Cal the Barbarian

June and I went back to my apartment to scavenge all the copies of my manuscripts for anything salvageable. Those were her words and not my own. Because all of this was great stuff worth showing off, right?

From the various looks she was giving while skimming the pages, I started to question if letting someone else read my writing was a good idea at all.

“Is it really that bad?” my hands tensed up close to my lips. “Come on, there must be something good.”

“Um…” June flashed a smile, but it quickly sank to a frown. “Well, grammatically it looks fine, I guess… But the real issue is that I have no idea what’s going on, and there’s ‘a lot’ going on.”

She went into detail about how she couldn’t figure out who the main character was, nor could she identify a particular theme.

“Like, gold haired martial artists and space wizards riding mecha cat dragons across the multiverse? I’m pretty sure some of these characters are copyrighted too…”

“Well, I wanted to reference Kugo and Marth Ader… And Mecha memzila is pretty cool…”

“Yeah, you're not supposed to do that!” she waved the papers in my face. “Ugh… Plus the genre hopping isn’t helping at all.”

I argued with her that genre hopping was a huge deal right now. “All the coolest stories are doing it.”

“Crossing 60’s Crime drama with whatever Xianxai is, does not work!”

“Then how is Peter Dumbo going to achieve eternal life and solve crimes for the rest of eternity?” I countered. “He needs the ten wyvern orbs scattered across the multiverse so he can make that wish!”

Clearly she wasn’t cultured enough to see how important that was to the story. Taking all the coolest parts of modern day fiction and bringing it all together in a tossed salad of entertainment was obviously the best way to keep people coming back for more.

“Auri, you need to pick an audience.”

“I am,” I argued. “I’m trying to appeal to the widest demographic, like that studio that makes the video game with all those microtransactions.”

June shook her head and nearly fell out of her chair.

“No… No… The only one this is appealing to is you. Yes, maybe someone out there will appreciate this, but you definitely aren’t making it for others.”

She explained that in order to make a living off of writing, there were some important factors that needed to be considered, mainly that I needed to know who my target audience was and what exactly it was that they were looking for in a story.

“You know how to write, which I can see here,” she gestured to the stack of papers on my desk. “But you just need to rope in your idea’s and make something genuine. Also, stop violating copyright laws.”

Maybe she had a point. I did tend to write whatever I felt was cool in the moment. Most of those ideas I put down on paper came after I watched any number of inspiring pieces of media. And of course, now that she was bringing up the copyright stuff, it embarrassed me to think that I didn’t even consider that an issue.

“Do any of your other manuscripts have an original story to them?” she asked.

Everything I’d sent to the publishers or written in the last few years pretty much was founded on copyrighted stuff, so I pretty much had to scrap it all.

June was determined though to find something, continuing to dig through my desk until she found a big notebook titled Cal the Barbarian.

“Ooh, he’s cute…” she hummed, flipping it to the first page and seeing a handsome drawing of Cal himself I made. “Long ago, in a distant land named Calidum, there lived an impressive warrior who had been dubbed Cal the barbarian.”

I perked up at the mention of that name, leaping over from my bed and lurking over her shoulder.

“He was the greatest fighter in all the kingdom, and a kind soul who stood for justice. Fueled by his love for the beautiful princess Aur…”

“Nope!” I slammed the notebook shut and stole it from her hands.

“Hey?!” she shouted. “I was reading that!”

She couldn’t see the rest… She couldn’t know that the princess was an embarrassing self-insert character.

“This story sucks anyways…” I laughed, dropping it in the trash. “You don’t need to see it.”

“Uh, no it didn’t,” she argued. “That was the most genuine thing I’ve read all evening, and I looked over the Endy’s fast food menu pretty hard.” She pulled the book out of the trash and opened it back up to a random page. “Cal raised up his sword, the blade shimmered as the sunlight heroically reflected off of it. Blood of the fallen monster dripped down, baptising the weapon with newfound purpose.”

“None shall threaten my princesses kingdom!” I continued the story. “Not you, and not anyone else!”

I remembered every word in this notebook. It was burned so deeply into my head.

“When did you make this, Auri? This definitely is your own character.”

I started writing this story to cope with the bullies at school who always called me weird. Each of the villains and monsters in there were based on a different person who hated me for no reason other than how I was so different.

“Oh, you know. It’s just something I made to pass the time in middle school.”

She couldn’t know the truth. I was more than content with leaving that part of my history buried in the past along with the old me.

Cal used to be my hero. He was the embodiment of everything I wanted someone to be for me whenever things got rough. Sadly, the reality was that nobody ever came around and the old me died to the ridicule, probably for the better.

The more I looked at this work, the more I wanted to cry because I couldn’t have that piece of me back. I was weird in those days, and that’s even by my current standards, but it still felt wrong to have let go of a piece of me, even if not the perfect.

“Why not publish this?” June asked. “I think you hit a lot of good cords with it.”

“Nah, let’s just throw this one out.”

My heart skipped a beat as I suggested that. Letting go of this story was going to hurt like a stab wound right through my chest, but I couldn’t deny that my love for it was mudded with foul memories. The longer June skimmed over it, the more chance she had of discovering the isolated weirdo who put it together.

That weirdo I locked up didn’t have a single friend back then, and if she were released once more from the shackles of my mind, I would never again.

“Auri, are you serious?” June shook the notebook around in shock, desperately trying to keep it away from my grasp. “I mean, it’s kinda’ a cheesy mess, but it’s not a bad read.”

“No!” I raised my voice higher than I meant to. “Stop reading it. I need to just let it go.”

My eyes turned more serious than she’d ever seen. The pain ran so deep that showing any less aggression wouldn’t have painted that struggle properly.

June caved at the pressure and handed me the notebook.

“Fine. It’s your thing. But I think this is a big mistake.”

“Then it's my mistake to make and not yours.”

It was a mistake I was willing to leave in the past. I actually thought this book had already been thrown away, but it must have gotten hidden in my desk. Regardless, it was time to let go of my history and start fresh. That distance might have been what I needed to free myself from the old me that nobody wanted to be around.

_(-.-)_

The dumpster outside was hidden in the shadows of a patch of overcast covering up the sun. It smelled really bad today, so someone must have thrown something nasty out recently.

The notebook was pressed tightly against my chest, like I was holding a child in my arms. My purpose to throw it away was almost lost in the sea of uncertain thoughts, but I’d come here for a reason.

Of all the things I wanted to get rid of though, was this truly the best one? Every other story felt like I didn’t mind sending it off to be judged by someone, but this one was so special that I was afraid to let it go and subject it to ridicule. It needed to be hidden so my heart wouldn’t be crippled. And the best way to hide it was to toss it away.

“I’m sorry…” I cried, letting my tears drip all over the book. Not only was I about to abandon every last character I’d created in this novel, but I was effectively putting an end to the girl who made it too. The same girl who spent all her nights crying because she was alone, finding companionship with all the people she wrote about. Her tears rained over the pages and painted them dark, just like me now.

All that work she’d done, just so that the roaches in the trash would be its final reader.

“What am I doing?” I sobbed loudly, wiping my tears away. “If I get rid of this, I might as well give up on my dream.”

Was it even really possible to make that dream come true? There were so many other people clawing their way up the mountain of success, better equipped to handle the stressful cold and thinning air. What chance did I have if I choked up this close to a pile of trash on the ground?

No amount of trying was ever going to make up for a lack of talent. And if I didn’t wow people from the get go, I might as well have given up!

“I’m done!” I raised the notebook up, loosening my grip on its cover. “I can’t do it! I’m a failure!”

“No!” June shouted, out of breath as she rushed at me from the building. “Auri, don’t do it!”

She was too late. I let go and let the air carry the book over to its rightful resting place. It was then that I truly felt the weight of my mistake, because once it fell into the pile of slime, there wasn’t any recovering it.

“No!” I cried, leaping toward the dumpster to catch it. But I wasn't swift enough, and soon would join the pile of filth myself.

The overcast acted up. Lightning crackled across the clouds. Rain fell in showering spurts all around, coating everything but I and the dumpster in moisture.

Anomalies in the weather grew, which created heavy gusts of wind that spiraled around me and prevented the outside world from reaching my location.

Lightning became more fierce, striking trees and roofs, causing chaos all over. One stray bolt shot down at me while I was mid air, wafting passed in the endless moment and missing by a hair's breadth.

Even though the lightning failed to wound me, I was still shocked to feel the touch of a heavenly male body carrying me like a precious princess.

The tornado of wind that had surrounded me fully faded, repulsing all the collected dust and debris away.

My eyes gazed up to see a proud and chiseled face, connected to a muscular body, of which I’d never seen the likes of in reality. The man was silent, but gazed down with a charming grin. His hair waved in the steadying wind, which framed his face so pleasantly to my eyes.

“At long last, fair princess Aurilia…” said the man, pressing me slightly closer to his hunky body. “I’ve finally found you.”

“C…” I couldn’t believe who this was. Not just a word on a page, or drawing in a notebook. It was my hero in the flesh. “Cal… Cal the Barbarian!”

His grin grew prouder, showing a hint of his perfect teeth behind those glittering lips.

“I’m here now, princess. And whoever hurt you so deeply, I shall make their ancestors cry by ending their bloodline.”