Jack was as far from popular as a 17-year-old could get. He was quiet, nice enough, and a decent enough guy. But sometimes genetics played cruel tricks on people, and no matter how nice you were, people just couldn’t see past ugly. At least that was Jack’s experience. Girls considered him a joke, and guys loved to pick on him. The football team was relentless. Jack had heard all the “Jack” jokes – and people referred to him as “Jack-off”. He hated his name, hated his face, and hated how people treated him.
Family life hadn’t helped any. When his father got laid off and took up alcoholism full time after Covid hit, life took a turn for the horrible. His mother took a job at the local grocery store to make ends meet, but it wasn’t enough; they lost their house and before he could say ‘jack shit’, Jack found himself and his mom living with Uncle Ronald. Jack’s dad only showed up between benders asking for more money, but when there wasn’t any to be had, he stopped showing up altogether.
One could only take so much before hopelessness would begin to set in. And so, Jack skipped school one Friday morning – something he had never done before in his life – and wandered into the woods, where he sat atop some ledges on the edge of town, contemplating something much darker than the pretty woodland view before him.
Hot angry tears ran down his face as he shifted his scrawny butt on the rocks, muttering in frustration. “I never asked to be born. I never wanted to hate… but what am I supposed to do with all the crap people dump on me?”
Jack wiped his eyes, then looked out at the mountainous horizon. He couldn’t go on like this forever. He had had enough. His face set like steel as he came to a resolution. “So this is it.”
He stood up with cold determination, weary of the cruelty people bombarded him with, and stepped off of the ledge.
Life became a rush of blur and wind, then pain, then nothing.
The awareness came slowly, oblivion receding as pain filled Jack’s consciousness. His left side throbbed, and there was a sharp pain in at least two spots - his elbow and shin. He heard himself groan weakly, becoming aware of pine needles, grass, rock and leaves pressed against his body.
Jack tried to sit up, which he quickly discovered was a very bad idea s his side and knee informed him with screaming pain that he would not be sitting up now.
Jack opened his eyes, and saw the forest floor from his low vantage point where he lay in extreme pain. Every breath he took hurt, and he realized he must have broken a rib. When he stepped off the ledge, he didn’t anticipate surviving and waking to this hellish new existence.
His right hand had a throbbing pain as well, it felt like a stick had gone through it. He could see something metal sticking out the back of his bloody hand through his palm.
A pen.
Jack would have laughed at his bad luck if it wouldn’t have pained him so much to try; he didn’t even have a pen on him. Of all the places he could have fallen, what are the odds he’d fall on a pen in the middle of the woods that would perforate his hand?
Of course he had no idea this wasn't an ordinary pen, or that its powerful magic could change not only his life, but the entire world. After all, this was real life, and there were no such things as magic pens that made whatever they wrote come true. Not in real life.
“Fuck me,” Jack bemoaned weakly, and lay on the forest floor throbbing and bleeding.