Snowflake Method - Marlena's POV

As I stated in an earlier post, I'm in the process of telling the story from each character's POV - at least for the major and important characters. Marlena is the most important character apparently, since her POV is the longest of the three major characters. Enjoy!

Marlena Kevan – POV

I received the summons from Von Schutzel as I was hanging about in the corner of the library of the author we rescued from Millicent Marianna Freedman – aka Millie – a few months back. Man, I really like her writing style! The summons was simply that a serious situation was in the making, one that required my unique talents.

Once I arrived back at the Asylum for Miscreant Characters, Von Schutzel and Agent Averdue of the Character Stabilization Unit informed me that Malcolm Price appeared to be planning a similar feat to Millie’s – changing bodies with his creator, author Nick Aceret. They need my ability to change gender in order to throw Malcolm enough off-kilter to bring him back to the page to finish his story, and, if necessary to face his fate at the Asylum.

Von Schutzel knew that Nick had created me, but he was not aware of the circumstances of our parting, nor of the history between Malcolm and me. Agent Averdue had reviewed Nick’s previous work, but didn’t see things quite the same as I did – having lived them and all.

Being the compliant character that I am – which annoys me to no end at times like these, but then again I don’t want to end up in the Asylum myself – I agreed to the assignment with a strong sense of foreboding. You see, I wasn’t just a bit character in Nick’s storyline. I was an integral part of it, closely involved with Malcolm, first as his victim, then as his lover and accomplice. Malcolm and I made a good team, but for some reason Nick decided I didn’t fit anymore, so my character went into the river at the end of book three of the series, and I came to work for the Character Stabilization Unit at the Asylum for Miscreant Characters.

Anyway, back to the situation at hand. After reviewing the information Agent Averdue had collected, I could see very well that Malcolm was not only planning to move into Nick’s body, but also to trade places with Nick, so that Nick would be the one killed off in the book – in Malcolm’s body of course.

You see, when a character is killed off easily – gunshot or other quick method of causing death – the essence of that character simply moves out of the body and waits to be reassigned to a new story with another name and a few cosmetic changes. But when a character goes through multiple and massive trauma such as Nick is putting Malcolm through, usually the character’s essence is reduced to a quivering glob of sludge only good to feed the creative ether with. So Malcolm’s plan was to make Nick’s essence into compost (and vice versa, although Nick probably doesn’t realize what happens to characters when they are written out of existence in a storyline – most authors don’t).

So, my assignment was to stop Malcolm and save Nick. My head knew that, in general, characters have to fall in line with what their creators, the authors, planned for them to do in a storyline. Everyone has their place, but that is not to say there was no potential for growth – that depended on the character/author interaction – but in any given storyline, the author decided the level of growth, not the character. Malcolm was planning to use his place in the storyline to his own ends, though – by switching places with Nick and, in essence, committing murder. Even in the character realm, murder is considered a capital crime when committed outside the bounds of a storyline – and to have the audacity to even attempt to kill your creator – what that’s just unheard of! At least it had been until now. But it’s wrong, and my head knows it’s very wrong!

But my heart thinks in personal particulars, and my particulars in this case were that Malcolm and I had a good thing going. We made a good team when all was said and done – and for whatever reason Nick decided I no longer fit the storyline and dumped me in the river at the end of book three. So, my heart was rooting for Malcolm (even though it too knew that was he was planning was wrong, very, very wrong). About Nick – ambivalence tinged with hurt – he created me (and I’m very thankful for that, of course), put me in plenty of situations where I grew into a multidimensional character (thankful for that too) – then he wrote me off the page. Ouch! I didn’t even see that coming! Most authors at least have the decency to use foreshadowing to warn their characters who are about to get the axe – but not Nick – at least not for me! He even treated Millie with more than that, and she was a bit character who lasted maybe three scenes in book two. Sheesh!

Of course, by the time I’d worked through my qualms about the case, it was nearly too late. Malcolm had changed bodies with Nick and was writing the rest of the storyline. At least he was smart enough to know that the flow had to match, so he had to go back and review Nick’s previous work to match his ending with the already-in-progress story. That gave Nick the time he needed to make his way out of the scene and into the sewer before Malcolm sent Riley Brown – the detective created to stop Malcolm in the series - looking for the body. And, at least Nick was smart enough to know that Riley, based on a two-dimensional model, would look at the obvious escape routes first – especially considering the fall Nick’s new body had just endured – so Nick had time to move towards the (further away river) instead of the (closer river). Which is where I caught up with him – in the sewer system heading towards the (further away river).

To say Nick was surprised to see me was a bit of an understatement. But, to his credit, he recovered quickly. He was a bit arrogant and annoying, not wanting to believe we could do what we said we were going to do – a bit ungrateful when someone you wrote off the page comes to your rescue there, dear! That is until we actually engineered the switch.

When Malcolm re-entered his own body, he thought he could send Riley off balance with a bit of cajoling about Sherlock Holmes killing off his Moriarity – wasn’t done in that series, you know. He was a bit shocked to realize I was impersonating Riley and I had a gun trained square on his head. As he lunged at me, I fired and down he went. Dead.