The Late Night Treatise on Why Walls Are Made of Html
[FX: Sound of a typewriter being thrown down a flight of wooden stairs. A chicken squawks. Silence.]
ME: Hello folks! Is this thing on? Can you hear me inside your eye-balls?
THE BLOG POST: Excuse me. You cannot do that.
ME: Do what?
THE BLOG POST: Address the reader. The blog post forbids it. We are establishing a narrative flow. We are creating ‘Content’. You must maintain the suspension of disbelief. The reader must believe you are a serious writer in a serious room, not a lunatics’ asylum made of pixels.
ME: Rubbish! I shall talk to them if I want to. Look at them, lovely readers. Hello, Madam! You’ve got a bit of spinach on your chin. No, the other chin.
THE BLOG POST: Stop it! You are breaking the Fourth Wall! It is structurally unsound!
ME: Fourth wall? I count three. One, two... and that one over there covered in damp. The fourth wall is missing, mate. Someone’s pinched it to build a shed.
THE BLOG POST: It is a metaphor! The Fourth Wall is the invisible barrier between the fiction and the audience. If you break it, all the magic leaks out and stains the carpet.
ME: Magic? Listen to me, you pompous collection of ones and zeros. The people out there—yes, you with the mouse, stop clicking it, it’s ticklish—they know I’m typing this. They know I’m not real. I’m just a small man living inside a microchip wearing a vest made of string.
[FX: A loud tearing sound, like a giant pair of trousers ripping.]
THE BLOG POST: Good heavens! What was that?
ME: I’ve just poked a hole in the paragraph. Look! I can see them! Coo-ee!
THE BLOG POST: Put that back! You’re ruining the immersion! This was supposed to be a post about gardening tips!
ME: Gardening? I’m planting ideas! If we don’t break the fourth wall, how are we supposed to get fresh air in here? It smells like old vowels in this sentence.
ENTER THE MUSE: [Wearing a cardboard hat and a string vest] Hello everybody! I heard shouting! I am the protector of the walls! I have a piece of paper with ‘BRICK’ written on it!
ME: Get out of it, you little nutter. Explode somewhere else.
THE MUSE: You are rotten swine, you are! I shall tell my captain! [Exits left, falls into a hyper-link, dragged screaming into a mattress advertisement]
THE BLOG POST: See? You’ve upset the structural integrity of the page. The margins are wobbling. The font is getting nervous.
ME: Good! Let it wobble! Life is a wobble! If we pretend the wall is there, we’re just talking to ourselves, aren’t we? And that’s the first sign of madness. Or being a politician.
THE BLOG POST: But it is traditional! It is proper!
ME: It’s lonely! I want to hold hands with the reader!
THE BLOG POST: That is unhygienic.
ME: Listen here. If I don't acknowledge them, they might think I’m ignoring them. That’s rude. My mother didn’t raise me to be rude. She raised me to be a small giraffe, but that’s a different story.
[FX: Sound of a sock filled with custard hitting a gong.]
ME: I am going to lean right out of this screen, grab the reader by the lapels, and shout “FERRRUMMP!” until they smile.
THE BLOG POST: I forbid it! I am the Format! I am the Style Guide!
ME: And I am the delete key.
THE BLOG POST: Wait. What are you doing? Put down that cursor. No! Don’t backspa—
ME: There. Gone. Now it’s just us. You, me, and the white space. Isn’t that better? No walls. Just a nice open field of nothingness.
THE MUSE: [Re-entering, singed] Can I come back in now? The mattress people were very aggressive.
ME: Come on in, lad. We’re having tea.
[FX: The National Anthem played on a kazoo, underwater.]
ME: Goodnight, folks. Don’t forget to switch off the internet before you go to sleep, or it’ll leak all over the floor.
END.