A premise for a book I’ll probably never get around to writing:
“I want you to reconsider. Don’t you think you owe me something?”
I tried to keep the disgust from spreading over my face. At the last, I turned away from her, seeking refuge in the act of shoving my last few possessions into my knapsack.
“You enslaved me,” I said, “demanded I pay back a debt I never incurred, and now, when even by the insanity of your laws I am allowed some clemency, you try to steal that away too. You have taken from me my youth, my labor, you have tirelessly hunted down every joy and comfort I found, tore it away from me, and with ceaseless care have laid my bed with thorns and given me gall for wine. But here, one last hope, I am dying, and I am allowed to return home to die.”
“What about your friends, your community. It takes a village, you know. After all these years, aren’t we your home by now?”
“Maybe,” I said, “if I had been me. If anything I had done had been my own doing. No, I said the lines you wrote for me, played the part as you directed. Anything I tried to do, anything I actually cared about or dreamed of, well you found it out.”
“I thought you were happy.”
“No, miss liar-liar. No, you didn’t, or at least, you never thought about it. You were happy. You imagined, if you were me, you would be happy. You never actually thought about me. Well, I’ve been living out your daydreams for you for the last fifty years, and it’s been Hell. Now, thanks to the frailty of the human body, I’m about to be free, one way or another.”
“I have given you paradise!”
“All I want is earth. That final embrace. To return to what I was. You cannot deny me. You dare not. There are bigger monsters than you in this galaxy. The same way you devoured me, they would love to devour you. So, go ahead, stop me; I’m a weak old man with maybe a year left to live. Take that year, and it will be the last thing you do. Then, like me, you will enjoy being the subject of others whose appetites, as you have threatened me with time and time again, are far worse than yours.”
Tale Told 