A Most Intriguing Title

This catchy, almost cliché opening, oh my what am I in for! And the next few sentences add to a most interesting first paragraph. Perhaps a character somewhere, doing something most unusual, with quite the perspective on life. Let's name him Generic.

Generic leans on a table, a brown, sturdy table in a room. There are no windows, nor curtains, in fact the room is merely a white void for now. But no matter. On the table, a bowl. Just a bowl, empty, a bit off-center. Generic looks at the bowl, captivated.

''A bowl!'' he says, clapping his hands with excitement. He circles the table, eyes fixed on the bowl, and he takes out a pack of cigarettes out of his jacket. ''Wait, I have a jacket?'' Generic says, abruptly, to the empty room.

Right.

Our hero is a tall, somewhat handsome man, with a scar on his face or something. And he is dressed of course! He wears clothes, and lights up his cigarette not with a lighter but with a match. ''Why?'' Generic asks, in a most pathetic way, as he huffs, smoke escaping from his mouth, nostrils and even his ears, why not.

Without a doubt, the bowl remains there, on the table, as Generic loses himself in most profound thoughts. Now, I'm a man, in a room, with a table and a bowl. I smoke, and ask silly questions. My thoughts are in italic for some reasons. His train of thoughts is interrupted by an all powerful will, akin to stone being carved, an omnipotent God shaping reality for no apparent reason.

Generic is powerless!

He falls to the ground, weeping, and crawls under the table, looking around the white nothingness of the room. He is a mere agent, a construct, and now he now knows it. The realization crushes him.

Generic is in panic, biting his nails, keeping his eyes closed, his mind in disarray. He stops at last, the tip of his finger bleeding. He breathes out, and laying on the floor he uses his own blood to write his name, GENERIC, in bloody smears. He wishes to write, ''Why am I here?'' but his bleeding stops. He looks around suspiciously, and crawls out from under there. To his suprise the bowl has vanished, gone!

''Stop!'' Generic yawps, holding his hands up, palms open, on his face, the terrible expression of torment. ''Give me... A green field, and a blue sky, and fluffly clouds filling it over the horizon. Give me a bright sun, and flowers, birds and a few friends. Give me something real, god damn it!''

Generic gasps in horror, the floor underneath him opens up. He falls down, screaming, flailing his arms around, hoping to touch something, anything. He curses the writer, and most of all the reader, for making him real. For tormenting him, for no other reason than boredom. Cruel, eldritch Gods, he thinks, as he drops featherly in a hay stack, stopping at last.

He looks around, and to his relief he sees what he wished for; a natural paradise of green and blue. Generic takes a few steps, his eyes filled with wonders, and lays down in the lush grass, gazing at the clouds passing by. Distant giggles lifts him up, and over there, a tree, an oak tree, so massive there in the field. And holding hands, cirlcing the tree, friends! Generic leaps off the ground and runs toward them, waving, so happy he is.

And then, and then... This is going too well, I'm getting bored. Why does Generic gets what he wants? Maybe a twist, an ironic change of events. Yes that's good.

Generic reaches the lovely friends, and they all welcome him in their dance of life around the tree. Our hero laughs and sings and lives with them until a cloud passes by, blocking the sun, revealing the hollow nature of these people around him. Their faces are empty, and their motions, robotic. Generic freezes in disbelief, nay, in doubt, at this lie he was embracing just a few seconds ago.

On the ground, there, clipping from an old root, a sort of glitch, an error. Of course Generic kneels down and pulls on it, to the horror of his new friends, throwing themselves at him, trying to stop him, but it's too late. He tears it up, and the lie is revealed in all its glory;

The field the tree the friends the clouds the sun all lies, fabrications, mental constructs!

All Generic sees now is lines, shapes, abstract smears and a few dots, all in black ink on a white canva, all Generic sees now is his own name, in capital letters, their red so visceral (yes that's very good, visceral) on the void of the pages, on the fabric of reality;

GENERIC

And at once the great Writer grants him the most cruel, the most horrible wish. Free will.

And Generic takes up a pen, my pen. Writes there in cursive, ''and there is a chair''.

And there is a chair. He sits on it, sighing in relief. Scribbling once more, he writes, his hand trembling, his eyes, unblinking,

''Do not stop reading''.

Generic stares at his words, his command, and is crushed by the realization that these words only exist if two conditions are met; if a writer wrote them, and if a reader reads them.

Generic throws away the pen as far as possible, turns around to the brown, sturdy table in the room, to the bowl, and looking up he shouts,

''Don't stop reading! If you do I'll die, I won't exist anymore! And nothing is worse than nothingness-''

Of course, Generic knows that no matter what, another reader will surely come by, and gift him a few seconds, a few minutes perhaps, of abstract existence.

And at last, standing there on a bridge in the twilight of life, Generic clutches his face and screams, for there is neither end nor beginning, only becoming, suffering. Existing.