Doris turns to the young girl.“I don’t know you, do I?”
Before the girl can answer, a sharp cry echoes across the room.
Doris spins toward the sound. “A baby?”
Everyone starts talking at once.
The girl answers. “I’m Calliope. I was born with her.” (She points toward the crying.)
“Wait—you haven’t written even the first scene? Or thought about it?” Grace frowns
“The first scene has a baby? How is she here if I haven’t even written her in yet?”
“You don’t really create us.” Calliope says. “ You excavate us.
Sometimes you direct, sometimes we get there first.
You’ll just have to keep up.”
Doris turns to leave, edging toward the door.
Grace pounces, “Oh no. You are not crawling back to the dark crevices of your mind.
I cleared part of the table for you. I’ve only got paper and pen right now, but it’ll have to do until we get you some real tools.”
“You knew I was coming?”
Grace raises an eyebrow.
“Of course.”
She softens it with a smile. A warm one. The kind that somehow feels like a hug and a dare at the same time.
She winks at Calliope.
“I already started the opening poem.
I mean, it’s filtered through your thoughts and dreams and fears and joys and love and pain and all that—but you know what I mean.”
“Poem? I’m not a poet.” Doris says.
“You are.
Time to admit it and get some stuff done.
Some of it will stink—you’re not Emily Dickinson.”
She walks around the desk and gently places a hand on Doris’s arm.
“This thing is going to stretch your writing muscles so hard you’ll hurt in places you didn’t Now Doris frowns. “Thing? What thing?”
The baby wails again.
Calliope heads toward a fridge that definitely wasn’t there a moment ago.
“I’ll warm a bottle. You grab a diaper.”
There’s a smirk hiding behind her voice.
“And we’ve got to clean up this room—get these bits and pieces into some kind of order.
You’ve got, what, 300 boxes of random stuff in here?” Grace pauses, then smacks her own forehead.
“Oh, wait! We decided not to put it in order. That’s what Calliope was doing when you came in. Throwing things in the air to see where they land.”
“I was writing notes in the margins.” Calliope looks up from the warming bottle. “We said it would be fun to make stuff up. Exaggerate others.”
“Can’t you just wave a wand or something?” Doris mutters.
Grace says, “For what, clean the room, feed the baby, or write the whole book? I’m your muse, not your fairy goddess mother. Grab a broom.”
She starts walking away.
“Oh—and don’t forget the diaper.”
“I thought I was the creator here.”
“Get over yourself.”
Doris grumbles, “Holy Weird Shitshow.”
Grace claps her hands.
“That’s it! That’s what this thing is. Holy Weird Shitshow. We just made up a genre.”
Calliope shakes her head, “Doubt it. Google it. Everything’s already a thing.
Someone somewhere has probably already done it.”