Unfinished

Confusion

I have never had a migraine this bad in my entire life. And that’s saying something, because I once pulled three all-nighters in a row trying to finish a draft before a contest deadline. That had left me with an impressive cocktail of caffeine jitters, blurry vision, and an overwhelming sense of impending doom. But this? This is worse. Because I have five fictional people, people who should exist only in my head, roaming my apartment like they own the place.

And I have no idea what to do with them.

I press the heels of my palms into my eyes, inhaling slowly, exhaling slower, willing myself to calm down. Freaking out won’t help. Screaming won’t help. (Not yet, anyway.) The logical thing to do is figure out why they’re here and how to send them back. Simple.

Except it’s not simple. Because nothing about this makes sense.

I open my eyes.

Lena is crouched on the floor, completely engrossed in my toaster. She’s unscrewed the back panel with—where the hell did she even get a screwdriver? She didn’t have one when she got here.

“Lena,” I say cautiously.

She doesn’t look up. “Mm?”

“What… exactly are you doing?”

“Oh!” She finally glances up, beaming. “Your technology is fascinating! Primitive, but fascinating. Did you know your toaster’s wiring is slightly frayed? It’s a fire hazard.”

I blink. “What?”

“I could improve it!” she continues excitedly, like I haven’t just had my faith in my kitchen appliances completely shattered. “Maybe add a multi-function heating system, make it double as a mini generator—”

I lunge forward and snatch the toaster out of her hands. “Absolutely not.”

She pouts, but I ignore her. My brain is already at full capacity for dealing with whatever this is. I don’t need my toaster turning into a death trap on top of it.

Jack, who has been lounging on my couch like he owns the place, lets out a low chuckle. “Smart call. Last time she ‘improved’ a kettle, it exploded.”

Lena crosses her arms. “It was one time.”

Darius, who has been standing near the window like a brooding statue, finally speaks. “Perhaps we should focus on why we are here before you start dismantling appliances.”

He’s right, of course. But my brain is still struggling to accept that this is happening at all.

I rub my temples. “Okay. Okay. Let’s—let’s take this from the top.” I glance at each of them, trying to ignore the way my stomach flips when I get to Azrael. “None of you know how you got here?”

They shake their heads.

“You just… woke up in my apartment?”

More nods.

I sigh. “Great. Just great.”

“Maybe you summoned us,” Lena offers.

“I didn’t summon you,” I snap. “I don’t even know how to summon anything!”

Azrael, who has been infuriatingly silent up until now, tilts his head. “Are you sure?”

His voice is smooth, almost amused, and I hate how much it gets under my skin. He’s leaning against my bookshelf like he belongs there, arms folded, silver eyes glinting with something unreadable.

I glare at him. “Yes, I’m sure.”

His smirk deepens. “Strange. Because from what I understand, we exist because you created us. If we are here, doesn’t that mean you called us?”

I open my mouth, then close it, because damn it, I don’t have an argument for that.

Azrael takes my silence as victory and pushes off the shelf, stepping closer. I refuse to back up. I refuse.

“Maybe,” he murmurs, “you just don’t know how you did it.”

I narrow my eyes. “And maybe you should shut up.”

Jack whistles low. “Damn. Tension’s thick enough to cut with a knife.”

Darius shoots him a warning look, but Jack just shrugs, looking entirely too entertained.

Azrael watches me for another moment before smirking again and stepping back. “Very well, little creator. I’ll wait.”

I exhale sharply, dragging a hand through my hair. I cannot deal with him right now.

“Alright,” I mutter, “until we figure this out, I guess you guys are… stuck here.”

Jack flops onto the couch, looking way too comfortable. “Not the worst situation I’ve been in.”

Lena hums. “I can find things to keep me busy.”

Darius nods, ever the responsible one. “I will not be a burden.”

Rex-9, who has been way too quiet, finally speaks. “I will require further data on this world.”

I stare at him. “Um. Okay?”

Rex nods once, then moves to a corner of the room and stands there, perfectly still, as if he’s shutting down.

“…Is he okay?” I whisper to Darius.

“He is in standby mode,” Darius replies.

“…Right.” Because that’s normal.

I rub my temples again, trying to process everything.

Azrael is still watching me.

I scowl at him. “What?”

“You still haven’t answered my question,” he says smoothly.

I cross my arms. “Which one?”

“Why not just finish our stories?”

I freeze.

The room goes quiet.

Because he’s right.

If they came from my unfinished drafts… if I finished those drafts… would they go back? Would they disappear? Would this whole impossible mess just fix itself?

It’s logical.

It’s simple.

It’s also the one thing I have never been able to do.

Azrael sees the hesitation in my face, and his smirk returns. “Ah,” he murmurs. “I see.”

I hate him. I hate that he’s right.

Jack leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “You got commitment issues or somethin’?”

I bristle. “No, I just—” I swallow. “I try. But I always get stuck.”

Darius studies me carefully. “What stops you?”

I open my mouth. Close it. I don’t have an answer that doesn’t make me sound pathetic.

“I overthink,” I finally mutter. “I second-guess. I write something and then convince myself it’s terrible, so I scrap it and start over, and then that feels terrible too, and then—”

I break off, suddenly too tired to keep talking.

Lena watches me with something almost like sympathy. “That sounds… exhausting.”

I let out a short laugh. “Yeah. It is.”

The silence stretches.

Then Azrael speaks again, his voice softer this time. “You never finish anything, do you?”

I swallowed hard. “No.”

The words feel heavier than I expected.

Jack exhales. “Well. That’s a problem.”

No kidding.

I take a deep breath, glancing at the five impossible people in front of me. They shouldn’t be here. But they are. And if there’s even a chance that finishing their stories can fix this…

I have to try.

I square my shoulders. “Okay.” My voice is steadier now. “Then I guess it’s time I finished what I started.”

A silence followed—one that felt heavier than before, like the air itself was holding its breath. Azrael’s gaze didn’t leave me, but it had lost some of its usual sharpness. The others didn’t move. For a moment, it was like they were waiting.

But for what, I didn’t know.

“I mean it,” I said, mostly to myself. “I’m going to finish.”

I walked over to the desk where my laptop still sat open, the screen gone dark in sleep mode, as if even the machine had given up on me.

I tapped the trackpad, and the glow returned, harsh in the dim light of the apartment. The blinking cursor stared back at me—mocking, expectant, alive.

I could feel them watching me. All five of them. Not just watching—weighing me.

Testing if this resolve would last more than five minutes.

I opened a file. One of the many half-finished drafts. This one was Jack’s story—the gritty urban tale I had started during a rainy week last spring, the one I was sure would “finally be the one.”

It was 18 pages long.

Eighteen pages of beautiful, promising chaos. And then… nothing.

Just a blinking line on an empty page that had been waiting for a year.

I inhaled.

I put my hands on the keyboard.

And nothing came out.

The cursor blinked.

Once.

Twice.

I closed my eyes.

Behind me, someone shifted. Footsteps padded softly across the hardwood.

Then: “You don’t have to do it alone,” said Darius.

I turned in surprise. He was standing a few steps behind me now, his tone quiet, sincere. “We’re here now. Use us.”

I blinked. “Use you?”

Lena stepped forward next, fidgeting with a pen she must have found somewhere. “We remember. The parts you wrote. The ones you never finished. They’re still in us.”

“I’m not a backup drive,” Jack muttered, but he looked intrigued.

Rex-9’s voice followed. “I retain narrative sequence up to 84.2% accuracy. The remainder can be interpolated with creative variance.”

I stared at them.

“You… remember the drafts?”

“Of course,” Azrael said, folding his arms again. “We lived them.”

I looked at the screen again. At the file. Then at them.

This changed everything.

It was one thing to try to drag myself back into the headspace of a draft long abandoned. Another entirely to talk to the characters themselves about it.

“But how would that even work?” I asked.

Jack grinned. “Ever tried interviewing your characters out loud?”

“…No.”

“Well,” he said, spreading his arms, “congrats. You’ve got a live studio audience now.”

I felt something then—small, barely there. Like a flicker of heat in winter.

Hope.

Not the loud, all-consuming kind. The quiet one. The real one.

I opened a new document. Not for drafting. For listening.

“Okay,” I said, slowly. “If you remember your stories… then tell me what happened next.”

Azrael stepped forward, the last person I expected to speak first.

“There was a tower,” he said. “Half-collapsed. Covered in ash. I was looking for someone.”

I blinked, chills crawling up my arms. “That wasn’t in the draft.”

“You thought it,” he said simply. “But you never typed it.”

More chills.

Lena added, “In mine, there was a dream. Not mine—someone else’s. I was trying to fix something they had built. Something broken. But it was alive.”

I typed it all down, fingers moving fast.

Darius’s voice followed, slow and calm. “The night before the war. The fire hadn’t started yet. I was still a healer then.”

One by one, they gave me pieces.

Not scenes. Not outlines.

Memories.

Fragments of the worlds I had once built and left behind. They’d been growing in the dark, evolving without me. They didn’t just want me to finish the story.

They wanted to co-author it with me.

And for the first time, I wasn’t scared of that idea.

The pages filled fast.

And suddenly, the cursor didn’t blink with impatience anymore. It blinked with rhythm. With life.

With momentum.

Later that night

I looked around my apartment. There were blankets thrown over chairs, Jack asleep on the couch with one arm draped dramatically over his eyes. Lena was curled up in an armchair, mumbling in her sleep. Rex-9 stood exactly where I’d last seen him, though now his eyes were glowing faintly. Darius meditated by the window, silent. Azrael?

Gone.

I found him out on the fire escape, staring up at the stars.

“Couldn’t sleep?” I asked.

He didn’t turn around. “I don’t sleep.”

Right.

I leaned against the frame. “Thanks… for earlier. For being honest. For pushing me.”

He glanced at me sideways. “You were never going to move unless someone shoved you.”

I smiled faintly. “You were always the shove.”

A silence stretched between us. Then:

“What happens when you finish?” he asked.

I didn’t answer right away.

Because I didn’t know.

Would they vanish?

Fade into data?

Return to wherever fictional characters go?

“I guess we’ll find out,” I said quietly.

He nodded, but didn’t look convinced.

And neither was I.

But for the first time, I wasn’t afraid of the end.

Because now, I had help getting there.

And maybe—just maybe—I’d find myself at the end of the story too.