The Author's Vanity

Descriptions mean nothing. I could sit here and describe for you a million fairytale paradises, a thousand grimy streets, a hundred marble banquet halls. I could paint you a picture of weather- one so real you can taste the heavy warmth of the thunderstorm on the horizon, feel the plump droplets melt against you skin, see the erie yellow light that turns all the houses into paper cut-outs of themselves. I can carry you into the heart of a raging blizzard, leave you there to be bitten and gnawed by frozen, invisible jaws- the screaming fangs that dig deep into your bones-

    And I could take you out again, pluck you up with agile fingers- ones that know their craft- ones that never feel a need to hesitate or tremble. Perfect fingers comprised of words alone, built with layers of understanding and strengthened by ignorance. In these fingers- in these hands- you will feel safe and I shall feel strong, and I shall lift you up and out of the storm I have created, and lay you down in a stuffy, velvet-curtained room, before a fire that crackles to itself in satisfaction.

The overstuffed comforts of this room, I will fill with people, faces so genuine, so honest and lost, that you will swear you knew them once, long ago, and I have only worked some spell with memory. You will see them sit and watch you, all except the fat man standing by the grandfather clock, who instead is reading a small red book over the top of a pair of glittering spectacles. You know- because I have told you- that it is a love story- a tragic romance- a gritty and beautiful tale spun from a golden fleece. A story that will never leave your bones.

But when you take the book, and try to read a page- you find it makes no sense- it is nothing, only wonderfully formed words entwined around each other- entwined to form intricate sentences- paragraphs and paragraphs of labyrinth pictures that go nowhere- that are nothing more than what I tell them to be, for though I am the master of illusion, I cannot write a story. False walls are false walls and false faces pretend to see but cannot because time moves too fast for them and they are only now realizing that I have lied to them all this time- that I told them they could be more than what they are-

They are only what I see- only the places I go, the people I saw. They are nothing once they leave my head, once they hit the page they shrivel and die- they curl in on themselves like dry leaves- and the only way I can make they feel alive is to fill them with false fire and idle fancies- and present them to you- my glorious descriptions on a silver page, ready to take wing and curl around your mind- but do not scratch too much at the paint and the gilding- do not question why you are now walking along golden sand when a moment before you were screaming at the edge of a cliff- do not dig too deeply- for the moment you do my facade will crumble and you shall see my vanity for what it really is.