This quick tale is about a fantasy world created by pencil. It ended up being a parody also, but it's real, and heartfelt, gritty and true. Enjoy.

A barred gate slams shut with a clank. Not bars of iron, but of fantastical creativity. It encloses my mind, but no pleas come from my mouth for mercy. No, for I want this.

The moment my mind is arrested and enclosed, I begin to live. I die to the outside world, but begin to live in a new one. One I create for myself. The outside world couldn't fulfill me, it couldn't rescue me, it bored me, it pained me. I gave up on that outside world, where I felt so alone, so empty, so thirsty for more. My new world I would create to do what the outside world couldn't do.

The real world couldn't heal me. So I created my literary world to heal. I wrote characters that could solve the issues of life.

The real world couldn't understand me. So I created my literary world to understand. I created a world in my image, that had my views, my heartache, my pain, my joy, my laughter. This new world understands me, it sympathizes with me, because this new world was created just for me and by me.

The real world abused me. So I created my literary world to protect me. I created a hurt and broken character that would be rescued, that would be held, that would be kissed to take away the pain. Once this character, which was created in a mold shaped like me, was taken into the arms of the protector, I sighed inside, feeling safe and warm.

The real world bored me. So I created my literary world to thrill me. Things that rarely happens, happens. The undesirable would be desired, the unrescuable would be rescued. The unlovable would be loved, the unchangeable would be changed. At every turn, when it appeared all hope was lost, someone would come to save the day, or something would happen that would bring the happily ever after everyone wanted.

The real world seemed to hate me. So I created my literary world to love me. I felt so unlovable, so useless, felt invisable, like I blended into everything so no one could see me. But no more would I feel this way. I would take matters into my own hands. Like a mad scientist in a lonely castle, I will build my literary Frankenstein. He will have the perfect lips, the perfect build, big eyes, and big hands. His breath will smell like roses, and he would ride on a white horse. No, maybe not a horse, maybe a skateboard, or no, a sportscar. He would look at me, curing my invisability, he would kiss me, curing my unlovability, he would wisk me away to be his, curing my uselessness. Why, I'd be somebody when I have somebody, giving me a purpose.

Yes, this world is perfect for me. I want to be a citizen of this world forever. I don't want to go back to that other world my parents birthed me into. Sure, I can live on this planet, using up it's resources of air, water, and food. But once I create my new world, my heart and mind will become registered citizens of it forever. You will look me in the eyes, you will talk to me, you will hug me, but I will be forever thinking constantly of what else I would furnish my new literary world, my new home, with. I would be here on earth in form, but in substance, I will be living elsewhere.

I am beginning to be consumed at that point. I don't want to have dual citizenship. I want my literary world to be my sole home. No more will my normal, real life, burden me with it's issues. No, I am made for my novel, and my novel is made for me. I will focus solely on it, pour my life into it. As I pour more and more of my life, my being, into it, that transfers my life, and my being, from this world. That is how I will demolish my dual citizenship. That is how I won't be here anymore. Soon enough, I won't be living in this world anymore, I will be gone, home where I belong.

The next time I awake, I will be where my pain will be remedied, where my cries will be hushed, where my skin will be caressed, where my problems will be solved. I awake, on a bed fitted to my form, and the warm light of recognition spills upon my face from a nearby window. I get out of bed, smile to myself, and tell myself that whatever happens, whether good or bad, whether ridiculous or not, whether possible or impossible, it will all work out for me in the end because I programmed this literary world to give me a happy ending. There is NO way that it would be sabotaged. I am sole creator and programmer of this machine that has teleported me, and have full confidence in it's producing a story that will remedy every single issue I have.

I make my way downstairs to eat breakfast in the kitchen. I hear my new parents. Whatever I created my parents to be, in the end it will work out. Hey, they can be loving, or they can be abusive. Either way, I have full control, and it will work in my favor in the end. If they are not to my liking, I can kill them off, or better yet, I can kill them off anyway so that I can have others feel sorry for me, so I can be the underdog that gets the friends, gets the boyfriend, gets the money, all in my own strentgh and against all hardships. I can get looks of sympathy. I can work my butt off and gain for myself everything I need without anyone's help. Hmm, I may keep my parents around though, and even if that is such a boring premise in my story, I can make them so incredibly quirky or rich that they are the talk of the town, become so admired, and that sheds a favorable light upon me anyway.

So after kissing my parents, I head outside. I have created my best friend to pick me up at home and tow me to school. I need this person to cure me of my lonliness and to improve my self-image. I could even add a few more best friends into the mix to reflect on the fact of how few friends I truly have, but one is good for now. I need her so I can unleash upon her all my insecurities, my fears, my dreams, my wishes, my guilt, my obsessions. I don't listen to her story much, for this is my story, my psych session, and she is my shrink. I can add some of her story into the mix, to flesh out this new world and make it seem big and full of all kinds of people and events and such, but I will keep her on a leash, and I the owner.

I get to school, and here is where everything begins. I unleash here my fears of being ugly, being useless, being not good enough, being hated. People look at me funny, people don't talk to me, people look down on me, and ignore me. But not to fear, for I created them to do just that for a purpose. I did it foremost to shed a bad light upon them, getting my revenge in the end when they all crash and burn; also I created such a darkness so that once light appeared, how greater would that light shine in contrast to the darkness. The light comes in the form of a senior at school who, although he could have anyone he wants, and for good reason because he is smoking hot, but he chooses me for some odd reason. I create him to get to know me and to look past my faults and my rough edges, and even my protests. Yes, my protests. I push him away, I call him all manner of cursewords, I ignore him, make fun of him, I make it look like I despise him completely and that he is the last person on this earth I would want to get with. But inside my heart, oh yes, inside my heart, I cry out to him, telling him I actually love him and can't stand to be apart from him. It gives me pleasure to get what I can't get, so I have created in this world an illusion that I can not get this guy, for all manner of reasons, but behind the hologram of impossibility is the fact that I will get this guy. I have gotten him. It took a lot of hard, fake work, but in the end, I got him, and he loves me and I love him, and no one will stand in between us.

I tell my created friends about it, or even they helped me all along in getting him anyway. As I push the hottest, smartest cheerleader aside, and stride through those double doors the school has, my hunk on my arm, I walk away into the sunset. Or maybe I'll make it rain, so I and my new guy can kiss under gushing clouds, getting ourselves soaked. That is the in thing right now.

I get home, and after eating a warm meal with my new parents, or making it my self after I have visited their graves, I lay in bed and reminisce over my life with a smile. I sleep.

In the morning I awake, and my smile soon fades. The light from the window that shone upon me before is different. I don't see the difference right away, but soon it dawns on me that it is two dimensional, looking like fragile, flat paper. I reach out and touch it, and it crumbles to the floor like a crumbled up piece of parchment, full of mistakes. I see writing on it, and it says "ray of sun, that shines upon my face in the morning." My eyes widen.

I rush downstairs, and my parents are at the table, and I reach to hug them, but I see too, that they are flat and lifeless. I see scratched upon the parchment of their skin, words written by pencil, "my parents, who are quite quirky and love me." Soon their paper is crumbled on the floor, laying and waiting to be thrown into the wastepaper basket.

My world, it is slowly crumbling. My beautiful world.

I sprint outside, and my friend and her car is parked. It is almost funny seeing this flat mural, for even the puffs of smoke leaving the exhaust are lined and hole-punched, words written on them. I try to get into the car to go to my school, but the whole picture crumbles and falls, the words appearing on paper that "my friend will listen to my problems and even drive me around because I have no car."

I run to my school, only to find everyone frozen in place, their thin frames rustling faintly in the winds of a soon coming storm of catastrophic proportion. They too, all crumble down, with words written on their paper faces like "bimbo", and "athlete", and even "nerd who is secretly hot and could be the one for me."

My heart begins to hammer against my ribs when I think of my newly acquired boyfriend. I search maniacally, and upon making it outside I see him standing there, with outstretched arms. It still looks like he is alive, for my heart has frantically willed him to be alive for me. Just for a few more minutes, let me be comforted by him. I run to him and clasp his hands, which oddly enough, are calm and steady. He looks me in the eyes and smiles.

"Let go of me. This place is not where you belong." His gaze roams my face with feeling, but I can see that starting from his feet and upwards, he is turning into a first draft, a piece of paper. The last thing to change is his eyes, which soon turn from warm, to flat and lifeless. My arms are now wrapped around a piece of paper, which crumbles to the ground. Written on his skin is "someone that will rescue me, be there for me, hold me, kiss me, and love me."

I stand there, crying as I look at the beautiful world that had come undone. I created it to be there forever. But no. The life I have in the real world is calling me back, I hear my own voice booming from the fake clouds like thunder "Come out! Come out! You can't stay, no matter how hard you try!"

Upon hearing these words, I jolt as the whole street I stand on begins caving underneath me, it turning thin and frail, and the lines of paper begin to appear on it. Words appear, "the street my school is on." I run to get away from the crumbling paper, and as I look all around me, the houses, trees, and even the sky, is turning thin, flat, and lined, and soon that too is crumbling, written "the world I created."

I can not outrun the changing. It crumbles around me, constricting me. I hear crunching, and then all is dark.

I come to slowly, and breathe, my breaths at first labored. My eyes sting at the realness of what's around me, and I emerge from the ruins of a story now complete, written, and read. I finished the story, and now I feel empty. The adventure is done and gone. And now I feel...done and gone also. But I am not paper, I test that by pinching my warm flesh. I touch my face. No, I am still here, heaving, my cheeks lined with dry tear-trails, my heart still thumping.

I can not, I can not live here. I must create another world. Yes, for the 10th or so time, I will create another world better than the last. And indestructable. This time it will be indestructable. Nothing will destroy it, nothing. I will make sure of it. I will even keep the story alive by rarely updating. Yes, I will try that approach. Anything so that I never, ever, truly live again. So here it goes...

"Once upon a time..."

I created this to reveal the years I have spent writing out of loneliness and emptyness. I wrote because perhaps I hated my life, or thought it wasn't giving me what I wanted, but either way, I never wanted to live another moment in my skin again. So I'd subconsciously create new skins to live in. I would be utterly consumed, glued to my laptop, like a zombie. I needed typing like oxygen, and that was my form of breathing. Now I am able to live again thanks to God, but it is so difficult at times, especially in rough patches of my life, to not escape into the paper worlds I create. You can say I'm obsessive, and obviously I am, I think clinically. All I know is, it is quite easy to lose myself in a fantasy built just for me.