Ink

"I'm scared." Good said. He was sitting in the corner, with his back to the wall and his knees hugged to his chest.

"You and me both pal." Bad added, pacing at the other end of the room. The room as blank. It was just four walls and a passage that led to an infinite sky. The only things in the room were the three of us.

"Are you two actually agreeing on something for once?" I asked the both of them, leaning against the adjacent wall to address them.

"I think we are." Bad answered, looking between Good and I. Good didn't respond. He dug his face into his knees. His back shivered and began to quickly rise and fall. He was sobbing. Bad quickened his pace. He wiped the sweat away from his brow with his sleeve.

"I don't even know what you two are afraid of," I voiced, neither turning to face me, "shouldn't I be the one who's scared here? I'm the one in charge."

"I don't get how you're not afraid!" Bad shouted, gritting his teeth.

"I don't know what the hell you're talking about!"

"We're talking about everything!" He yelled, finally collapsing onto the floor into tears. "You thought of it today! Now we can't stop thinking about it!"

I exasperated and glared at him. What the hell is he talking about?

 "I mean reality," he pleaded, looking far into my eyes, "everything that exists out there. I know we have all of those lofty dreams."

"Everyone does," I assured him, "what's your point?"

"They're nothing more than dreams." His face buckled. His tears stopped, and he glowered at me. "You of all people should know that."

"All of this is just a dream," I declared, motioning to the room around us, "but it's still real."

"This is just some twisted, convoluted way that you rationalize morality in your own head. Of course it's a damn dream, it’s the literal definition of a dream! I mean the dreams that could change your life, forever, for the better!"

"Just because it's a dream doesn't mean it's not possible." I whispered, kneeling down to him.

"You're trying to tell the catastrophist that anything's possible, with just some hard work and dedication?" He mumbled.

"Well," I started, shrugging my shoulders, "it is."

"You and I are the same person you moron," he empathized, "how are you not at all in the slightest bit concerned about this?

"Because I'm more concerned with the 'right now' than I am with the future."

"Wow," he enamored, "you really are an idiot, aren't you?"

"I know that that's the wrong way around."

"Yeah, no shit."

"Is it really wrong? Or is it just wrong to us?"

"No, it's wrong to literally everyone!"

"How do you know?" I promised him. "You and I are the same person, remember? And with that knowledge, we have about the same, total worldly knowledge as a sequoia tree."

He sighed, and got back up to his feet to continue pacing.

"Why aren't you scared about this?" He pleaded me once more. "We graduate from college in a year. Yet we've never held a job, we're going to graduate with a degree in fucking English, we don’t want to educate, and rather we want to make a living from writing fiction! Does none of this concern you?!"

"Eh," I shrugged, "a little."

"Do you ever want to have a job?!" He shouted, edging closer towards me. "Let alone a career?!"

"Yeah, that's why I'm trying to do the whole 'writing' thing."

"Let's think realistically here for a minute. You're going to 'finish' the book this summer, amongst other things, right?"

"Yes?"

"So you're going to finish revising the book, write a query letter all that jazz, and then send it off with the intent of getting a literary agent?"

"Yeah but I don't see where this is—."

"And then from that point you're going to try to submit it to a few publishers and then hope you can allure one?"

"Dude I don't know what you're trying to—."

"None of this is going to work!" He shouted, leaning into my face. "You and I both know this! You know that that God damn Word file on that thumb drive is nothing but a waste of a megabyte!"

"It's alright." I told him, gently pushing him back. "It's not comparable to anything like Dickens, or Hemingway, or Tolkien, but it's alright."

"Christ alive you've lost it..."

"When I write, I don't know how the words will come out. I don't know if they'll be crude or eloquent.  I don't know if they'll be in Arial or Comic Sans. And I sure as hell don't know whether I will become the next 'best author of all time,' or if this will just be some phony dream that eventually burns to a crisp, and lands in the ash tray like so many others' before me."

Bad sighed once more, and turned back around to lean his head into the far wall. Good still sat in the corner, in the fetal position he had held this entire time.

"But that's the beauty of writing," I continued, "isn't it? The sheer marvel of writing is that you have no idea what the words will look like until you actually write them! You can make them appeal to just you, to a friend or lover, or to the masses. Writing is an art of improvisation!"

"What's your point?" Bad said from the far wall, grumbling into the wall.

"Life is the same thing as writing." I told him. "The only thing that matters is the page that you're on right now. Sure, you can try to plan for what will sit on the pages ahead, but it's a waste of time. We don't know, and we will never know, how the ink will stick to the pages of the Story of Our Life."

There was a pause, and the air shuddered around us. It was all going to end again shortly. Good finally lifted his head up and looked at me. His forehead was wrinkled and red, and dried tears ran down his cheeks.

"But what if we don't like how the ink sticks?" Bad mumbled once more. "Just change the font, or copy and paste."

"No," Good finished for me, "in the traditional sense. All that matters is the page you're on right now, or the exact word or letter. Once the ink has stained the page, it can't be fixed. It cannot be redone. You just have to fix it with whatever pages you have left."

Bad turned around and inhaled, probably to make a rebuttal. But he stopped, and let the air out. He knew it was time. We all knew. He turned back around to face away from us as the white encapsulated us.