Chapter 1
I am absolutely a liar. I've come to find that's the thing to say when you want people to trust you. There's nothing people love more than to try to outsmart that instinctual part of their brain that screams at them to run away. Don’t worry though, I’m not a killer or a bad person, I’m just an untrustworthy narrator. And you’re ok with that. You were ok with it from the moment you picked up this book. You said to yourself, “I want to be lied to so I can be entertained or distracted or fall asleep easier.” I’m not sure of your motivation myself. I just know that you love a liar. We all do.
That being said, let me tell you about Edwin Thurnbucket. Edwin is me, but the difference between myself and Edwin is that Edwin is not real. You’re not stupid, you know that he’s not real. He’s just somebody that we’re both getting to know as he spills out of my fingers and click-clacks himself into some semblance of character. In certain ways he is real and in certain ways he is just a mess of pixels on a screen.
It is said that writers write the best when they write about things they know. So I will tell you right now, I am an only child who knows nothing about brotherly love, therefore so is Edwin. I can also tell you that try though I may to not be a boring person, ultimately I am. This is not the case with Edwin though. Edwin is the Hyde to my Jekyll. The Tyler Durden to my Narrator. The Id to my Ego. You get the idea. He is going to destroy everything he touches in a way that I never could.
Look, stories require a certain type of people to undergo a certain type of progress in order to be considered interesting or important. I can tell you right now that this is the dumbest fucking thing that I’ve ever heard of in my life. (I can also tell you that in my real life I swear profusely for my own general amusement, but I know it’s not polite so I’ll try to restrain myself in the company of strangers.) Stories are great ways to escape the banality of life, but I think to other people the stories turn into a model for what life should be. Boy meets girl. Boy gets girl. Girl topples facist post-apocalyptic regime. Boy uses magic and fixes everyone’s life. You get the idea.
Stories are fun, but they are much too dangerous. Especially lazy stories. They set a certain level of unachievable standard that absolutely ruins life. You know how to ruin somebody’s life? Tell them how it could have gone a whole lot better than it has. Stories are regrets waiting to happen.
That being said, let me tell you a new kind of story. It has a beginning and a middle, but it doesn’t end. When people’s stories end it’s called death. If you aren’t dead, your story is still going. If you are dead, I’m surprised you made it this far in this book and you should donate yourself to science. However, since I am fairly certain you aren’t dead, you are currently living in your happily ever after. I’ll let you wrap your head around that as you try to figure out what your after is.
