Their Dreams Write our Lives
By John Miller
Approx Word Length: 9,616

The Storytellers were a fable told to me by my Scandinavian grandmother, a myth to frighten young children, similar to the boogeyman, part of a world that had been left behind in the Old Country, a world that spoke to me through stories Gran-ma-maw told me as a child. If I wasn’t good, the Storytellers would write bad things into my life, perhaps even monsters. They were popular in the age when peasants thought writing was magic and attributed godlike powers to scholars.

“Do you hear them, Davie?” she asked when I was ten. “The Storytellers are writing our lives.”

“I don’t hear anything, Granmamaw,” I said as we walked to the store.

“That’s because you listen with your ears,” she explained, “Instead of here—“

She tapped her withered finger to my chest, and I knew she meant I hadn’t listened with my heart—a magical technique taught in Trolldom (Scandinavian magic). “There are vast unexplored worlds of imagination out there, Davie, worlds as real as our own. Scientists claim these worlds are nothing more than dreams and imagination, but they are wrong.”

I remembered her words as I pulled my car to a stop in front of a portside warehouse and got out. The reverie bled from my mind as I surveyed the warehouse supposed to be abandoned. I saw ten cars parked within the fenced area around it. I’d checked with the City of Peoria’s Chamber of Commerce earlier that day and discovered they hadn’t records of anyone using it for years, but my informant had told me the mysterious and powerful organization known as the Storytellers would be there. The grounds around the warehouse were fenced, and I saw stacks of pallets and old forklifts.

My cell phone vibrated in my pocket and I almost shouted. I slinked behind stacks of wooden pallets to turn it off, but when caller ID showed my editor, I answered it. It had to be important for him to call so late.

“What have you learned, Davie boy?” he demanded.

“Nothing yet,” I whispered.

“Can’t hear you, Davie boy! Speak up!”

“Nothing yet,” I said louder. “My contact informed me the Storytellers have rented an abandoned warehouse alongside the Illinois River. I just got here.”

“Just get the story,” he said. “The competition is working on a conspiracy theory, and we need to compete. Dig up everything you can about these so-called Storytellers.”

My boss had inherited the Philadelphia newspaper Friendly Philly from his family, and he had grown up in the business. He wasn’t given to fancy ideas or change, and he had been reluctant to pay my airfare and hotel stay to investigate the Storytellers—no matter how credible my informant had been.

Two weeks earlier I sat in an office in the employee lounge at work with my fellow colleagues as our boss, Spencer Williams III, screamed because of decreased sales. A family owned business, the Friendly Philly delved into political satire and syndicated columns as well as major headlines, and our boss worried he would lose what his father and grandfather had trusted into his hands upon their deaths.

“We need a big story to boost sales,” he told us. “So big it rocks the foundations of the media. We have to go by the books on this one with no exaggerations.”

A week later I researched Storytellers on the internet. I didn’t do it because of my job; I did it because of Granmamaw. It was Granmamaw’s birthday, and she’d been dead five years. At such times I thought of her… and the Storytellers. That’s why I Googled “Storytellers” and found myself in a chat room called Supernatural at Yahoo Instant Messenger.

While in the chat room I met Simon Harms who used the username Record Mongol. He admitted the Storytellers were real and told me about a secrete meeting and how he planned to investigate.

“What are the Storytellers?” I typed.

“They are a group of people who believe in the power of an ancient mythical concept called Story, and they believe it has great affect over the lives and destinies of others. Of paramount importance are those who believe in them: important politicians, world leaders, and clergy—those who come from old and powerful families which have had ties with this secretive organization for generations. The Storytellers have embedded themselves into these upper-crust families, and the families do whatever is asked of them. This is the true power of the Storytellers—they rule through the world’s elite.”

“Why have you told me this?” I typed.

“For my safety,” he typed back. “They want to recruit me, but they demand I show up alone in Peoria, Illinois. I want at least one person to know who I am and my location.”

That sounded suspicious, but I didn’t question him. I became excited to hear someone—anyone—who could tell me about the mysterious Storytellers.

“I don’t know why you would trust me, a total stranger,” I responded. I couldn’t help my suspicion. “But an article about the Storytellers might make my boss happy. What if I went with you?”

“I would be glad for the company,” he typed back.

He gave me his phone number, and I called him. We discussed our itinerary and scheduled possible times we could meet, and I explained I would have to have my boss’ approval since I had no vacation time left. This would have to be work-related, I told him, for me to go.

The next day I spoke with my boss, explained the situation. He was hesitant to believe me.

“You expect me to send you on a plane to investigate some clandestine meeting because of a conversation with some guy in a chat room?” he asked. “Who is this guy, anyway?”

“Simon Harms,” I replied. “CEO of Trident Records.”

That was all it took to convince him to send me. Trident Records surpassed Columbia Records in sales, an empire that controlled half the overseas market flowing out of the States. If an entertainer wished to sell to the Asian Market, half the time they went through Trident Records. What caused my boss to budge was the fact that Simon Harms owned several smaller businesses, one of which was The Philadelphia Examiner, our competition.

Simon canceled at the last possible minute, after my airfare and hotel reservations had been arranged. He didn’t give a reason.

Now, almost two weeks later, I stood beside a stack of wooden pallets with my cell phone pressed against my ear. I was there based on the assumption that the Storytellers were an ancient organization accredited godlike powers. They had close ties with some of the oldest monarchal families in Europe, and when they sent word they swayed the minds of the most powerful world leaders—they were an advisory counsel hidden behind the scenes, the perfect story my boss needed.

“Do you think it’s dangerous for you?” Spencer asked as an afterthought. My cell phone slid in my sweaty hand. “You remembered the revolver I gave you, I hope?”

“Yes, I have it,” I said. “It’s in my waistband.” I felt the .45 magnum and shuddered—I hated guns since an accidental death of a childhood friend, but I wasn’t about to die over my trepidation of guns. “Somebody’s going to hear me if I keep talking because I’m here now, outside the warehouse where the scheduled meeting is supposed to take place. I don’t want to have to use the gun, sir.”

“Say no more, Davie boy,” the editor interrupted. “Attach the story to an email and send it to me by tomorrow afternoon. I want it slanted toward conspiracy. Got it?”

“Yes, sir!”

“Our competition, The Philadelphia Examiner, can’t print a huge story without competition from us,” he muttered. I heard telephones ring on the other line, and I wondered if he was still in his office at that time of night. “Got to go, Davie Boy. Be careful!”

I shut my phone off and walked in shadows. Twenty feet later I made it to the warehouse. I saw a single door and three rollup doors, all locked. I tried to be as quiet as possible, but this wasn’t my forte. I kicked something in the dark, and a soda can skidded across the pavement. I froze. When no one responded, I continued to search for a way inside.

A fire escape on the back of the building presented itself, and I moved a stack of wooden pallets beneath it with a pallet-jack. I climbed up the wooden pallets which shook, and I steadied myself at the top and reached for the bottom rung of the fire escape ladder. It slid down and struck the topmost wooden pallet I stood on, which was good, because it helped steady the stack of pallets.

I climbed up the fire escape to a metal balcony which led to a door. I slid a credit card between the door and the door jam, and I thought I’d gotten it stuck when the door opened much to my relief. I put the card in my pocket and stepped into dim blue light.

“The Storytellers aren’t human,” Granmamaw told me when I was sixteen. “They’re similar to the Three Sisters of Fate who weave the destinies of humankind with their looms.” From my Mythology class I remembered the threads woven by the Three Sisters dictated life and death of mortals and gods alike, and both feared the Three Sisters. “Some say the Three Sisters were Storytellers, and the myth of the Three Sisters of Fate resulted from people’s misunderstanding.”

I stood in a storage room. An open door led to a walkway suspended above the warehouse. I saw a closed office at the end of the walkway at the top of stairs. I crept to the storage room’s wall next to the door, pressed my back against it, and listened. I couldn’t believe I relied on Granmamaw’s Trolldom magic, but I was scared.

“When you use Trolldom magic to listen,” she taught, “You have to feel yourself become one with your environment. You must become one with the ground beneath your feet. You must feel it. You can visualize the ground, but that is not enough; you must feel the ground as if it is a part of you—feel through it.

“Next, stretch this feeling out into the immediate area. Listen to your heartbeat within the ground. Hear your breath within the trees and sky. Taste the earth itself.”

I practiced this as a child, and I believed it then. I hadn’t tried the technique for over a decade, and I’m not even sure it worked or had been part of my youthful imagination. I used it now because of fear. I didn’t want to get caught. If the listening technique my grandma taught me worked, maybe I could perceive the most opportune moment to go around the corner. After all, I had believed in it once. It’s funny the things once abandoned as childish are the things we cling to in times of stress or danger.

I closed my eyes. My heart beat fast, and I heard the pulse in my ears and my deep breaths. I felt enormous pressure within the soles of my feet as if I’d jumped and landed hard, and the pressure intensified. I became one with the floor I stood on, and I felt stacked boxes and chairs pressing onto me—I was the floor. A red image composed of sound, sight and physical impressions—as crazy as that sounded—swept into my mind. Although the wall blocked my view of the metal walkway, in my mind a red image of the balcony appeared, as if drawn by an artist in crimson ink. The balcony grew, elongated in my mind’s eye, until it formed a perfect sketch. I let my awareness spread out until it encompassed the entire warehouse, red outlines beyond the wall at my back.

Granmamaw’s listening technique had never worked so well before!

I sensed—or thought I sensed—twenty people below. No one lurked in the empty office. The walkway led over the warehouse where the twenty people stood in a circle. Some strange object rested in the middle of the circle, but I couldn’t decipher what it was—the image I perceived made no sense.

I opened my eyes and the red images of the area disappeared as if by an invisible eraser, and reality sunk back into my perceptions. I risked a glance around the corner, and I didn’t see anyone. I slipped around the corner and held my breath as I went to the balcony’s railing.

I gasped and widened my eyes. An involuntary shudder weakened my legs, and I supported myself on the railing with trembling hands. Twenty people stood below just as I’d perceived through Granmamaw’s listening technique, but it wasn’t the people that unnerved me.

A giant blue replica of Earth hovered in the center of the group, suspended by a means I couldn’t decipher. The sphere was twenty feet in diameter and perfect in every detail. I saw clouds on the miniature planet, and I felt as if I stood on the moon itself and looked down at Earth, so lifelike was the replica. Wind swept from the planet facsimile and my hair wafted in the breeze, my clothes fluttered.

“It’s tough to assimilate, isn’t it?”

I yelped and turned back to the storage room I’d exited. Simon Harms, my informant, stepped from the shadows into the pale light onto the metal walkway. He made no attempt to be quiet, and his footsteps echoed. I saw some of the mysterious people below glance up and smile. Some waved.

“Simon?” I gasped. “Why are you here?”

“The same reason you’re here,” he told me. “We’ve both come to find the Storytellers. The difference between you and me is simple: I’m a member and you are not.”

“You’re a… Storyteller?” I stammered. “But-but this makes no sense.”

His rich laughter echoed, and he waved to those below. I wondered if I would be alive tomorrow.

*

“Carl Jung had it right when he spoke of the Collective Unconsciousness, but even he didn’t see its full implications.” Simon gestured at the orb and said, “This is the Collective Unconsciousness; this is Destiny’s Price.”

I stood speechless while he spoke, our bodies tinted blue in the sphere’s glow.

“With Destiny’s Price, the Storytellers control destiny through story,” he said. “It is through story we rule the world.”

“Through story?” I croaked finding my voice. “What do you mean?”

The globe lit the warehouse with its own luminosity. We walked in its glow. Simon’s footfalls echoed in the warehouse. The other Storytellers took a break.

“Everybody has a story,” Simon told me, “You, me, and everybody in the world. Some stories are beautiful and some ugly. Each religion, government and tract of land has a story.

“Likewise, each culture has their storytellers. Some write articles like you do for newspapers. Some write books. Others write speeches and screenplays. A select few write Scripture and affect people for generations to come.

“Regardless of what role they play, they are the storytellers of the world: judges and lawyers; editors and journalists; preachers and gurus whose words—whether written or spoken—create reality within the minds and social customs of those whom have placed trust in them.”

“That’s what you are,” I said. We continued to pace the globe as it bathed us in its bluish light. “You’re a Storyteller. You belong to this ancient sect and influence powerful families.”

“I am so much more than that,” he said with a chuckle. “What I just described are the storytellers of your world. I need you to think about your own storytellers so you can understand what we are.”

I looked at the globe and shuddered. It floated in midair. It was dark enough that I couldn’t see wires, but I began to believe there weren’t any. Simon let me reach out and brush my hand along the edge of the globe. White clouds swirled around my hand, and a sudden blast of wind shook the building outside.

I removed my hand and stepped back. My heart thundered in my chest because I realized what had just happened, and it went against my logical worldview.

“What the hell?” I tried to control my voice’s volume. “I created that wind, didn’t I?”

Simon placed his hand upon my shoulder and said, “That’s what you can do, my friend.” He gestured at the twenty people who returned from their break. “Just think about what they can do.”

They formed a circle around the globe again. I saw people from different nationalities: Japanese; Spanish; Russian; Native American Indian; German and others. They didn’t hold hands or chant as I would have expected a secret cult to do. Instead they stood and stared… then closed their eyes.

I wouldn’t have thought their closed eyes would be enough to frighten me, but they were. I knew they wielded great power. I alone had created an instantaneous windstorm when my hand had passed through the globe’s clouds. What could they do together?

Simon led me near the steps that led to the walkway. I watched as the globe—Destiny’s Price, as Simon called it—shimmered brighter with blue light. The people stood beneath it, aglow with its power, and as their faces creased in concentration, Destiny’s Price glowed even brighter.

“What are they doing?” I whispered.

“What we’ve done for centuries,” Simon said. “What we always do. We write stories just like the storytellers that already affect your life. But Destiny’s Price gives us… advantages.”

“Like what?” I whispered.

A holy hush descended like the silence before a hymn sung in church. The Storytellers were the choir members, and we listened to their magic. Some great event was happening, and I realized a part of history hovered before me. The Storytellers my granmamaw told me about were real, and that knowledge coursed through my journalist’s veins like molten metal. I had the conspiracy theory Spencer demanded, but I also had the blockbuster story of the Century!

“Do you want to know how it works?” he asked.

I nodded.

“It’s easier to show you,” he said. “Step closer.”

“But I—”

I approached as the globe glowed brighter. It hummed and the pavement beneath my feet shook. I felt my chest vibrate. The globe’s white clouds swirled and wind beat against the warehouse outside. Wind gusted from the globe and blew everybody’s hair and clothes. Dust swirled up, and two small dust devils appeared in the warehouse. The wind increased as did the vibrations, until I stepped outside myself. Or, more accurate, an invisible force I had no power to resist moved into me.

My life opened within my mind like an electronic web page uploaded: all the details and nuances; each chapter of my life; every single event and scene; all my actions and words and thoughts opened like a book. And it didn’t just open, it fed into my mind like radio feed as I received the transmission signal. In an instant, the story of my life flooded my mind.

“My God!” I wept. “Make it stop!”

I saw how uneventful my life was, but more so I saw what a bore I was, how misguided and naïve. I saw multiple relationships in which I, the ultimate nice guy, suffered betrayal again and again, the lonesome loser. I had few friends because I traveled too much like my father before me. My present job had taken me from the East Coast to Philadelphia, the third time I’d moved in as many years.

I moved around, I realized—as my life’s story flowed into my mind—to insulate myself against life itself. Life and love couldn’t hurt if I toured the country and never settled down to sink roots. But the story of my life didn’t stop with my past up to my present; my future opened before me like the images gleaned by a psychic’s crystal ball. The concise images disturbed me.

I fell upon troubled times—or I would in ten years. I married, had a child, and the woman was the same exact type of woman I always dated. I never chased women; a certain type of woman always came after me. My future-wife had a hard heart to insulate against emotion, and she became selfish to an extreme. I worked fifty to sixty hours per week, came home to clean the house, and took care of our daughter, Emily. I got up at night, exhausted, and fed Emily her bottle and sang her to sleep. The long workdays and lack of sleep blurred into depression and health problems.

While married, I was still alone in the world—such a wonderful future. A heart attack gave me an early death and I never saw Emily graduate from high school.

“What do you see?” Simon asked in a gentle voice.

I couldn’t answer because what I saw horrified me. I didn’t want to see those images of brutal truth, and I realized I blocked so much from my mind for the sake of false security. The slices of my past that didn’t set well with me I ignored, like an alcoholic who denied he had a problem. I denied my mundane existence, denied my uselessness in the world, and in the future I would let a selfish woman rule and dominate me into an early grave.

I cried. I cried at the useless life I lived, and I cried harder at my useless future. Anger boiled inside, but it wasn’t directed at the Storytellers nor at Simon; I was angry with myself for the future façade of marriage to an emotionless woman.

“What is it?” Simon asked again.

I felt my story recede from my mind. It felt like a drug wore off, as if I came to after surgery. I shook my head and wiped tears from my cheeks and eyes.

“I didn’t need to see that,” I told Simon. “Just because now I know I’m useless doesn’t mean I have the power to change who I am.”

“The power of story is all you need to change who you are,” he disagreed. “Story has always changed people’s lives. The story of Scripture, the words of a politician or President, these are all words and ideas expressed. Would you deny such stories have changed the lives of people for centuries?”

“No, but I—“

“Your life is… what?” he asked.

“Useless,” I replied, “And without life. And it will continue to mean zilch in the future.”

“But just because your life is meaningless doesn’t mean you can’t change your story,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

Simon was bald, and blue light reflected off his Cuban features. His handsome face showed compassion, but intensity burned within his eyes.

“I was like you years ago,” he said. “I’d come from Cuba on a boat. I joined a gang in Florida, got busted, and went to jail.” He looked into my eyes and added, “I was useless.”

I averted my eyes and watched the people, the Storytellers, around the globe while Simon spoke. His words comforted me.

“Then someone asked me to attend a meeting for Cuban refugees,” he said. “The rented high school gymnasium was a façade for the Storytellers. I went and found Destiny’s Price. Storytellers stood around it, and they let me read the story of my life like you just read yours.

“I saw how useless my life had been up to that point. I had stolen from others, had sold drugs. I was worse than useless; I was a criminal.”

“Then what?”

He smiled and pointed at Destiny’s Price. I looked at him as he watched the globe. He stood taller than me with chiseled cheekbones, an angular face and muscular body. I saw gang tattoos on his knuckles and hand. A black tear tattooed next to his eye made me picture him as a gang member in his youth.

“Then Destiny’s Price chose me,” he said. “Destiny intervened. Just like destiny intervened in your life. You’re here for a reason, same as me so long ago.”

“You mean I’m chosen?” I asked amazed. “But why?”

I couldn’t understand why anyone would choose me. Why would someone useless like me be chosen for anything other than articles about parades, obituaries and occasional headlines?

“Consider it like winning the lottery,” Simon said. “We didn’t pick you; Destiny’s Price picked you. It told us who you were and where you lived, and we arranged the elemental threads of your destiny so we would meet, and here you are. Today’s your lucky day.”

*

I worked with Destiny’s Price an hour later. The Storytellers left me alone with the globe, except for Simon who assisted me.

“Before you can change the world as a Storyteller,” he said, “You must first change your own life to become secure in your finances. And if you mess up, you’ll be messing up your own life instead of the lives of others. Consider changing the story of your life practice. When you’re successful, you can work with others to write the World-Story.”

“Thanks for your vote of confidence,” I said.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “Destiny’s Price chose you. There’s a reason you were chosen, and it wasn’t so you could use the power of story to destroy your life or the lives of others.”

“Still… I’m not sure about this, Simon,” I hesitated. “Isn’t this the domain of God? When you affect the world like this—”

“How do you know God doesn’t use Destiny’s Price?” he asked. “How do you know God doesn’t work through the people who control Destiny’s Price?”

He had a point.

“You were chosen for a reason, Davie,” he said. “You must find out why.”

I looked at the globe, let my mind wander, and closed my eyes. A wind shifted through me, but I concentrated until I felt my brow furrow with effort. I made a connection with Destiny’s Price. My life flashed within my mind again, the story of my life. Each fragment of sentence in the story was a scene in my life, and I knew with little effort I could reach out and rearrange those fragments. I could edit my life like an editor rips into a manuscript to change it.

It was easy to do once I let my imagination work. I changed the story of my life so that I didn’t move around so much, and I wrote or willed myself employed at the newspaper years before I actually was hired. I wrote a good working relationship between Spencer and myself, and he trusted me. I also wrote into his life the desire to sell his family owned newspaper which was already in financial trouble. I wrote a scene in which he sold his business to me, and he retired to Florida content to live off the last of his family’s inheritance. I made sure he lived happy and content with many friends and loved ones in Florida.

I opened my eyes. I felt the connection snap between Destiny’s Price and myself, and a physical sensation hummed into my body as the globe’s blue light faded.

I stepped back and a rush of memories gushed into my brain. I staggered and felt someone steady my arm. Memories of events that had never happened crushed my existence as a journalist, and I remembered—vivid and strong memories—that I bought the Friendly Philly from my boss years ago. This memory was powerful and strong, and the event wasn’t illusion, it was bedrock reality.

“Are you okay?” Simon asked steadying me, his hand upon my arm.

I nodded and took out my wallet. I opened it because I remembered my business cards were tucked inside next to one-hundred dollar bills. I pulled a card out and read it:

The Friendly Philly
Reporting tomorrow’s news today!
Editor: Davie Miller

My hand trembled and I dropped the business card. It fluttered to the floor.

“Will you be okay?” Simon asked.

“It’s… just amazing!”

“It’s tough to assimilate, isn’t it?” he asked.

I remembered when he first asked me that question an hour earlier on the walkway above us. I had just found Destiny’s Price—or had she discovered me?—and I wondered if he would ask me the same question again in the future. If he did, would the question follow more life-changing revelations?

It was definitely tough to assimilate.

*

In the days that followed I overhauled my life: past, present and future. I lacked self-esteem, so I wrote that out of my life. I found a thread of low self-esteem that flowed into me from my own father, and from his father before him, and I removed the entire thread.

I became self-confident.

I also changed the way I looked. Simon had done the same thing, he’d told me. After I considered his handsome features in contrast with old photos he showed me, I felt I decided I should change me looks, too. I never knew how an ordinary and mundane appearance held me back. I became handsome after I wrote it into my story, and I began to notice looks from people. The looks were obvious from pretty women (who never would have noticed me before) as I took a break and sat at lunch with Simon.

“Do you think beautiful people have it easier in life?” I asked as a pretty waitress at the diner eyed me.

He laughed and said, “Do I even have to answer that one?”

The waitress blushed, but she let her hand graze mine as she took the menus. I watched her walk away, the way she put emphasis in the sway of her hips, and I saw the backward glance just as she disappeared into the kitchen to see if I noticed.

I thought of two people interviewed with basic backgrounds. What if one person was beautiful and the other looked like me—or looked like how I once looked before I wrote it out of my story?

“Life is about beauty,” Simon said when our waitress brought our lunch. “But not everyone is born beautiful. Some work their way into beauty, become beautiful in character or through work and art, while others born with physical beauty have lives that mirror ugliness.” He cut into his steak with greed. “The question is what will you do with your beauty, Davie? What will you do with the Story that rewrites your life?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

I looked at my steak and eggs. I wasn’t hungry anymore. I felt the waitress’ eyes bore into my back, and I shifted uncomfortable in my seat at the booth.

“Destiny’s Price chose me for a reason,” I said with a shrug. “I guess I have to find out why.”

Simon grinned through a mouthful of meat. He jabbed his fork at me while he spoke.

“You’ve got that right, Davie!”

*

The next morning I woke up at my house in Philadelphia. I rolled out of bed and wondered how I’d gotten there. I made myself coffee and went outside to get the newspaper. Along the way I glanced at the clock and saw it was nine o’clock, a full two hours past the time I once had to be at work. It felt nice to be in control of my life and finances.

Outside I picked up the copy of The Friendly Philly off the step, went inside, and sat before the white breakfast table. My house felt wrong, but I didn’t know why. This was my house, wasn’t it? Yes, I remembered it. I was a journalist and—

That’s when it hit me. It all came back to me as from a dream: Peoria and Destiny’s Price. I remembered the mansion in Philadelphia I had written into my story, but I wasn’t in it. I was in the house I lived in as a journalist before I’d changed the story of my life.

I glanced down at the paper and read the headlines: Clinton Hopeful! At the top I read the date. I flipped through it and saw an article I’d written about pet owners, and I felt my heart speed up. I’d written that article as a journalist but not as an editor and owner of the newspaper.

“What’s happened?” I gasped.

The editor of the newspaper had his own traditional column in the Classifieds of The Friendly Philly, and I read the name at the top: Spencer Williamson III. Somehow I had been knocked out of the story I’d written for myself using Destiny’s Price. I was no longer the editor, but had become the mundane journalist I’d been before. I ran to the bathroom mirror and found the handsome face with high cheekbones and dark hair was gone, replaced by a slightly rounded average face and brown hair. A cold sweat of dread crept up my spine and I shivered.

Had it all been a dream?

I sat back down at the kitchen table and read the article I’d written as a lowly journalist. Someone knocked at the front door. I stood so fast the chair fell behind me.

I opened the front door and saw Simon with a worried expression. He glanced around nervous as if someone spied upon him.

“Sorry I’m late,” he said as he stepped inside. “But we didn’t know what they did until it was too late.”

“What who did?” I asked as he rushed past me.

He glanced around as if to make sure no one was there to jump him. He even looked inside my closet.

“The others,” he answered satisfied the coast was clear. He shook his head. “Haven’t you ever wondered why there are wars in the world? What about disease and pestilence and famine?” I was too flabbergasted to speak. “We Storytellers write destiny for ourselves and others, right?”

I nodded and walked back to the kitchen. I righted the chair I’d knocked over, poured Simon a cup of coffee, and I handed it to him when he joined me. My hand didn’t tremble—I had become acclimated to the complicated insanity of rewritten stories. He took the coffee and sat across from me at the table.

“It’s all hit me so hard and so fast,” I admitted, “That I never had time to think about such things.”

“Well, you should have,” he said. “There’s evil out there, Davie. We’re the good guys. There’s another bunch of Storytellers, and they’re the bad guys.”

“Bad guys? How bad?”

“All wars, murders and atrocities are caused by them either directly or indirectly,” he said. “They’re the ones mundane people should be scared of. Besides natural catastrophes, they create supernatural monsters and demons.”

“Wait!” I said with my palm raised. “You can’t be serious!”

“It’s not just our job to try to improve the world through story, we must combat their evil power,” he continued. “They have their orb, and we have ours. They have their power, and we have our power. Our agenda is to create a utopian paradise, and we would, too, if it weren’t for them.”

“What is their goal?” I asked when I realized he was serious.

“The complete and total destruction of the entire human race.”

“That is messed up,” I exclaimed. His words shocked me so much I forgot my own predicament. “How can we stop them?”

“We’ve never been very good at stopping them,” he said. He looked embarrassed. “We tend to act more like firefighters than soldiers, and we put out whatever fires they start.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

He tossed a photo down on the table. It was Spencer Williamson III, my boss.

“Do you know who this is?” he asked.

“Yeah, it’s my boss,” I replied. “The editor of The Friendly Philly.”

Simon smiled but it looked sad. He slipped the photo back into his shirt pocket.

“He belongs to the Order of Chaos,” Simon said. “They’re the other Storytellers. While we use story to change the world’s destiny, they use a power altogether different.”

“And what is that?” I asked as a chill crept up my spine.

Simon remained silent for a second while he sipped his coffee. I noticed his hand trembled. The shadow of a cloud swept over my backyard, and I felt cold in the deeper darkness.

“They use nightmare,” he said. “They use the power of nightmare!”

*

We finished our coffee in silence. Simon looked flustered and I was scared. I was about to ask what Destiny’s Price was and where it came from, when three shadows swept past my kitchen window. Their forms billowed like dark cloaks, and they were shadow-forms with humanlike features. I knew what they were: the demons Simon had told me the Order of Chaos created.

“What is it?” Simon asked as we stood at the same time.

Something crashed in the living room, and part of my front door flew into the kitchen, smacked into the stove and fell. More shadow-demons blurred past the window, and a deep growl came from the next room. It was strong and deep and I felt my own chest vibrate from the intensity of the sound. Hackles rose on my neck and a chill crawled up my spine.

“Damned Order of Chaos wrote shadow-demons into existence!” Simon muttered.

The preposterous no longer stretched the limits of reality within my mind. I saw long clawed fingers reach around the doorframe of the kitchen, heard snickers of mockery, and a wraith of shadow stepped into the kitchen. It stood eight feet tall although it was slouched, and the back of its neck and head brushed the ceiling. Skeletal features grinned from the dark cowl, and if evil existed it shone within those eyes that burned with hatred. The spark of intelligence within those cruel eyes was what terrified me the most.

“What do we do now?” I whispered.

Before Simon could open his mouth, the shadow-demon rushed past him. Its trajectory took it past where Simon and I sat, and it slammed into the wall behind me. I saw a crimson splatter pattern on the white breakfast table, heard Simon groan, and I saw him bend sideways at the waist. He crumbled to the tiled floor. A small object flew over my head and smacked the table with a wet sound. It was purple and moist. I looked past the table and saw a hole in Simon’s side, and I realized the demon had ripped a kidney from his body.

“Simon!” I shouted.

I stood to run, but the demon placed its giant hand on my shoulder. I looked down and saw the length of its shadowy fingers touch my ribs, saw thick drops of blood drip down my arm, and felt cold graveyard-breath upon the back of my neck. The points of its claws pricked my flesh.

The shadow-demon forced me to sit.

Another shadow-demon floated into the kitchen. It kicked Simon’s body out of the way, looked around, then emitted a low wail and turned back to the doorway. Spenser entered the room with a grin.

“Hell of an assignment I gave you, isn’t it, Davie Boy?”

*

Spenser looked like JJ from Spiderman Movies, except he was thicker all around and looked meaner. My coworkers and I called him JJ behind his back. He sat across from me in the same seat Simon had sat minutes earlier. On the table lay the purple kidney between us. It gleamed in the kitchen light. A musty scent filled the room and made me think of old coffins lined with mildew.

“Do you know what the difference is between the Order of Chaos and you Storytellers?” he asked in a gruff voice.

I glanced at the ugly shadow-demon behind Spenser and said, “Well, I think the Storytellers have you guys beat in the looks department.”

Spenser scowled and the shadow-demon growled. The demon floated in my direction, but my boss raised his hand to stop him.

“We can do this the hard way,” Spenser told me, “Or the easy way.”

“What’s the easy way?” I asked. “Not that I really want to know.”

When faced with stress, I always used humor and sarcasm to deal, but with my new self-confidence, quips flowed unabated. I realized while my old life and looks had come back, Spenser hadn’t changed my new self-confident demeanor. Maybe he didn’t know I’d changed who I was on the inside as well as the outside.

He glanced at the kidney on the breakfast table and smiled. I gulped and nodded when he looked back at me.

“We understand each other?” he asked.

I nodded again. I saw four or five shadows shuttle past the kitchen window the way they’d come, and I wondered where they went. What did demons do when they had free time? I shuddered and turned my attention back to my boss.

“As I was saying,” Spenser said, “The difference between my Order of Chaos and your Storytellers is not about beauty, but our goals are the same.”

I coughed. I looked at him to make sure he was serious—I knew I’d heard him right.

“We both want utopia for Earth,” Spenser explained. “The difference between us is how we intend to implement this utopia. The Storytellers want to use creation the way it is. The Order of Chaos believes there are fundamental flaws within creation, within the nature of the human race. We want to start all over from the beginning of creation with a clean slate, and if that means World War III to annihilate the entire human race… so be it.

“Each time the Storytellers come close to some utopian paradise someplace on this miserable planet, there is always some mishap. Do you know why?”

“Uh, creation is flawed?” I asked.

“Exactly!”

“You should also know that which makes a man important isn’t who he is,” he changed the subject.

I must have looked perplexed, because he laughed.

“What makes ordinary men become great are the events that occur and the situations they find themselves in,” Spenser said. “An ordinary man is just an ordinary man, but when he wins the lottery he becomes extraordinary. One man is born into wealth; another finds himself with a rifle in jungle combat; and still another finds he has a gift for science and there is a need for an atomic bomb: in all these situations it isn’t the man that makes himself great, but the needs of his environment. Most fail the test, but without the test and what happens to him, there would be no greatness.”

“What’s your point?” I asked.

He sighed and scratched the back of his neck. He nodded at the last two shadow-demons, and they floated from the kitchen. Seconds later I saw two shadows slide beneath the window.

We were alone.

“You’re an ordinary man and so am I,” he explained. “The difference between you and me is that I was born into a family that owned and operated a successful business. It’s not what I am that makes me great, but what happened to me—I was born into wealth. This authority also gave me power over people like you who work for me.

“I became even greater when the Order of Chaos approached me, invited me to join. Now it’s your turn. It must feel like you’ve won the lottery since the Storytellers have asked you to join them. Again, I reiterate: it’s not what a man does that makes him great, it’s what happens to him that makes him great.”

“No, I don’t believe that,” I told him. “Human character and inner resolve isn’t a factor in your theory.”

“We want you to turn your back on the Storytellers,” he implored. “We want you to join the Order of Chaos.”

I stood and walked toward the drawer next to the kitchen sink. Inside was the .45 magnum Spenser had given me the previous week. In all the rewrites and edits of my life, he couldn’t keep track of all the details, and I just remembered it was there.

“Don’t try to run,” he told me. “I can call back the shadow-demons with a mental command. I wrote that into the script, you might say.” I turned and saw him grin. “Also, I have .38 Special in my shoulder holster and—”

His jaw dropped when he saw the .45 magnum in my hand.

“You wouldn’t!” he said. He stood to his full height, a slow effect created by shock and fear. “I’ll call the demons back!”

“That tells me you haven’t done it yet,” I said. “By the way, Spenser: you weren’t that good of an editor.”

The bang of the magnum sounded like a cannon inside my little kitchen. As soon as I fired, the size of the kitchen changed, grew and enlarged, and it became the kitchen of my mansion. In the span of one gunshot, I went from a journalist to an editor of a major newspaper. The sudden onslaught of rewritten new memories didn’t shock me, and it surprised me when it felt natural.

Simon sat and shook his head to clear it. I smiled as I saw a shadow-demon disappear in thin air as it rushed at the kitchen window. I didn’t know what was happening, but I liked it.

“God, that hurt!” Simon said with his hand held to his side.

I helped him stand and we looked at his side. I saw a large splotch of blood soaked into his shirt, and I watched the crimson splotch shrink until gone. Spenser’s body burst into smokeless flame and burned away. The kidney on my breakfast table shriveled to raisin-size, and Simon carried it to the garbage with a napkin.

“Can’t get much on the Chinese Black Market for the kidney now,” I said. Simon chuckled. “Why is everything changing, Simon?”

The window to my left widened and showed an estate with a circular drive. The kitchen in my mansion was in the front of my house—the house of a successful editor. I saw a servant walk by, and she smiled as she passed. A Mercedes appeared in the circular drive.

“The Storytellers must have rewritten what your boss did,” Simon replied. “They rewrote the threads of your story, changed the plot and background to match the story you had created for yourself yesterday.”

“This confuses me,” I told him. “It’s hard to keep a grasp of reality when it doesn’t remain constant.”

“Such is the power of story,” he said as I followed him to the front door.

He opened the door and I saw darkness instead of sunshine. What should have been the front yard of my estate was an enclosed room, large and spacious. We stepped through and I shut the door behind us.

“Where are we?” I asked.

“Seattle,” Simon replied. The room had a hardwood floor and high ceiling, and Destiny’s Price hovered in the center. “We have to stay on the move or the Order of Chaos will find and kill us.”

“Will they rewrite Spenser back to life?” I asked Simon. We walked toward the people who surrounded Destiny’s Price. “Like the Storytellers did to you?”

“I don’t think so,” he said. “In order to join the Order of Chaos, prospective members must accomplish some dark deed. It is obvious that Spenser’s dark deed was to tempt you and get you to join his Order. Since he failed, I don’t think they’ll write him back into the story.”

“What about those shadow-demons loose in Philadelphia?” I asked. “I’m worried they might harm innocents and—”

“With Spenser gone, those creations of his are gone, too,” Simon interrupted. He waved and smiled at the new Storytellers. “Now we have to figure out what your mission is.”

“My mission?” I asked. “I survived Spenser’s temptation. Isn’t that enough?”

The Storytellers exchanged smiles with each other, and they excused themselves for a break when we approached. “Rearranging story threads and altering the destiny of the world takes a lot of concentration,” an Oriental woman said. “We need many breaks.” I watched them walk off and wondered where our exact location was. Yeah, I knew it was Seattle, but was it a house or an office building, another warehouse or a mansion?

The surreal story I had fallen into wouldn’t yield its grasp upon me, and neither would Destiny’s Price. I realized if I ran and didn’t look back, the Order of Chaos would get me. I thought about Storytellers who altered the destinies of world leaders, and I considered the Order of Chaos who impeded them with famines and wars and new diseases and super-flu viruses—whatever destroyed lives.

Why?

Where did Destiny’s Price come from? Who had created it? What was the name of the orb the Order of Chaos used to rewrite and warp reality? When I asked Simon he said nobody knew.

“Once you become a Storyteller, you have no time to research,” he said. “There is the constant need to keep your wealthy lifestyle through Destiny’s Price so that you have plenty of money to live, take care of whatever family you have, and work with other Storytellers. A Storyteller must be able to drop what he’s doing at a moment’s notice as inspiration hits, which is why we set ourselves up as owners of successful businesses and let others run them for us.

“We can’t just walk up to Destiny’s Price and operate it. She must call us, and when she does we feel inspired to create story. She leads our thousand-strong members by intuition and inspiration, and we never know who will show for the next meeting… or even where it will be held. We don’t control her; she controls us.”

“And nobody knows the origin of Destiny’s Price?” I marveled.

“Maybe that’s why you’re here,” he said. “Maybe Destiny’s Price inspires to give us the answers that have eluded us for centuries. Oh, we have our theories, but none are concrete. The most popular theory is that Destiny’s Price is the collective psychic phenomena Carl Jung called the Collective Unconsciousness, but it is obvious she is much more than that.”

Destiny’s Price pulsed with power. Conical blue light spilled over me, and my skin tingled.

“She’s calling you, my friend,” Simon said. “Heed her call.”

*

I didn’t know who I was anymore. Days earlier I hadn’t been sure of myself, but I had rewritten my character, and now I expressed myself with a self-confident demeanor. I didn’t know what reality was, either. Was the life I now lived reality? Or was the life I left behind the truth? Perhaps my life as a mundane journalist had been nothing but a story, too. Perhaps the original story had been rewritten long before I became a part of the story.

My mundane life had become fantastic, and the surreal was now reality. Bathed in the conical blue light from Destiny’s Price, I closed my eyes and surrendered with arms spread wide, palms up.

“Take me,” I said. “Teach me.”

Nothing happened. I stood for an hour with anticipation, but it was futile.

“Maybe you’re trying too hard,” Simon suggested. I heard his voice behind me in the distance. “Maybe you should just let it be, let things flow.”

“And maybe I’m not trying hard enough,” I said when I remembered Granmamaw’s listening technique.

I used Trolldom magic to listen to Destiny’s Price. I pushed my mind into the blue light that engulfed me. I felt my impressions flow into the tingling sensation that danced along my skin. A vibration came from nowhere yet everywhere; it’s as though the vibration had always existed, but I noticed it for the first time. The blue light intensified, and I felt it suck my mind and soul into it.

I flew for what felt an eternity, but I knew my mind traveled but a short distance from my body to the orb before me. After eternities wrapped in countless forever-dreams, I appeared inside Destiny’s Price, and that was when I saw her.

“You came,” she said. “I didn’t think you would.”

She was five feet tall, but she didn’t stand. Instead she floated in the middle of the blue sphere, and I hovered before her within Destiny’s Price. She was naked yet sexless with the features and shape of a beautiful woman, yet she had no nipples or body hair. Her amber hair contrasted in a most wondrous way against her light-blue skin. In her presence passion burned and roiled like some invisible force, and a vibration flowed from it that made my soul shudder with excitement.

It wasn’t sensual passion; it was the passion of inspiration. I felt like I had just completed the perfect news article for my newspaper, or had just written the next Lord of the Rings, a classic. I felt the power—her power—and I knew it was the power of Story: inspiration and creativity and excitement bled together into one fathomless and incomprehensible Story of the human tale.

“What are you?” I asked.

She smiled and said, “You sense what I am.” She touched my face with a tender caress as if we were lovers, and I guess we were for I’d felt her power many times in my life. “I was conceived when the first letters were formed, and I was born with the first written story. Each story and every word thereafter fed me power. I am connected to all the stories ever written, both books burned and the literature still with us. Everything written, emailed, each sent text message: all these things feed me.”

“What is your name?” I asked.

“Sophia,” she said. “I am the unified collection of human wisdom. I am story, but I am much more. Through me you create your gods, and through me your gods empower you. I exist outside the confines of physical reality, yet I create worlds for humanity through Story, and through my wisdom I make the world a better place through this physical manifestation I created for myself, what you call Destiny’s Price.”

“The Order of Chaos wants to destroy you,” I warned her.

She giggled.

“They worship me. I appear to them as I do to you and the Storytellers. I am two sides of the same coin. Watch!”

She grabbed my hand and pulled me into an embrace. The room disappeared, and the blue light we floated within turned black and murky. I looked out of Destiny’s Price—which I now knew was the globe—and I saw members of the Order of Chaos. They were people filled with evil and they had dark countenances. I saw Spenser among them—Simon had been wrong, for the Order had brought him back from the dead by rewriting his ending.

Sophia gestured and Spenser floated to us, passed through the orb, and he came inside Destiny’s Price. He glanced at me with narrowed eyes as we floated together. “Don’t be suspicious,” Sophia told him. “It is Ying and Yang. You are the darkness to Davie’s light, and you create the hell to counter his heaven. You bring chaos to topple his utopia.”

“Why?” he demanded in his gruff voice.

“For balance,” she replied.

Blue light flashed, and both Spenser and I flew from Sophia when he tried to strangle me. I felt another vibration, and I landed at Simon’s feet. The conical blue light faded, disappeared. I looked around and saw I wasn’t among the Order of Chaos, thank God—or I should say Sophia.

“What happened?” Simon asked as he helped me to my feet.

“I saw Spenser and he’s still alive,” I said. “And Sophia.”

“You saw her?” Simon asked amazed. “Not many Storytellers have seen her.”

“Spenser and I both did,” I said. “I have to write this down.”

He nodded and led me to a door. I found a kitchen on the other side where the rest of the Storytellers laughed and conversed. Sandwiches were on a counter, and they all held drinks. Simon led me up a flight of stairs beside the kitchen door. Down a corridor of doors, we stopped before a small room. Inside I saw bookshelves and a desk. On the desk was a computer.

Without a word I went and sat. I wrote what Sophia had told me. Then I wrote my own story—you’re almost done with it now. As a fellow Storyteller, I hope what you’ve read helps you in some fashion.

I know my story will make it into the hands of those who aren’t Storytellers (who do not have access to Destiny’s Price), but I think that is what Sophia wishes. You see, she wants us to know that we are all storytellers, and our lives are stories filled with chapters and sentences, and we write our stories through the things we do and say and think.

Is my story over?

As I finish this chapter of my life, I realize my Story is just beginning. It is in the process of being rewritten by my fellow Storytellers downstairs. Your life, too, has been rewritten many times. We are all Storytellers in our own right, editing and rewriting our future by the actions and choices made today.

Keep on writing.

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