So here, have a story I wrote!
Endings
When I was younger—say in my late teens, early twenties, somewhere thereabouts—I hated the idea of stories ending. Stories were not supposed to end, because when stories ended I couldn't be with those characters any more, save in revisits of previous events. Revisiting an old book is still something I love to do these days, but a sequel, now there's where I'd always get excited. A chance to see what an old character was doing now that the problems from the first story had been resolved.
I think that's why I loved mythology so much, because a character from one story would inevitably pop up in another, and then another, and then another. But even these characters would eventually die, or merely be forgotten. I followed the path of Hercules through all of his mythological exploits and was crushed to discover that even he died in a story, struck down by his own hand, more or less. The heroes and gods had a shelf life—the Norse gods knew what would bring them down, and waited for it until it came, the Greek gods were replaced by Roman gods, which were in turn replaced by the Christian God, who, I fear, doesn't have much time left before the Science God steps in and replaces him.
It was good, therefore, to discover authors like Douglas Adams and Neil Gaiman brought the gods back and gave them new adventures, new things to do. Unfortunately not even they could restore the old gods to their former glory, and that problem, the problem of stories ending, would continue to nag at the edges of my mind.
It got to the point where I would refuse to say goodbye to people I'd met, even if I knew full well I'd never see them again. I could not bear to admit to myself that the story was over, not even when I fell in love and (just as quickly, I fear) out of love with a young girl in a math class (or somewhere, I do not recall her well at all).
Stories end, and you no longer can see what the characters are doing with themselves. Some authors took the easy way out and merely ensured that their characters were all dead by the time the story ended, so that there was never any doubt as to what they were doing once the book was over: they were mouldering, that's what they were doing. It would be silly to ask after them, because the dead don't talk (at least not most of the time).
My distaste for endings continued for some time, and eventually grew so large that I began to refuse to finish anything. Movies, books, games, all were placed to the side where they could never end. I got into a fair amount of trouble over it all, especially when it came to books. I was supposed to read books for class, and I never finished them. Not once.
I determined that no matter what happened, my story would not end. The rest of the world could bring their stories to a close, but I would be someone who would never stop. It would be difficult (or more accurately, impossible), but failure was for other people.
And so it came to pass that late one night I found myself walking home, when some street toughs stabbed me in the heart and stole my wallet. I would have given them the wallet without a fight, but I suspect they got carried away. I died, but because I was not willing to end my story, I appear to have stuck around. I have stuck around for the past two hundred years.
So long as my story never ends, I will continue to stick around. As I'm the one in charge of ending my own story, I can merely walk away and leave the whole thing incom—
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