Today's #flashfiction #CursedThroughStories

“Save the trees!”

Paul Bunyan*

      Today I tinkered with my 3DS and made it display 4D graphics. I have to admit its kinda hard to play games when everything is forming around tesseracts so I had to turn it back to normal because I kept dying. When you're fighting monsters an extra line of directions makes things a little complicated to say to the least. On a side note my friend CJ is coming over tomorrow so that'll be fun.

Anyway onto the flash fiction!

Cursed Through Stories

      There are more curses in the world than someone could possibly count. More ways a wizard or witch could make someone suffer for the pleasure or revenge. They can turn someone into a toad or petrify them so they can sit as a statue in a garden. I was cursed by an incredibly powerful wizard, with an incredibly powerful curse. It's been so long I don't even remember what I did to him, I just remember it was something insignificant. The curse was not.

      The curse gave me immortality. But not immortality in the normal world. It gave me immortality by making me reincarnate through the lives of heroes in fictional stories. If that sounds appealing to you, if you think “But being the hero of a story would be incredible!” then you don't remember what defines a story: conflict. Heroes fight villains. Heroes suffer while fighting. And many heroes are defined by their individual tragedies.

      I've experienced all the different kinds of pains the heroes have. And I'm aware of all the past lives and I follow the script of the story as a compulsion even if I know the ending. When I was living through Hamlet I knew the ending. I also feel the feelings of the hero no matter how hard I try so even though I knew the ending I still felt the suffering and shocks of Hamlet at all the twists and turns.

      If you're thinking that it might be worth it for the happy endings its not. In how many stories does the happy ending come from the hero killing an evil villain? The evil villain that killed his parents? Do you know how many parents I've lost? Ones I loved just as much you love your own? Now think back, there are also stories in which the happy ending comes from people sacrificing themselves to help me. “Go on without me!” it goes. I've gotten that phrase said to me over and over to me in so many forms. And I have to go because that's what the story demands. And I feel like I'm making the decision because I'm the hero even though I am actually not because of the curse, but I feel the guilt all the same.

     The wizard gave me an option when he cursed me. He told me I could be either the hero or the villain. Maybe I should have chose being the villain. Maybe thinking as and living as the villain would make me suffer less.