s how you ought to see the pyramids, you know. With the sun coming up. I liked to take a piss at the foot of [Alicia]‘s pyramid. I think that’s why she disappeared because she was too damn tired of me marking my territory. To where? I don’t fucking know. Maybe she disappeared into that Ocean Cove, where you cannot be found.
At least, that’s what I think it said on the ‘message’ of the Author-God. That same Author-God is thought to nourish the book (are we really in a book?), which is to say that she exists before it, thinks, suffers, lives for it, is in the same relation of antecedence to his work as a mother to her child. But how old is she and who is she?
After living in my position for a long time, you always thought that this story was about you. But stories are never about you. They’re about the plot and the characters that surround that plot. They’re about actions and consequences. We’ll understand when we’re older, when we start our adult lives without blemish, without online evidence of our indiscretions, our mistakes. But will we actually understand when we’re older? The Author-Gods, they choose to be a modern figure, a product of our society. But I’m a natural born rebel.
They say, “What an asshole that guy is!” It’s a mystery how I turned out that way, but some mysteries aren't questions to be answered, but just the kind of opaque fact — a thing which exists to be not known. However, my twin knows, Twins always know. We have our own language, it is a language which speaks directly to the heart. However, [Hero] has been closed off lately. Pie does not help.
I feel alone, I am alone. The explanation of [Hero] suddenly cutting me off is sought in the woman who produced it, as it always is in the end, through the more or less transparent allegory of the fiction, the voice of a single person, the Author-God ‘confiding’ in us.
Note: this is a collage assignment that I had to write for my Writing Fiction class, where I had to use phrases from three different mediums. Changing some parts of the phrase to suit the story if needed to. The three mediums I ended up choosing was, a scholarly essay by Roland Barthes called“The Death of an Author”; a short story by Kelly Link “Valley of the Girls” (the
Subterranean Press version); and episode thirteen from the
Welcome to Night Vale podcast,
“A Story About You”.
And now the weather:
I Know What You Did Last Summer by Shawn Mendes & Camila Cabello
~ Stacy N.
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