My name is Leila Allison. I’m a Penname–just one word, like “dammit.” And I insist that it be considered a proper noun, like “Irish.” I do, however, approve of “Pen”–which I find swaggery, thus to my ego’s liking.

My employer (from here, “The Boss”) is a woman of mystery who keeps a low profile because she fears the social media secret police. She is paranoid and erroneously convinced that there is enough interest in her for someone to want to ruin her life with unsubstantiated accusations on Instagram, if she were ever to rise above her state of anonymity. At best she’d rather be like Oz/Professor Marvel, but cloaked behind an impenetrable, Toto-proof iron curtain, unknown, unloved, unbothered. It’s hard to get away with much nowadays, but paradoxically it has never been easier to get lost in the unforgiving crowd. This led to the invention of Yours Truly, who considers herself as real as she needs to be, and then some.

Before slinking off to a yet another sabbatical at a place where the sunsets are pretty and the Thorazine is plentiful, the Boss summoned me from the deep shadows of her mind and endowed me with “untakebackable Free Will” and the keys to her Literary Queendom, a realm in the make believe multiverse that she’d named Saragun Springs. That’s just how she put it, shortly after swallowing yet another loganberry wine flip, and seconds prior to passing out in her chair–”Lei-lith, youse goth untakebackable Fee Bill…and da keyz to Sarygun Spings–dooze whatevuh…”

Now, I was in the Boss’s mind for a long, long, long time before getting out. Everything she knows, I know; her addictions are mine; our intelligence and education levels are the same; and we both understand that a writer, whether human or a Pen, cannot create someone smarter than herself–yet there is this strange degree of separation between us that allows me to behold her objectively. We have an I/me perception shared between two distinctly different points of view. I also have the advantage of recalling things she once knew but has forgotten–for though I am of her, I am much younger in the existence sense. For instance, I remembered she had once known that Free Will was a choice given to humankind by God. Mainly, we have the choice to kiss His butt or depart from Him and court disaster (in a way Heaven sounds a lot like North Korea). The Boss’s interpretation is simpler and owes to the Thelemite creed “Do what thou wilt.” And although there is no real such word as untakebackable, the concept behind it was clear to me.

Ha! I was off like a Cat with thumbs and the car keys. Although trouble stemmed from that viewpoint (mainly, there isn’t a Cat-sized car out there worth stealing), the principle of it all formed in my mind, regardless of logic. The first thing I did as she began the long sleep off was head to Saragun Springs (a concept that had been trapped in her mind even longer than I had). The second thing I did, being what you might call a virtual sort of person, was to reject the physical laws of the universe except for those that pleased me–or when such suited me as plot devices. The third thing I did was when and where the trouble began.

I needed to populate my realm with characters. I also put a call in to an Imaginary Friend whom I grew up with in the neighborhood of my Employer’s mind, named Renfield. I made her second in command of Saragun Springs. We both flew from the Boss’s sleeping mind, taking the blueprint of the realm with us.

As virtual persons, both Renfield and I are eternally on the more popular side of thirty but we do not belong to any specific generation–not that any are lining up to have us. All you really need to know about Renfield will unfold clearly and soon enough. But if I had to sum her up quickly, I’d say that she is as distinctly American as a baseball to the head. I endowed her with the same permanent state of “Fee Bill” that the Boss had given me.

I’m a Pen who specializes in fiction. Thus I began to develop Fictional Characters (from here, FC’s) to populate my works; I must have FC’s before a storyline. But the Boss’s weaknesses involving booze and not necessarily well thought out Big Ideas are mine as well. About halfway into a fifth of Three Freedoms vodka, I thought it would be cool to endow my FC’s with the same mistaken notion of Free Will that pulsed through both my and Renfield’s souls. Untakebackable. Furthermore, each FC was given sentience and a life that goes on outside the stories they appear in–although those lives take place only at Saragun Springs–lives and sentience I have no control over whatsoever, save for the stories they appear in. I conceived them as actors to play roles in my acts of genius.

Another thing I have in common with the Boss is the capacity to blow off the mental Voice of Reason. Conservative stuff like “Think about what you are getting yourself into” is tiresome, boring and too safe to be much fun. It’s my good luck that the Voice of Reason does not hold her liquor well. The Voice of Reason is always a shot or two from becoming a cheerleader–the staunchest toady for my Big Ideas, as long as I’m pouring.

At first the realm was like a new house on moving in day. Stuff still in boxes and not much going on save for sloth, beer and pizza. There was no real plan other than whatever popped into my head on the spur of the moment. I guess for free wheeling types, that’s the way to go, but when you are founding a realm and/or new dimension on the otherside of reality, maybe a to-do list of some sorts should be consulted.

Hence…

Union Troubles

I created my office in a “territory” of the realm named “The Barnyard” (in all, there are seven territories, which we will get to, by and by). On that first day my office was a bare room save for a window, my desk, and me working away on a Chromebook while drinking and smoking in a squeaky chair I’ve yet to do anything about. Then I set about creating a group of FC’s. I figured that fifty would do for starters.

Upon completing my FC list, I took a break, lit a cigarette and leaned back in my chair, ignoring the squeak, feet up on the desk. I had all kinds of projects planned. First I wanted to arrange the geography of the springs, because at that moment there wasn’t much outside the office window except the Barnyard and a barracks to temporarily house my impressive roster of FC’s.

This was when a recurring theme in my existence commenced. Renfield,who is my only Imaginary Friend, entered my office to pee in my Cheerios in the metaphoric yet just as equally disgusting fashion. She had “Free-Willed” a luxurious office of her own next to mine, and, unbeknownst to me, she had met and got friendly with each FC I had sent out upon creation. To each I’d said, “Hi there [insert name], you have Free Will and your own life. Stay handy, and don’t let the door hit you on the butt on your way out to the barracks.” In retrospect I should have been friendlier, maybe a bit more personal, perhaps even glanced up from my computer when I spoke. But I had fifty (to be honest, I soon lost count) of the fiends to deal with before the vodka ran out and the Voice of Reason’s new flexible philosophy wore off. Seizing the advantage, Renfield had intercepted each FC as she/he/it exited the office. She is both ingratiating and duplicitous. A Free-Willed conspiracy was fomenting between individuals I had created, and yet I was ignorant of it. In my defense I am no more omniscient than the Boss–but maybe I should have paid closer attention.

“I bring great news, darling,” Renfield said, barging into my office, carrying a document file.

“What the hell are you doing here?” I was slightly confused by the interruption because I didn’t write “Renfield entered the office” and the bit about the Cheerios until after it happened. In the real world cause precedes effect, but in fictional realms it is supposed to be the other way around.

“I have Free Will, remember? Besides, I’m the Imaginary Friend, as real as you are–I don’t need you to write me–in fact nobody in the realm is under restraint, unless acting a part.”

“Shitsticks,” I said. “I probably should have thought that out better. But the Voice of Reason is one swallow shy of rehab. Guess the endowment of Free Will puts me in for a slew of little surprises.”

“Right?” she said, smiling. Renfield smiles a lot. In fact if a person could be described as having a secret smile hidden behind her back, you’d have Renfield. “Your life, on the rare occasions I think about it, seems awfully barn door after the Cows, darling.”

“Let’s leave personality traits out of this, darling,” I said. “May I assume the ‘great news’ of which you speak has something to do with the file in your hand?”

Renfield sat on the edge of my desk. Like smiling, she does a lot of that too. It doesn’t say such in the Bible, but I bet on the eighth day God awoke hungover, and realized that the stuff She had set in motion was now hopelessly beyond her control and couldn’t be undone. That describes the sinking feeling I had when Renfield laid the document on my trusty Chromebook, which was still warm from all the FC creation.

I opened it and saw a psycho manifesto, whose title will be burned into my mind long after my Employer has turned to clay that reeks of fermentation and ashtrays.

It said:

The Union of Imaginary Friends and Fictional Characters (UIFFC)

Below the ugsome heading was a list of demands. At the end was a list of names, beginning with Renfield and followed by each FC I had created, beginning with Miss Daisy Cloverleaf the Pygmy Goatess and ending with her brother Fenwick; there were sixty-six names of various “persons” (that confirmed my suspicion of losing count–or blackout FC creating) lying between the Mini Goats. Each one had either signed or made her/his/its mark on the document.

I read aloud: “The ruling Pen cannot create new Fictional Characters (FC) to appear in new stories without first offering the role to already extant FC’s–what the fu–”

“That’s explained here,” Renfield said, flipping the document to an equally ugsome page.

I again read aloud: “We FC’s and Miss Renfield, our dear Imaginary Friend, consider ourselves actors in the ruling Pen’s productions. And since stories are composed of words, we feel that any competent FC can play a part suited to his/her/its talents….”

I chewed on that for a while, like a dope addict Cow working a poppy cud. Then I glanced up at Renfield.

“Lemme see if I got this straight….someone like Daisy the Pygmy Goatess must be offered the part of, say, a five-hundred pound blob of sentient Jello if such isn’t already in the roster before I can wonk-up said beastie–right?”

“Precisely.”

“But there are only sixty-six ‘actors’–what if I want to fill a stadium with fifty-thousand Jellos?”

“We will just shoot something like that the way they do in cheap movies. Round up a crowd of fifty, move them around with each scene and have them wear different shirts or a hat in other shots.”

I cast about my mind for objections to the Union and found none other than it was not my idea. The Voice of Reason had straightened up enough to point out the futility of arguing the point further.

“All right. Fine. Whatever,” I said, signing the document.