I Wrote a Little Fiction

Here's the funny story behind all of this. One of my awesome co-workers got the idea to Photoshop out Waldo from a Where's Waldo image and then place it in the breakroom. Everyone will be looking for Waldo in the image, but he's not there! I thought it was an amazing and hilarious idea and it totally worked. Then I wrote next to the picture a list of people who had "found him" so people would look even harder. All this time a great company photo of all the employees together, which I won't post out of respect for my co-worker's privacy, was on the board next to this sans Waldo image. One of my co-workers photoshopped Waldo IN to that photo and put that on the board in place of the original. I love all of this. All that to say this all lead to a goofy idea I had to write a little note in first person from the perspective of Waldo leaving the first image and coming into our company photo. So now that you have the context here it is, the only fiction I've written in a couple years ever since I started pursuing becoming a pastor. Click on it to view it at a larger more readable size, I've also pasted the text below.

I managed to make it off of the ship. It wasn't easy but I couldn't stand it anymore; that feeling of eyes always watching and somehow searching for me and me alone among the packed crowd. I can't describe how I know that's true but I do. Anyways, now I stand comfortably in a place where no one is expecting to find me. Instead of rubbing shoulders with firemen and giraffes I casually blend in behind the small crowd. This place is warm and inviting. The smiles seem genuine. I think the people like being here and care about the work they are doing together to make the customer successful. I will stay here for as long as I can in hopes the eyes do not find their way to me here as well.

My friend at work didn't know I wrote it yet and commented that it was dark. I attribute that to a podcast another co-worker recommended to me called The Magnus Archives, a horror fiction podcast with an amazing premise that gets all the better as the meta narrative takes over.

In their own words:

The Magnus Archives is a weekly horror fiction anthology podcast examining what lurks in the archives of the Magnus Institute, an organization dedicated to researching the esoteric and the weird. Join new head archivist Jonathan Sims as he attempts to bring a seemingly neglected collection of supernatural statements up to date, converting them to audio and supplementing them with follow-up work from his small but dedicated team.

Individually, they are unsettling. Together they begin to form a picture that is truly horrifying because as they look into the depths of the archives, something starts to look back…

That's also the only fiction I've been listening to lately but I wouldn't trade it for the time I'm spending getting an amazing education from Western Seminary for my Masters in Biblical and Theological Studies.