Dreamcatcher

Chapter Three:

It Can Stop Any Day Now

Self indulging, narcissistic fucking asshat!

I couldn’t help but recycle the moment again and again in my head. He wasting my fucking time! But every publisher does. Unless your great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather’s body was used as the foundation for the cement of the building, you didn’t have a rat’s chance in hell to be offered a real chance. Not that modern day slavery they try to pawn off as a good ‘work experience’ job.

No one paid me any mind as I marched up to my apartment to be greeted by mail on the doormat. Two bills, an eviction warning, and junk advertisement. I unlocked the front door and just kicked in the paper onto the rest of them just inside.

What a beautiful thing life turned out to be. You get lied to when you’re younger. Told you can do anything, be anyone. But I guess they forgot to talk about the asterisk at the beginning of anything and anyone. One: You need to know someone, anyone. Genuine people never cut it in a world so obsessed with consumerism that tomorrow they might just eat themselves for that little hit of dopamine. Two: The ‘be anyone’ part was a joke. You don’t even get to decide who you are. No one cares about you.

I didn’t bother to turn on the lights before throwing myself onto my bed and pulling out my phone to scroll through social media. To see how successful my ‘friends’ became and how fast they dropped me as soon as I wasn’t needed anymore. That’s the only reason they really only messaged me. Check any of my dms. Questions about writing specific scenes, how to construct the character– only to scream at me that I didn’t know what I was talking about–, and cinematic composition. Then after hours of helping them, some would ask about me or what I’m doing. Some being one guy, but even I can tell he really could care less and is frankly annoyed hearing me speaking. All their lives I could doom scroll through on my feed.

I rolled onto my back and plopped the phone onto my stomach.

You know. I couldn’t help but wonder how many of them actually became friends with me because they liked me or they just liked the attention I gave to them. Doesn’t matter either way. The only way they’d remember is if my landlord found me in the closet then they might shed a tear after reading the obituary. Again. I doubt it. Not that they wouldn’t cry, but that they read obituaries. They have lives and I’m not worth wasting a second on. I think I got what Brass Ego was actually talking about.

I’ve wasted twenty-nine years of my life, almost thirty now, chasing the sun. So what do I do…? I guess I could always publish it online and just to see what happens. At that point, it was all I had. I picked up my phone again and went to one of those popular fan-fiction websites. There was nowhere else to go with it.

Sign up was easy enough and I was immediately brought to my profile’s home page with one big button screaming at me: New Story! I tapped it and copied all of the fiction completely over. After a few minutes it was saved so it could prompt me with a publish button then after that… it asked me to name it.

CyberPo|

I paused at the words. It felt awkward using that old title now. I failed to grab real interest in publishing houses with it. What good would it do on the general public?

I just deleted the old title and stared at the cursor until… the idea came.

A Drop of Golden Sun |

People would have to notice that.

I hope.

Pressed submit and went to sleep hoping I wouldn’t wake up.