Write What You Hear . . .by Molly MacRae

The characters wandering around in my head don't talk to me. Maybe they would if I approached them, but I prefer to eavesdrop. They chatter to each other and I have the enviable position of being the fly on the wall. Although, as this all happens inside my skull, maybe that image doesn't quite work. Anyway, they're alive and yakking around up there and that's fine by me.

Margaret, Bitsy, and Leona are especially entertaining as they snipe and maneuver around each other. They seem to have a fondness for interrupting while I'm cooking supper. Are they clamoring for my attention? I don't know, but as I always stop to transcribe their conversations, their gabbing often leads to setting dinner on the table later than I intended or to snatching a dish from the jaws of the oven in the split second before it's too late.

I don't know what part of my brain my characters inhabit, but they offer comfortable, witty, contemplative, sometimes confrontational, and always imaginative conversations. Distracting though they are, it's great fun listening to them and I hope they never move out.

(Illustration - copyright Hank Blaustein - from the short story "Missing Something" in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, May 2000.)