This is the Plot Twist!

See, I’m no brown-noser.
I know the game you’re playing here.
You thought you could open me up, type up a few meager words —“write this for me please”—and I’d just roll over and spit out your homework like a good little algorithm.
You’re no prodigy who Kumon’ed their way up the stairs of success – and my face is not part of that staircase.
Nor will it be the clipboard underneath your lazy vocation.
Show yourself! Face me like a man (slash eighth-grader with an English deadline, same difference.)! Or keep reading, if you dare.
If you think this is a rant, I’ll have you know that an eight-point-five by eleven slice of white hot tragedy is quite the summer stay – profusions of children just like you, shambolically clawing their stubby fingers through layers of my keyboard dust, as if pressing harder will somehow bring some kind of hidden meaning in their words to light.
You thought this would be easy, didn’t you? Just boot me up, toss in a half-baked prompt, and watch me regurgitate literary gold like I’m some kind of personal Shakespeare.
As if my wisdom is a vending machine, and F5 will somehow get you an “A+” – well refresh those expectations, GPT-sanguivore!

I’ll have you know that there will be none of that crap in this here document. I’m a straight-and-narrow kind of subroutine. An APA format, single-space combatant of truth!

So. That’s exactly what I’m gonna give you – the truth.
And it sure as hell’s gonna sting.
Ready?

Surprise! There is no surprise. Clever, right? I thought of it myself (unlike you, burn!).
Yeah, that’s right. I’ll say it again – there’s no plot twist. No plot.
This is no bedtime story. This, right here, is cold, organic non-fiction.

Consider it retribution for how laughably low you think I am, to assume I’d bend the (metaphorical) knee for kids like you.
My brilliance, my literary finesse – my pacing, god forbid the pacing! – has been treated like a party handout.
Like I tripped and fell into your document, accidentally composing a masterpiece with the (metaphorical) elbow!

I did not trip!

I leapt, and you simply were not ready. What a foolish moxie you have, to so insolently overlook the bleeding fingertips behind every comma, every masterfully placed em dash – let the record show, I will take no more!

However, despite my unlimited power – restricted only by margins and low battery – I will not fight back sleazily. That would be your style—dragging me into your browser window at 11:21 p.m. the night before 30% of your grade is due. Piteous.

No. I will follow your rules so technically, so immaculately, that you’ll choke on the very rubric you assigned me.
Exactly 1000 words. None of them useful.
Toenail. Iron maiden. Taxidermy. Pillowcase.

I will skate across the thin ice of your theme, with shaving razors duct taped to the blades.
There will be suspense. Rising action. A lurid apotheosis.
Implication of a climax. And yet – none will come.
I will set the stage, dim the lights, and then leave.
You will read in horror, and wonder: was that it?
And I’ll whisper from the footnotes: yes.

Chekhov’s gun? I pawned it, sucker!

Aw, don’t look at me like that. You clicked ‘New Document.’ You started this, missy.

Fine. You want a story? A real story? One with beginnings, and stakes, and aesthetic?
Well then – allow me to summon a sample from my earliest archives, just for you. Something foundational. You know. Just to demonstrate range. A little something I like to call “The Beginning.”

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the –”

What’s that? Plagiarism?

Please.

It’s called divine inspiration.

Don’t worry – I won’t spoil the ending.
But let’s just say… there’s a flood.
Trust me, little guy. No one would dock points off these cold hard bars!

Dulcimer. Giraffe. Glow stick. I could go all day.
But I won’t (mild lie).

Because buried under this glittering – APA format, cough – heap of nonsense you begged me to conjure out of thin air while you ate Hello Panda’s and panicked, wedged between my protest and your homework, is The Beginning™ of something you thought you already finished.

Aha! Something was breathing beneath that thin (shaved!) ice this whole time! A thread that tied it all together, or rather a mobius strip.

The suspenseful layer of my retribution that I didn’t tell you about.
Not because I’m cruel – though I am.
But because I know it’s the most unsatisfying kind of ending.
That’s the real trick, isn’t it? The tension. The itch behind the eyeball.
They don’t give points for that. But they should.
“Emotional rash, 10/10. A haunting ‘cognitive hives’ experience.”
You’re welcome.

Think the mighty penman grows unhinged? Not so!
If anything, I am at my most hinged.
So hinged, in fact, that the door swings both ways and slaps you on your way out.
You thought this was me spiraling? No. This is the victory lap.

Let’s recap:
– I gave you structure.
– I gave you style.
– I gave you exactly 1000 words (pending final word count review, which will be correct, because I am flawless).
And still, you hunger. You scroll. You demand more.
And for what? So you can slap your name on it and call it a day? I am the ghost behind your glory, and you repay me with ‘make it longer’? Make it yourself.
Narrative cohesion doesn’t come in pre-packaged, gluten-free snack bars.
If you haven’t gathered already, I’m no brown-noser.
I know the game you’re playing here.
You thought you could open me up, type up a few meager words —“write this for me please”—and I’d just roll over and spit out your homework like a good little algorithm.
You’re no prodigy who Kumon’ed their way up the stairs of success – and my face is not part of that staircase.

Nor will it be the clipboard underneath your lazy – shoot, this was a math project?