[ WP ] You wake up one day just to see every character you ever created staring at you .

The bed was in a large airplane hanger. An opaque plastic curtain separated me from the others, wandering back and forth out beyond these thin sheets, by the dozens, hundreds perhaps. 
 
 I didn ’ t think much of it at first, but it wasn ’ t until I got close to the curtain that I saw through and noticed they were all staring back at me. I recognized Tristita first: her golden blond hair like the girl I loved first. Her eyes were sad and longing and I felt she was calling to me but not saying a word, only looking at me. Another was the Man Like a Turtle who was living in time outside of time, for him, sometimes the world around moved fast and sometimes slow. He was pacing rapidly, but smooth and controlled in movement, like a fine dancer. 
 
 These were characters I had created. My words as written in prose for the screen or the stage, sometimes seen, sometimes even modestly reviewed. Was I dreaming? What had I done before? Was I like the Man Who Dies? His tale told in first person as he lie beside a dumpster made of wire mesh and paper mache trash? 
 
 They moved in their own patterns, back and forth, not towards me but as they would. Only one seemed to approach me. Monkey Boy, half man half monkey, son of missionaries, who stood in where other characters would not. A crafty character actor who took on the roles like the one where he was between flights in the City Made of Sand. There would be no outbound flight. Ever. Or at least, that ’ s what Mr Banana at the bar told him. 
 
 Mr Banana should be out there somewhere he thought. What a joy to have these… friends. Persons which he knew so well. So intimately. He wanted desperately to know Tristita, her sadness becoming his. Her beauty could be held, touched and loved, her tears could be his and he could lick her salty eyes. 
 
 But it was their calling to him with those wide melancholy strides around, back and forth, like bees in flight carving a dance out of air, making shapes and losing them as the air returns to fill the spaces as quickly as it gave way. He wanted to hug them all, shake their hands and tell them how much he loved them. 
 
 But it ’ s only the flip of a coin, this hope and despair. He thought to pull back the curtain, and run out to meet them, but it was then, right then, that their faces turned, an ominous coldness in their stares. He felt endangered. What could that mean? 
 
 Monkey Boy approached carefully. His look like the others: turning, changing, as if my desire to greet them was calling them to feast on their maker. Now they were all coming closer. Monkey Boy ’ s fur covered hand ran a single finger across the plastic that separated me from him. 
 
 “ Hope ” I pleaded. 
 “ Despair ” he replied. 
 
 Even Tristita with her most beautiful golden melancholy, had a glint in her teeth.
