Critical Response Ch. 03

[Author's Note: Stepping out of the stories, Cassie has some feedback for me as to how she's being written. She has been hard at work, featuring in What We Say In The Dark, Alena's Game and When One Day We Are Gone. Still, no rest for the fictional....

Thank you to AlinaX for use of the cafe!]

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I'm at a table in the corner of the café. The barista has suddenly switched her footwear from sneakers and is now tottering around on improbably high heels, trying to balance the plates she's just cleared up from the two women sitting at a nearby table. I listen to them talk for a while, but then I check the time again. She's late. My laptop's open, but I find myself staring into space.

A bell tinkles as the door opens and I look up to see Cassie standing in the doorway. I wave her over.

"Busy?" she asks, indicating the laptop.

I shrug, closing it and beckoning her to sit down.

"I've got time," I reply.

She's so different to Lily. Lily would have just barged in and sat down; Cassie's a lot more circumspect.

"How're you going?" I ask, getting up to meet her.

"How do you think?" she replies, rolling her eyes, "I'm shattered."

"Want to sit?"

"Please."

"Something to drink?"

Cassie hesitates. "Uh, such as?"

"Coffee, tea, or I think there's something stronger maybe, if I asked. This place is quite unusual."

"Yeah, when you suggested the Meta, I had to wonder if you were for real. But, yes, tea," she nods, "Do they have herbal?"

"Sure. I'll join you."

Cassie laughs, and I stop.

"What's so funny?" I ask her.

"You don't seem like the herbal tea type."

"What makes you think that?"

"Oh, based on past evidence."

I make a face at her. "You shouldn't believe everything you read," I tell her, "We're not just the sum of our parts."

"I hadn't expected to go into Carl Jung with you. More likely Freud?"

"Not interested in discussing ego?"

"I think there's quite enough of that already. You should check out the author forums."

Cassie flops onto the seat opposite me, crossing her legs and leaning back. She's wearing a work skirt and a blouse, nothing ostentatious. I wave the girl over, watching her struggle on her stilettos, and she takes our order. All the while, I feel Cassie's eyes on me. She's watching me, or more accurately, observing me. It's a little unnerving.

"You're really exhausted, aren't you?" I ask.

Cassie just nods, waiting as the barista returns with our order. She sips her tea, watching me over the rim.

"So, you wanted to catch up. How can I help you?" I say, breaking the silence, "Do you want to do a debrief?"

"After Quinn?" Cassie replies, "Or after Lily?"

"I don't mind, you can...."

"Or after whatever's coming next?" Cassie continues, cutting me off.

"Is that why you're here?"

She wrinkles her nose. "Maybe. Look, you've had me back-to-back in two stories, and then straight into a third. I'm beginning to think I should be joining some kind of union."

Cassie laughs to herself. "If there is a union for fictional characters, working together for designated time off, minimum working standards," she continues, "Imagine that, one bondage scene too many and that's it, tools down, we all walk off the story. Where would that leave you?"

I don't answer. Cassie's smart, old enough to have figured out how it all works. She's coming around to her point.

"So, what can I help you with?" I ask again.

Cassie doesn't reply immediately, running her fingers around the rim of her cup. She's trying to work me out, to gauge my reaction.

"You're putting people through all kinds of situations," she says at last, "Ever thought about how that looks from the other side?"

"What do you mean?"

"Getting towed along in the flow of the story, not able to escape, pushed into situations."

"It's a story, that's going to happen. People don't read stories about drinking tea."

"Ah, they are at the moment. But that aside, do you think it's fair though?"

"What do you mean, really?"

I wait, and Cassie shifts in her seat. Eventually, she confesses, "I guess what happened with Quinn, with Alena, that was pretty difficult. The story didn't need to go that way. You could have just had them living in their little bubble, riding off together into the sunset."

"It really did need to."

"Why?"

I nod towards the closed laptop. Following an intuition, I open the screen up and bring up a file.

"It's an important piece, to set up something later. Do you want to see?"

"Sure, I'd like that."

I turn the screen to face her.

"So, this is the future," Cassie murmurs.

"Yes."

"And where are we?"

I point to an entry halfway down the list.

"That means there's a lot more to come. How's it going so far?"

"It's all starting to head in the same direction," I tell her.

Cassie gives me a strange look. "I guess that's my point," she says, "What if it isn't the right direction?"

She holds my gaze and I have a little flutter of doubt. Lily just wanted to know where she was in the storylines, how big a part she had, how much of it was all about her. Cassie has a different set of concerns.

"I don't know," I confess, at last, "I suppose if people read it, then it's on the right track."

"Ah, but you know that's nonsense," Cassie chides, "Alena's story should have told you that. You had two completely different audiences, diametrically opposed. One audience wanted to watch how Alena groomed and conditioned Quinn into servitude, the other just wanted to watch her burn."

She shrugs, turning her attention back to the screen.

"To be honest," she continues, "I'm surprised the ratings kept up as high as they did. You can't please all the people all of the time, but I suspect you ended up pleasing none of the people for a fair chunk of it, from the comments."

"It was a mixed bag," I concede.

"It was a very broad church."

Cassie reaches out and touches an arrow, the one leading down from the present into the story coming next.

"Do you need help?" she asks.

I hesitate. It's just about the last thing I had expected her to say.

"Uh, as in, what?" I stammer, "Professional help?"

"No, I didn't mean that. Although, I can't preclude the idea that you do."

"You think I'm not right in the head?"

"I think the world takes all kinds of people. If we all thought the same things at the same time, there would be no progress. No, I mean help with the stories."

"What kind of help? Proofreading?"

I see a flicker in her eye, and I know she's got me. I'm curious to see what she'd do.

"That, but also the stories themselves."

"That's a little...."

"It's a little recursive," Cassie interjects, "A character helping to write the story that she's appearing in."

"You want to read my drafts? It's all pretty loose at this point."

Cassie grins at me, her hand on my arm.

"Oh, that's not the truth, is it?" she murmurs, "You don't think I believe that, surely? How much have you written?"

"In total?"

"Sure, from the start to the end, how much?"

"About half a million words," I confess, "So far."

She shakes her head and I suddenly feel stupid.

"That's a long time to fly solo. Why not let me have a look, let's see what you've got."

Her gaze is steady and unflinching. This isn't like the situation with Lily, letting things slip and having them come back to bite me, or Eve wanting to break into my files to sleuth. Cassie's offer appears genuine.

"Okay," I say, "But there's one thing. You won't remember any of it, once you're in the story."

Cassie smiles, "Then I'll just have to trust that we did a good job. Now, where do we start?"

I hesitate again, then bring up the first document.

"Go for your life," I tell her.

Cassie takes the laptop from me and retreats to a couch, curling her legs up under her, cradling her tea. I watch as she becomes absorbed in the screen, breaking off every so often to take a sip of her drink. Her nose wrinkles, her brows furrow, then she laughs, all in the space of a few seconds. I sit back and check my phone, answering a few emails.

A little while later, I hear the laptop snap shut and I look up. Cassie's coming over to me, holding it out in front of her and I take it.

"Seen enough?" I ask.

"All of it," Cassie replies.

"That's impossible, it would take days."

"At your reading speed. I'm fictional, you never defined how fast I can read."

Cassie's matter-of-fact about it, as if it should have occurred to me. She perches on the chair opposite, mouth set in a firm line. It's not looking like good news.

"What did you think?" I venture.

"Good in parts. Awful in parts. Tell me, the girl from the café siege, why bother with her?"

"Chloe?" I respond, staggered that she's gotten that far into it, "It just, there, uh, there needed to be a back story for...."

"There didn't."

"But in the last story, how do we get from the party at the Lost and Found to the rescue? There needs to be a reason that things went the way they did."

"How about it just happened to be that way? You don't need to go down every rabbit hole."

"I don't," I retort, but I can feel how defensive I'm getting.

"You do. It looks, from here, a little obsessive-compulsive. There are too many back-stories, too many bit parts, you can't flesh them all out."

"I can try."

"Or you can leave it to other people."

I'm genuinely puzzled. "How?"

"Open it all up. Let people play. Some people thrive on a blank page staring back at them, at the green field waiting to be constructed. Others like to bite off a chunk, jumping off from a pre-existing narrative. Like Aidan going off to Australia. Like the party you're going to have in the Lost and Found. There would be a dozen stories in just that one night."

Cassie shrugs, as if it's obvious.

"You found benefit in writing, so you'd have to assume that other people might too," she continues, "They get some words down on paper, get it out of their heads. It's a powerful conduit, a way to unload."

She leans towards me, meaningfully.

"Sometimes, the things that matter most are what we say in the dark."

"I wrote that line," I tell her, "You can't fire it back at me."

Cassie smiles back at me, "I know you wrote it, I said it to Aidan, remember?"

I frown at her. "I understand what you're getting at, but in the same vein, I need to respect the audience. Having plot points just turn up, people riding in on white horses to save the day, that's cheating. What's the point of building up to something and then pulling a Deus ex Machina and blindsiding readers with divine intervention to make everything all good in the end?"

I take the laptop back and find myself staring at the screen.

"I'm not here to write fairytales, Cassie. That's why it's dark in places, why people go through things. It doesn't mean that I don't want a happy ending, just that it's going to need work to get there."

Cassie sighs, rolling her shoulders back as she stares up at the ceiling. I can see the tiredness in the line of her body as she stretches.

"It's, uh, I guess, it's the story... it's hard on me and on some of the people I care a lot about. What if I refuse to take part? What would you do then?"

"You want me to change the script, rewrite destiny?"

"I want a happy ending," Cassie replies, tersely.

"That's a little selfish," I chide her.

"No, not for me. For other people."

I'm taken aback as I realise she's bargaining for other characters in the stories, not on her own behalf. It's a revelation into how her mind works.

"Whose side are you on, Cassie?"

She doesn't answer immediately and I can see she's formulating a strategy, getting her bargaining chips lined up.

"I agree with Anya's father. I'm not interested in people getting bent out of shape, people suffering. Moran says it in the final book and I agree with him. I'm on the side of love."

She meets my gaze, challenging me.

"If I gave you the opportunity to change the storyline," I reply, "What would you do?"

"I'd ask for three things."

Cassie folds her arms, waiting for me to take the bait.

"Okay," I reply, "Let's talk. What things?"

"First, you leave my family out of all of this. My parents, my kids, even Damian, I don't want them embroiled. You can mention them in passing but that's it. The story's too heavy to bring my boys into it, even though you might feel the need to deal with what Damian did."

"Fine, done."

"I want to bestow a happy ending for someone that deserves it."

"Who?"

"Aidan and Rosa."

"Really, Cassie? Not you, after seeing everything in store for you, you don't want a happy ending for yourself?"

"No. What happened between them, she was having a breakdown. I don't need my professional qualifications to determine that. It was as clear as day."

"That's very noble, but pick something else."

"Why? You said I could...."

I cut her off. "Don't waste your wish. Leave them to me. Pick another."

Cassie looks for a moment like she's going to argue, but I wait her out. She's right, and I know it. Aidan and Rosa deserve better than what happened, but I need time to work it all through.

"Then I want this," Cassie says, "That night in the last story, with Syn upstairs, you know the one?"

I nod.

"I want Ashley in the Lost and Found. She meets up with Adam there occasionally anyway, so it's not such a push to make sure she's downstairs."

"Why?"

"Because she's a paramedic," Cassie states, and I can see I've hit a nerve.

"That's divine intervention," I tell her, "A big fat Deus ex Machina."

"It's the least you can do for everything I've gone through for you. You'll figure out a way to make it work."

Cassie stared at me, letting the silence lengthen.

"Okay," I concede, begrudgingly.

Cassie gets to her feet. "So, where do I start?" she asks as she stands.

I watch as she tugs the cuffs of her blouse and smooths down her skirt, suddenly business-like.

"No more deals to make? You said three things."

Cassie nods, fixing her eyes on me.

"One last thing I want," she replies, "The last part of the last story, the place where all this finishes."

"What about it?"

"The scene with all of us together in the kitchen at my house, I want something there as well."

"That's going to be hard."

"Why?"

"It's the conclusion to everything. I can't just go rewriting it."

"I've read what you've written. I only want one thing, just right at the end."

She folds her arms, waiting, and eventually I relent.

"What do you want?" I ask.

She fixes me with an unfathomable look. "Free will," she murmurs, "Can you grant me that?"

"I guess."

"Thank you."

She heads towards the door, but I call out.

"You rock, Cassidy Hayes."

She looks at me over her shoulder and I can see something in her eyes.

"Not yet," she replies, "But I will."

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