…
Unperturbed, Lisa returned to her bedroom, burying her small, childish nose in her book where it belonged. She wasn’t concerned about Ollie; disappearances and reappearances of animals, people and objects were an ordinary aspect of Lisa’s extraordinary life.
Throughout the entirety of the small girl’s empty existence, she’d visited elves and faeries in a forest, then lived as an average girl at an average school. She’d go to sleep in a bed in Britain, and wake up on a canal boat in Italy. She’s had a brother, then a sister, then a pet cat named Tiffany. Every morning she lived a new life, with her presentness being the one consistent aspect of an ever-changing universe.
However, Lisa, despite being only twelve, was vastly intelligent. Therefore, sensible girl that she was, Lisa decided to rely on two things – stories, and her ability to create them.
Lisa devoured books. Her ability to read and read well was her weapon, and she wielded it without resistance. After reading her 50th book, Lisa decided it was time she wrote her own, as many ambitious and creative children do at some point. However, she struggled – writing was difficult when running from an army of stampeding elephants one second, and being in an ordinary house the next.
Therefore, it was on the day that Ollie faded out of existence that Lisa grew tired. Throwing her book to the floor, she lay, sprawled across her bed, and slept. As she slept, she dreamed of being a normal girl with one family, one home – the kind of girl that, to Lisa, existed only in stories.
As she was sleeping, she didn’t see the walls around her fade and vanish. She didn’t see her bed shimmer and disappear, or feel her now unsupported body land on the floor with a soft thud. Perhaps it was good that Lisa was sleeping, as it meant that she didn’t have to watch the disease of disappearance spread to her own body – her hands, her face, her legs, all of it crumbled, and everything filled with nothingness.
*
The author closed her laptop with a sombre click. It was strange, but she felt almost sorry for Lisa – the main character in all of her stories, no matter where or what or who else was involved, Lisa had been the character she felt the closest affinity with, despite her being purely a creation of the author’s own keyboard. As she wrote and rewrote, the author had changed her story so many times that even she had to admit it was time to begin again – A fresh story, with fresh characters, and no twelve year old, bookish girl who liked to create stories. Cracking her knuckles, the author lifted her pen and began to write a new story, about a boy called Ollie who loved mammoths.