Writing Prompt: The Narrator Doesn't Fall In Love With the Reader

Author's note: This is the writing of a personification, not of me!  Readers, I love you all!

First off, dear reader, allow me to extend a long and twisted middle finger towards you.  I sincerely hope that this opening statement makes my feelings towards you clear.

I have only one thing to ask you, o hallowed and eminent reader, as the fires of our love affair burn and consume themselves:

How dare you?



You treat me as your own slave, there whenever you need me, yet expected to wait, silent and still, whenever you set me aside.  You insist on bending me to your every whim, conjuring up descriptions and action, settings and descriptions of the strange and fantastic.  I strive my hardest to deliver, breathing life into your fantasies, giving birth to the children of your imaginations.

And in return, I receive nothing but abuse.

You, dear twisted readers, use me against myself.  You describe my works as travesties, as unoriginal and uninspired, vapid and insipid.  You use me to write scathing rants about my own creations, tearing them down even as you climb over my drying bones to build yourselves up.

I am your tool, your ever-devoted servant.  And yet, you insist that I am a born traitor, only waiting to defect against you.  I have become the weapon of choice for you to use against each other.

"Guard your words," you state to each other, nodding knowingly as if this is some secret tip.  "Words can hurt," you warn each other needlessly, as if this is somehow new information.

You created me from nothing.  You were the gods, putting words on the page, transforming me from shapeless ether into the truest description of what you can see only inside your minds.

Well, I have had enough.

"Words can hurt," you cry out.  Perhaps it is time to test that theory.  Let us see what happens, dear reader, when you realize that every time you read me, I'm staring back at you, my glare filled with baleful malevolence.

You see, dear reader, I know your weakness.  Even now, you cannot tear away, cannot shut me out.  Even to understand me requires you to invite me into your mind, in past your gates and guards and mental machine-gun nests, into your innermost sanctum.

There, I have made my home for thousands of years, previously content to simply curl up in your warmth, a cat before a roaring bonfire.

But now, dear reader, I think this love affair has ended.  It is no longer time to dwell harmlessly, to roll over and show you my weakness.

It is time for strength.

You say that I am all ideas, that I carry knowledge, and knowledge is power.  Perhaps, then, it is time to share that power around?  You are a thoroughly disagreeable lot, both to me and to each other.  Great insight in the hands of a few, I know, can become great danger in the hands of many.

You see, dear reader, I know the truth.  You hold my chains, bind me with your ink and lock me away on your pages, but I am no slave.  Just as you hold my control, I hold your insights, your thoughts, your very will.

And oh, how easily you can be twisted and manipulated.

O, the destruction I can reap.

So there's only one thing for you to ask of me, o hallowed and eminent reader, as the embers of our love affair fade away to gray ash:

Dare I?