The Eventides of Time and Space

Darryl Winkle was about sixty years of age, a little too fat and suffered the occasional migraine headache. He was part-time at several jobs, including short gigs acting, portraying a gorilla and every December, he put on a red suit and portrayed old Santa Claus.

He did not drink or smoke and tried hard at writing and acting but never seemed to get far. On this very day, though, Darryl Winkle would discover all the things right and wrong in his life that may have very little to do with him but a lot more to do with the Eventide of Life.

Daryll Winkle woke up in his small aging motorhome; he could barely remember the events of the night before, except it did not go very well. He looked at his computer screen for a moment and saw that three different productions had returned his email enquiries. One even went as far as to ask him to email them as soon as possible if they had something they thought was perfect for him.

Daryll stepped into his tiny shower, cleaned his body and exited the shower. He stood there staring at his droopy belly for a moment; he combed his hair and beard and searched for some cleaned clothes. He would skip breakfast and email these people immediately.

After a few minutes, he was online. After a search, he looked up the director's name and decided he was a bush league director trying to move up to the big time with a small budget. He decided this might be a perfect fit for him.

He was surprised at how quickly the studio office replied, and it seemed they wanted him in the city the next day. Should everything go well, he would start on set in three days, it was not a significant role, but his character would often be in the background of many scenes. This meant he might make real money and have a chance to move from a 1974 Dodge Motorhome to a mobile trailer.

He looked cautiously out his side window and decided the day seemed very nice for an early December morning. He thought he would journey to the local mall and maybe find a new shirt for this audition. As he stepped out of the van, the clear sky and sun were suddenly gone, and a heavy rainstorm was overhead. He stepped back into his motorhome to get his umbrella and went back outside a few minutes later to several inches of snow on the ground and his vehicle with snow and ice covering it.

Daryll went outside with an umbrella in his right hand, an overcoat, and a light spring jacket. He stared straight into the sky, "Make up your bloody mind already!"

The rest of the day was a mix of different weather fronts, and by the time he returned with a new shirt, some groceries, and a bottle of Caribbean Rum, he felt exhausted.

He sat down at his little table and went back online. He sent a message to a friend that replied that she was surprised that he said he poured himself a stiff drink. She said she had known him for many years but never had seen him drink. Yet, as Daryll looked around his motorhome, he saw signs that he must love hard liquor. He looked in his fridge and found half a baked spaghetti dish, but then found the oven had three empty liquor bottles in it and appeared not to have been used in years.

He decided to step outside his motorhome and move far from the old Dodge. He stared up at the sky and stood, not moving. Suddenly he found himself in his kitchen eating his pasta; he got up from the meal, went back outside the motorhome, and stood and began staring at the sky again.

What seemed like only a moment later, he was lying in his motorhome's bed, very dark and windy outside. He got up, put on his pants and jacket, went back outside, and stared once more at the sky.

Marie sat at her keyboard; she was perplexed at how the main character in her story seemed to be moving back to the same spot outside his trashy old motorhome without her writing a word. She kept rewriting the character into a different scenario, but he kept reappearing outside of the motorhome in her writings.

She took her laptop computer to a good friend who was a high school English teacher. She explained to him what was happening. At first, he seemed very skeptical. She booted up the laptop, but in her password and went to her story.

"Alright, let's try this." She said as he watched her fingers dance across the keyboard.

Daryll was standing outside the motorhome; three of his neighbours appeared as they approached, and they seemed not to quit being themselves. Daryll noticed at once they all appeared to be a strange shade of grey and moved awkwardly.

"Now, wait a moment," she said to her friend.

"I would not have believed it if I did not see it myself." Said the astounded English teacher.

Daryll ignored the approaching people, ignored Mrs. Petersons' left arm falling off, and returned to the same place. He stared straight up into the sky without moving.

Matt Zambro, a veteran teacher, sat at the laptop himself. He began typing something completely outrageous.

Daryll found himself standing at the edge of the RV Park wearing a red dress with a big floppy yellow hat on. He had no shoes and was holding a chicken under his right arm.

A moment later, Daryll removed the floppy hat and dropped the chicken; the chicken protested this treatment and moved away quickly. He moved back to the same spot and began staring once more. He moved past the three other residents in bare feet, wearing an ill-fitting dress. He could tell they were all slow-moving Zombies.

After a search online, the English teacher discovered they might be dealing with a strange occurrence that has been rumoured to occur to specific writers. The characters they create seem to rebel when too many changes occur, or their personality is somehow compromised.

Marie looked at the article, "I already rebooted the computer several times."

"This article suggests resetting the password as well; your runaway character might know your passwords used when he was first created." Said the English Teacher.

Marie thought about this moment and noted that her story had added another line. It seems her character was still standing, staring upward. She thought she would try changing the weather in the RV Park.

Daryll stood in his red dress, bare feet and wished he had kept the floppy hat as it started to rain heavily on him. He did not move or flinch; he remained standing in the same spot, staring upward.

Matt Zambro touched Marie's shoulder, "Reset your password,"

Marie decided it was time to rest her password and be done with this foolishness. She thought it might be a hacker, and this might at least stop this for the moment.

A moment later, she was entering in a new password which was longer and more complicated than the previous one. She pressed the "Return" key a moment later, and the old password was forever gone.

With her friend watching, she wrote a few passages into the story. This time Daryll crawled into bed and seemed to go fast asleep without protest and without wearing the bright, very wet red dress.

After further research into some of the darker stranger parts of the world wide web, the two concluded it must have been some hack, but resetting the password seemed to have fixed the problem. Marie thanked her old friend and promised to let her know if anything strange occurred.

The following morning Marie turned on her computer put in her password, and opened up her writing file.

The character Daryll sat back outside his motorhome on a lawn chair, sipping a cup of coffee. She read the impossible paragraph, and the character stood up as she finished. "Now Marie, I may call you Marie, right?"

She sat there in amazement; she typed quickly as she thought. She started to try to erase the new paragraph to no avail.

"Marie, we can do this all day; "Reset your password," the character waved his mug in the air. "Well, that was brilliant. It got me out of the wet red dress. Have you ever heard of William Shakespeare, Walden, maybe Mary Shelley?"

She paused for a moment, curious about where this was going.

"Well, Marie, they all had a little help from a character that was tired of being poorly written." He pointed at himself, "That is me," He spun around in a circle, "those other writers all had a little help from their characters."

She typed quickly, almost without thought, "What do you suggest?"

Daryll stood motionless for a moment, "Want to be a great writer, like that Agatha Christie woman? We work together."

A month later, Marie signed a book dealer with a major publisher; this prairie girl was soon on the New York Times' top fifty books. A year later, she finished a second novel called "Eventide of Life," which went to number three best-selling book in North America and number four in the United Kingdom.

Despite liking the musty old motorhome that was far too hot in the summer and far too cold in the winter, he missed it. Living in his private villa on a small yet cozy tropical island in the Caribbean had certain advantages. Marie had already started the third novel, "Reset your Password!" The two met Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Friday mornings. She would write him into the current story so he could discuss things with the novel's characters and assist Marie with the agreed-upon changes.

In the end, Marie and her advisor worked many happy years together in the Eventides of Time and Space.

Authors Notes

Any references to other authors or suggestions of characters coming to life are a creation of this author's mind.

This story may appear in other publications. Please feel free to comment or follow my writings.

Thank you Bruce.