Metafiction

     Mark is a high school student. He was tired of his repetitive life : go to school, study, come back home, go to academy, come back home… His only job was reading tremendous amount of fictions. He loved to read those books and he sometimes wanted to be the main character of the fiction that are usually very free and do what they want to do. One sunny Sunday, he went to bookstore to buy new book. On the book shelf was a book with the very bizarre name. He felt attracted to it at first sight, and took the book into his arms. He toddled home with my eyes on the book.

     ‘William Irving lived in the suburbs of Belmont, Massechussetes. Apparntly born without the ability to laugh, cry, or show emotion in any other way, the only time William had ever left his town was when a friend convinced him to watch a parade downtown 3 years ago. He had not enjoyed that experience very much. This story is about that day.
     After one of his friends' suggestion, William decided to travel all over the world to find emotion and to learn how to show emotion. He first went to Japan. He saw some monkey shows but they were not fun at all. He then went to North Korea. He met a fat but small monster there. The monster was wearing sunglasses.’

“Wow, I want to travel too! However, my mother will not allow me to travel outside… She always pushes me into academy and I should study to satisfy my mom’s expectation…”

He kept reading it without seeing his front but only seeing his book.
    ‘The monster, named Kim Jung Il, started to make the cheapest jokes that William had ever heard in his life. But somehow, the other people around the monster seemed to be enjoying its strange sense of humor. Bravely, William said to the monster. "Excuse me, but your jokes are not funny." The next moment he woke up, and he found himslef in a dark, confined cell.
     It was his home. It was just all a wild dream! He just dosed off while going to watch the parade.’

“Cool! It was a very good reversal of the story!” He then noticed that he was not on his way to home. He looked around and he found that there was the parade!!

     The parade in front of him was just spectacular! Giant dinosaurs waling by, the dinosours playing with an even more giant set of Jenga, and, also, nuclear missiles flying everywhere. It was just awesome, but William couldn't laugh or make an expression about it. So he made a very, very bold move to overcome his inability, a move which he would regret for the rest of his life!

Mark was very surprised that his book became real! He was very excited and read his book again to see what happened to William

     ‘William, prior to that moment, had convinced himself that his situation was due to some trait in his genes; he thought that he needed a drastic genetic alteration in order to gain access to the human emotions that everyone else could summon so easily. Now, watching himself fail yet again to crack a simple smile, William decided to expose himself completely to the nuclear missiles flying overhead. Surely those missiles would contain enough energy and nuclear influence to affect his genes. He rapidly climbed up one of the oversized Jenga sets that the dinosaurs were enjoying and jumped straight into the path of one near-flying missile.’

Mark felt that there was something wrong. He suddenly looked up and his premonition was proved right. Mark found nuclear missiles over his head.

“What the f…!”

There was no time to watch the missiles. He started to run but he couldn’t stop reading his book. He had to find out what had happened to William.

     ‘In a miraculous coincidence of the quantum orbitals of the atoms that constituted William and the missile, the impact did not cause William to explode into an infinite number of micro-particles. Instead, it gave William the uncanny ability of being able to control each and every one of those particles individually while maintaining a unified consciousness. That meant he could freely alter the shape or position of his body parts with a simple thought or even detach parts and have them move on their own………..’

The last page seemed to be torn off. Mark couldn’t read real ending and suddenly the missiles exploded above his head. Intense light hit Mark and he couldn’t see anything around him. He couldn’t feel nor hear anything. Mark thought that this is the end of his life.

”I wanted to be free. But I didn’t want this kind of freedom. I don’t want to die…. I don’t want to DIE!!!”

“What are you talking about kid?”

Suddenly Mark heard mysterious sound from anywhere.

“Who are you?”

“Oh kid… Wake up!! It’s already 8 o’clock!”

“What??”

Mark woke up and it was a total dream.

He felt relax. 

However, he felt something in his hand.

It was the book he read…!