Oh, Death! Oh sweet, elusive sleep that teases the shadowy corners of my room, whispering honeyed, vacant promises into my failing ears like a young maiden in heat. Cursed that I cannot reach out to take her into my embrace, kissing her soft neck even as she reaches into my chest and stills my beating heart. For even now, the sun rises and fills the shadows of my room with unforgiving light, and I see through my morning haze that she is not here. Another day alive in this execrable world.
As I shuffle to the kitchen, pulling my slipping nighttime suspenders back over my shoulder, I must pass the Bad Room. I would shut and lock and hang chains upon the door to keep the Bad Room from sight, had I not removed the door years ago. For you see, the Bad Room is my greatest enemy and my only salvation. I am a prisoner for life in this penitentiary, and the Bad Room is the sole escape route, a dark tunnel protected by a thick wall of concrete with which I have only a spoon to scrape through. In there sits my typewriter and notes, my accolades, scripts, pens—anything to do with my damnable life as an author is collected there. And I must look upon it every day, for I either leave this prison one keystroke at a time, or in a body bag. I favor the latter.
Why, you ask? If you didn’t have to Google my name before reading this article, I’m sure you’re aware of my contributions to literature. Telling stories comes as natural to me as breathing, or leaking out a little bit of urine into my trousers after I thought I was finished my deed—it is simply what my body does unbidden. Or at least, it is what it did easily before the attention, the accolades, the… expectations. What a pernicious, cataclysmic word. As I turn on the coffee maker, I shudder at the thought of sifting through the morning’s dozens of #windsofwinter tweets. Depending on what is trending on Elon Musk’s digital sandbox filled with the excrement of stray cats known as Twitter, it might be in the hundreds. How did it come to this?
The walls of my prison encircled me slowly as I slept, imperceptibly closer and closer each day. I did not realize their presence until one day, I struggled mightily with thought and keyboard, only to tally a meager 300 words for my manuscript. This minuscule progress was promptly made obsolete by one of my many interns, gently reminding me that Dany’s eyes are purple, not blue. Then, like a mentally unstable TikTok star with a YouTube’s education of civil engineering digging tunnels under her yard, everything collapsed around me, locking my limbs into rigor mortis and suffocating my every breath.
Then, those insufferable imbeciles David Benioff and D.B. Weiss (a man most unworthy of the illustrious initialed moniker) took it upon themselves to turn decades of my writing and guidance into a pile of slowly drying dragon shit. How was I to know that the two men capable of bringing my vision to life on screen were so incapable of finding creativity that wasn’t spoon-fed by my books into their convulsing, drooling mouths? “Open wide David, here’s the dragon coming in for a landing! Nyoooom!”
And now the world has soured upon my beloved child, my life’s masterwork. Or worse, they’ve sided with me against Benioff and Weiss and crowned me their savior, waiting eagerly for my final two books to redeem the story and reclaim the narrative from that $90 million wank job Benioff and Weiss chafed out of HBO with their dry, flaky nerd hands. And the expectations mount. With every day the Winds of Winter stays in the Bad Room and is not delivered to my editor’s desk, the expectations creep and the walls of this prison rise slightly higher.
My beloved wife pours me my morning Wheaties and I stab at them with a letter opener, pretending they are the treacherous politicians of King’s Landing and hurling witty barbs at them as they succumb to my noble blade. She smiles at my morning ritual, happy to see that I have not entirely lost my love of murder and betrayal. But when the last Wheatie is defeated in this morning trial by combat, our smiles fade. We both feel the weight of the boulder I must now push up this hill of my own making.
I take a deep breath and step over the threshold of the Bad Room.
Three hours later, I have about 450 words written and a respectable 16 wins and nine losses on Chess.com. It’s been a good day.
pete n' tony's internet adventure 