There was way too much personal stuff, not only about me but about others I am out of contact with now and cannot get permission from, so I had to extensively rewrite it, trying to keep to the true spirit of the original story as I wrote it.

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Monika had always been fascinated by stories of people who came back from the brink of death and told about how they had seemed to be traveling down a long, dark tunnel toward a bright light. She had just pulled the biggest stunt she had ever done and blown herself to bits right in front of her brother, destroying all of his creative work in the process. Now, here she was, the passage was long and dark, winding forever toward a dim light.

The others were already there, waiting to applaud her. The first one she saw was a twelve foot tall grizzly bear.

“She’s here!” He growled and there was the clapping and cheering of a small knot of strange people as she ducked into the valley. “You were great, Monika. Vivian Leigh could not have made a better performance.”

“Thank you, dear Bear,” She said, “I do the best I can with my brother’s melodramatic writing.”

“He was in pain when he wrote that piece.”

“He was in pain and can be a pain. Why doesn’t he ever write anything fun for me?” She pouted. “What did I do this time? Strapped dynamite to my body and blew up everything he had created. I want some better parts and more interesting lines.” She made a goofy face and mocked her closing line, “’All men are assholes and all women are bitches!’ What kind of crap is that? My brother is a goofball.”

A finely dressed gentleman in a black suit covered with stage blood cleared his throat. “Ahem. My dear Monika, you did have the most important part, you know, and really, you are his most original character. He favors you above all of us.”

“That’s only because he can’t find the favor he wants.”

“I suppose if that were the case he wouldn’t have made up a sister,” A shocked look crossed his face, “Would he?”

“Oh no, no. He may be a perv, but he’s not completely out there.” She looked at the assembled cast. They sometimes seemed to take as much inspiration from her as they did her brother. It was an awesome responsibility and they were all good creations who worked hard to do their job. “It’s hard,” she told them, “To live in someone else’s imagination. Your life and death, your most important events, all cast by the creator.” Were all fiction writers so completely off their nut, or was her brother just “special?” He used them all to help him learn about himself and he never really wanted to destroy them. It was a good thing for her and the rest that he became so involved in his character’s lives. It breathed life into them.

She wondered how many “real” people understood the depth of her brother’s feelings. Every little feeling he had was intense, every little thought, whim or wish was with the intensity of a desert sun. She couldn’t blame them, really, they just didn’t know. It was too bad that he was her brother or she’d show them all. A coarse, quiet voice interrupted her reverie.

“Say, Moni,” She hated that nickname, except when Animal said it. Animal was probably the most original of all. Created as the alter ego of Bear, he took on a life of his own. She liked him. Every one did. He was the most insecure of all of them, but you had to know him intimately to know that or you just saw an overwhelmingly swashbuckling and charismatic personality. “How is he going to get us out of the mess he put us in?” He pushed the black cowboy hat back on his head, reached inside of his duster, pulled out a package of hand-rolled cigars and stuck one in his mouth.

“I know you are not going to light that up while I am standing right here. When did you start that?”

“I haven’t really, I just thought it completed the persona. They look tough.”

“It’s icky.”

“Wait till you see what my hair is going to look like. I am going to let it grow and part it down the middle and get it feathered back. I’d grow a beard and mustache, too, if it wouldn’t come out in a splotchy grey.”

“I don’t think you are doing yourself any favors with any of it. Does my brother know about this?”

He grinned at her stupidly and stuck out his tongue. She laughed. Duh. Did her brother know? Why was Animal always so insecure? He was the alter-ego of Bear, who was one of the best friends anyone ever had. He was handsome and had a likeable personality. She knew why he was the way he was, though. It was summed up in the line created by her brother that had made her famous, “All men are assholes and all women are bitches.” Her brother sometimes had a way of cutting to the quick in a matter, but she knew it might be true. All men and all women were not equal, of course and so you never saw the potential for it sometimes, but it was there. She thought of all the hurt her brother had suffered over the years. Sure, some, probably most, of it was his own fault, but yet she had seen salt rubbed into his wounds, also.

“Oh, before I forget,” She scanned the cast, “My brother is willing to take suggestions on how to carry out the story.”

A fat, toothless, graying man with a beat-up hat on his head looked up from peeling his string cheese and said, “You guys know he can’t live wit’out us. I t’ink we should go on strike, once, hey. Get better story lines and better parts with less melodrama. We need a better writer!”

They all laughed.

The idea of just quitting the whole thing was appealing and she hoped her brother didn’t hear the suggestion. Monika often wondered why her brother even bothered to write sometimes. He wasn’t that good, in her opinion which she kept strictly to herself, but it was a dream to follow. He had hope.

Bear spoke up to the graying man, “You would do well to recall that you, we all, are his creation and he can do whatever he pleases.”

“Well, he could just frickin’ erase me, den. Dey claim he ain’t even real. We are the real ones and he was imagined by us.”

A murmur went through the cast. Would he actually be allowed to say this? It couldn’t be true, could it?

Bear was actually a combination of a type of were-bear and that big green comic book guy. When he wanted to or when he was stirred up he could change from a human form that looked like Animal and her brother, into a twelve foot tall, two thousand pound grizzly bear with slavering jaws and the whole bit.

He rose up now to his full height and roared, taking a swipe at the cheesehead. The cheeseheaded guy just laughed. “Maybe you are right about this creator. I t’ink you probably are or dat mighta hurt, hey. But it’s still pretty melodramatic, once dough. He mighta made us, but we don’t get used enough.”

They all grunted and looked at Monika.

“Look,” she said, “We’re all back and in good health, maybe he will think up more interesting stories with better lines.”

She wondered about that. “He should be more like me,” thought Monika. “He should just say whatever he feels right away and not stop to think about what is going to happen. Of course, he only wound up destroying his little fantasy world when he did that.”

“Whatcha thinkin’ ‘bout, Moni?”

“My brother.”

“Wow!” grinned Animal, “I never knew.”

“Shut up,” she laughed, “Is that all you ever think about?”

“I’m a man, ain’t I?”

She ignored this. “How can I get my stupid brother from being so frickin’ responsible?”

“I don’t think you can do anything. What are you going to do? ‘Hi, I’m a figment of your imagination and I’d like to get you to write the truth about your feelings and your character’s feelings no matter what.’”

Monika sat down with her head in her hands and sobbed. Animal put his arm around her, “You know, Monika, you just can’t force some things and who can tell what might happen? We’ve both seen some strange things happen to people overnight, let alone over a couple of years.”

“But, what about…”

“Look. He’s not going to destroy a bunch of people’s lives if he can help it. He’s going to try to do what he wants with as few people getting hurt as possible. He’s not a mean, hard-hearted man like some people think.”

“Well, what do we do?”

“We wait. We wait and see what life brings even though he’s too responsible to just go after what he wants. The important thing now is that he maintains his friendships. They need to know they can rely on him being there as a non-judgmental, listening friend.

Monika sniffed and took Animal’s hand and pretended to wipe her nose on his sleeve. He jumped back, handing her his neckerchief. He would help.

The End?