Cassie as Writer

Late in the afternoon or perhaps in the early evening, things started to look up. Cassie found herself in a position of power for the first time since arriving at The Station. This horrid venue was the place where characters went when their authors were not working with them. It was sometimes considered a respite, but often was more of a prison.

The locals could peer through the Boss Viewer and watch their Boss working away. Some of them would laugh and point, others would sadly shake their heads. If they could see the Boss working, they were in The Station, and thus the story was not about them.

Like the Hotel California, people could come into the place, but leaving was only at the request of the Boss. It seems that many Bosses create characters and then never use them. They simply discard them and go on to other projects. These abandoned souls then come to The Station looking for some company and end up trapped in the world of Not Quite Useful.

Cassie was 5'5" tall and weighed 117 pounds. She had red hair and green eyes. She was athletic and quick witted. She was intelligent with just a touch of meanness, not enough to find her cruel, but just an edge to her. Her Boss would reuse the premise calling her by different variations of her name, Cassandra, Cassiopeia, or Cass. She wished to be working, but knew that the Boss was more inclined to write non-fiction and therefore she would be out of a job most of the time.

She tried to find some satisfaction in her idleness and came upon a plan. She would write a journal of the events as they occurred in The Station and see if with all the help of all her trapped friends, she could make something concrete to help them all.

Today she left the bar area and strode out into the town. There was a main street bathed in sunlight. It was free of the smoke and smell of the bar itself. The town was beautiful and she decided that this place would make a wonderful backdrop for her journal writing.

She felt as if she had a least a small purpose. Maybe no one in the other world would ever read about her. Maybe over there she was forever locked in the Boss's imagination. But here she was real. Here she was alive. Here she had her own thoughts, dreams, aspirations.

She looked out over Main St. and found a dry goods store. She mused that it was anachronistic for a 21st century woman and before her eyes is morphed into a Wal-Mart store. She strode up to the behemoth, entered, noticed that the greeter was one of the regulars from The Station, and went to the stationery department.

She left with a journal, some pencils, a few colored pens, and a smile in her heart. Not only did she now have a purpose, but there were no cash registers. This place wasn't really so bad, once you got used to it.