I read fast, flipping through pages like it’s my job. It is kind of my job. Whatever. The story unfolds slowly but smoothly, moving through parts of the narrative I wasn’t able to explore until later in the comic. I didn’t expect Wallace to get the feelings right—Amity’s feelings about Faren, the atmosphere of their home island, the scope of the story—but he did.
There were pictures of all this in the comic, one or two panels for atmosphere and sense of place, but he brings it alive in words. Maybe this is only because I know what it looks like. It’s too good. This is like eating cake you didn’t know you could have.
I madeMonstrous Seabecause it’s the story I wanted. I wanted a story like it, and I couldn’t find one, so I created it myself. And now someone else has remade it for me in a different medium—a medium I couldn’t do myself—and he’s letting me experience it. I am finally seeing the story I wanted, and even though I know how it unfolds, and I know exactly how all of these things look, it is new again.
This is more than I deserve. It’s perfect.
Chills course the length of my spine. Too late I realize I’m crying, and a few tears drip on the paper. I curse, push the papers away from me, and pull my sweatshirt up to quickly wipe my eyes. Davy moves his head to rest it on my thigh.
“I’m okay,” I say, but my voice shakes. I dab my sleeve onthe page to try to dry the tears. Wallace will probably see those tomorrow.
I am laugh-crying alone in my bedroom. Wonderful.
Wallace has read my mind. He has divined the things I thought while drawing this comic and put them down on paper. I don’t understand it, and I don’t know how this chain of events happened. But Wallace Warland can do magic. Actual, real magic. With words.
And it’s not just that he read my mind. It’s that he knows the material. Wallace knows the constellation Faren drew on the ceiling above their bed is called Gyurhei. He knows its mythology—or close, anyway. I could correct him on the page, but it seems like a shame to mark up such careful writing when I can’t find anything else wrong, so I’ll tell him tomorrow. None of that—the name, the mythology—was laid out in the comics. It was one of those things I had to explain when someone asked on the forums.
There’s more. I flip the last page over.
It’s a quote fromDoctor Faustus.
“This word ‘damnation’ terrifies not me,
For I confound Hell in Elysium.”
He remembers. Once, and I don’t know if this was on the forums or in chat, I saidMonstrous Seawas a combination of the Final Fantasy video games and the Faust legend. Most of the fans didn’t know what Faust even was, they just knewit was Damien’s last name. That was so long ago. Back at the beginning of the website, the forums. That post is long buried now.
But Wallace remembers.
CHAPTER 9
Ispend a careful ten minutes sketching a stylized Orcus and its three moons around Wallace’sDoctor Faustusquote. Then a serpentine sunset riser lifting out of the ocean on one side and a dread crow with wings spread on the other. I hope he doesn’t mind.
I grab the gifts I’ve been meaning to send Max and Emmy—a copy each of the newestMonstrous Seagraphic novel compilation and a pack of Twizzlers for Max and Starburst for Emmy—and pack them up. Max lives in Canada; Emmy goes to school in California. Max’s shipping is usually a killer, but whatever, I can write it off as business expense.
Then it’s on to finishing a page ofMonstrous Seaand startinganother. I know the colors are on a computer and they’re the same colors I always use, but today they seem brighter. The lines are darker, stronger. I already drew the character expressions in detail, but they look better too.
The forums are alive tonight. Rainmaker has posted another chapter of his latestMonstrous Seafanfiction,Auburn Blue. I only know this because ninety percent of the people on the boards are looking at his fanfiction thread, and he’s nowhere in sight. I don’t think he ever sticks around to see what people say about his writing. A man after my own heart.
I ignore the thread. The only fanfiction I ever plan to read is what Wallace gives me. There’s a purity to it, in knowing that it’s so good and that I’m the only one who’s seen it, that I’ll never get from something published online. This is just for me. At least for now.
I stop and reread the chapter he wrote two more times. Then I check my messages.
Emmy and Max have advised. To put it lightly.
2:00 p.m. (emmersmacks has joined the message)
emmersmacks:Wait
emmersmacks:So what happened with New Kid
2:30 p.m.
emmersmacks:But seriously
3:01 p.m.
emmersmacks:E!!
