The bishop began to walk to his work at the church. Suddenly, he noticed me writing about him, and came over to talk to me.
"Say, aren't you Milky?" he said, nervously.
"Why yes, I suppose I am," I replied with some uncertainty.
"I'm not interesting, you know," he confided.
"Oh, that's fine. I don't have anyone else to write about. It's a slow day."
"No, but actually, I'm not really the 'fictional character' type. I will wreck your story. Look at that guy over there massaging pudding, or those two women trying to kill each other with fabric. Perfect story material," he suggested enthusiastically.
"I've done all that. Today, you're my character. Maybe we'll explore some religious motifs," I replied.
"Oh, EVERYONE explores religious motifs. You don't want to write the same as everyone else, do you?" he asked, quite obviously trying to play upon my fear of normalcy.
"What I want," I responded with determination, "is to write about you. So please just proceed with your day. I will forgive you if it is a boring day, don't worry."
The bishop sighed. "That's not what I'm worried about. It's... it's the way you write."
"What about the way I write?" I asked defensively, writing as we spoke.
"You make fun of your characters. You always make them hypocrites or just plain stupid. In 'The Favour', you ridiculed a priest and a woman who were too shy to admit that they wanted to have sex with one another, for example," he accused flatly.
"Is that what this is about? That story didn't have anything to do with the fact that the priest was a priest, he just-so-happened to be a priest. I'm not going to mock your religion."
"Oh come on. The Adventures of Neo-Jesus was not complimentary to our Saviour. In The Divine Crepe you were clearly mocking the idea of a messiah. In QQQQQQQQ, you have the pope give birth. In A Good Holocaust, you referred to religion as one of the tools which could be used to fool humanity into obeyance. In Blankets, you meet God and then announce to the reader that you "co' smoked his ass." In God, you wrote about our Lord ripping the head off a dog. Then there are all your Christmas stories - I don't even want to mention those. In short, it is safe to say you're not a big fan of Christianity," he stated.
"I love Christianity, just for different reasons than you," I said. I smiled as I added in a conspiritorial tone, "I mean, you have to admit, it's pretty silly."
"Well, yeah... AH! WAIT! See? There we go. Now you're having me call my own faith silly." The Bishop folded up his arms and began to walk towards his church.
I finished writing that last paragraph and then ran up and blocked his path. "Alright, I promise not to write anything else about religion. You can just go out to lunch with a friend or something and I'll write about that. You can just walk around town if you want," I suggested. "Whatever you want to do is fine with me. I'll choke a story out of your day no matter how bland it is."
The bishop resumed his earlier nervous expression. "Please don't say choke. You see, that's your other problem. You kill off almost all your characters. Some authors occaisionally tell tales of their characters overcoming all obstacles and living great lives, but whenever your character's lives start getting good, the world explodes, or they get killed, or something terrible happens. It's like you're jealous or something."
I paused for a moment. "I'm nice."
"I'd point out that you brutally kill and/or torture all your characters in a manner which is distinctly not nice, but in Narration you had a large meteor land on an innocent girl who disagreed with you," the bishop said with heavy sarcasm. "So, yeah, you're really swell."
"My characters only die when they deserve it, or when the story needs an ending," I said, writing down my argument with some sincerity.
"Oh be serious. The Best Carpet is a story about a boy who sees some nice carpet in a horror movie. The story effectively ends when the carpet leaves the movie, but then almost as a afterthought you have the main character kill his girlfriend and uncle before going to bed. That was just plain spiteful. In Bitterness, you have sex with the Queen while undead pit bulls rip your fellow students to shreds. In The Wallet, you have the Earth destroyed because a young boy returns a wallet he finds. In Ted, you have the main character not only die but afterwards be disgraced in the news and raped by a necrofiliac. There is no reason for this punishment except your own personal amusement," the bishop fumed.
"At least they die quickly. I never give my characters prolonged diseases or wounds, unlike some authors."
"But what agony you put them through! In Night of the Husks, the main characters shoot sprays of blood in all directions before even being attacked. In Death Story--"
"Hey, Finn did all the bad stuff in that one."
"You always say that. But listen: the horse 'winced so hard his eyeballs imploded and blood sprayed across the entire earth, and the hard spray hit him in the tail and killed him even more!' I mean, you hate this horse so much you break all laws of physics in order to cause him pain. In Blind, you force a blind man to breathe in cement. In The Merriest Christmas EVER, you have a skater get his penis caught in his skates. In Avenue of Death, the main character watches as all his 'flesh peeled off and a ridiculous deluge of thick, black blood poured throughout the entire universe.' Then in Jumping in July, a happy little boy who likes to jump is hit in the neck by at least one nuclear missile."
"Umm... STiK made me write that part," I lied.
The bishop stared at me disapprovingly.
"Okay, I admit, I went through a violent phase," I explained. "It happens!"
"You wrote The Election just this morning, in which the entire population of the Earth which survives attacks by fire-breathing children is forced to feel agony forever, and followed it up with Gauntlet, in which you state that life is nothing more than walking along and saying 'ow' or 'yummy' until one dies. These are not cheery. Face it - you DETEST your characters!" he roared, pointing his finger accusingly.
"Fine! I admit it! I hate them all! What have they ever done for me? Have they ever written about me?" I demanded, trying to hold back my angry tears.
"No-one has ever lived long enough to try!" he exclaimed with considerable frustration. "But they do care about you."
"HA! I tried to write a story where the characters loved my attention so much that they were forced to compete with one another for my attention - and the most exciting thing that happened was a family had breakfast. I was fooling myself," I admitted. "If anything, they're scared of me, like you. I don't want it to be like this. I've always wanted to befriend one of my characters, get to know them and thereby get to know myself better. But something always gets in the way."
The bishop now placed his hand on my shoulder. "Hey, I'll be your friend. Let's so eat that lunch you were talking about."
I paused before I allowed a smile to spread across my face. "I'd like that. Just let me finish writing this," I said, and quickly scrawled down:
And then the world exploded.