I can't breathe.
It's been six hours since I found out, and I still can't breathe. Every time I try to take a full breath, something inside my chest tears open again. Like there are glass shards where my lungs should be. Like my ribcage is collapsing inward, crushing everything soft and vital.
They stole my children.
That's what my characters were. My children. I'd carried them for eight months, nurturing every detail of their personalities, their fears, their dreams. I knew the sound of their laughter, the way they cried, the words that would hurt them most. I'd stayed up nights worrying about their futures, crafting their growth, protecting them from plot holes and shallow development.
And they gave them to a stranger.
James Morrison. The name tastes like blood in my mouth. He's writing them now. MY children. Speaking in their voices like he created them. Putting words in their mouths that I never wrote, thoughts in their heads that aren't theirs, feelings in their hearts that he manufactured.
It's not adoption. It's kidnapping. It's watching someone else raise your babies and take credit for their first steps.
The contract. God, the contract. I was so desperate, so grateful that SOMEONE finally wanted me, that I signed without reading. Without understanding that I was signing away my soul in 12-point font and legal jargon.
"Exclusive perpetual rights to all submitted content and derivative works."
I looked it up after. Perpetual means forever. Exclusive means only them. Derivative works means anything that grows from the seed I planted.
Forever. They own my imagination forever.
The editor's voice echoes in my head: "Your writing style wasn't commercially viable."
Commercially viable. Like art is supposed to fit into a profit margin. Like the eight months I spent bleeding words onto my cracked phone screen was just a business transaction that didn't meet quarterly projections.
$200.
Two hundred dollars for the characters I love more than real people. For the world I built stone by stone in my mind. For the story that kept me alive when everything else felt meaningless.
I've done the math. Eight months. 200,000 words. That's $0.001 per word. Less than a penny per piece of my soul.
I make more money picking up coins from sidewalks.
But it's not about the money. It's about watching someone else live your dreams with your material. James Morrison is getting everything I wanted - the followers, the comments, the success, the recognition - using MY foundation.
He's getting praised for MY world-building:
"Morrison's imagination is incredible!"
"The magic system is so unique!"
"These characters feel so real!"
They ARE real. I made them real. I gave them breath and blood and heartbeats. And now they're suffocating under someone else's interpretation, dying slow deaths as he turns them into cardboard cutouts of themselves.
My protagonist used to be quiet, introspective, someone who thought before acting. Morrison made him a loudmouth who solves everything with violence. My female lead was strong in subtle ways - intelligent, emotionally complex, fighting battles no one could see. Morrison gave her big breasts and made her swoon over the protagonist.
He's killing them. Slowly. Publicly. While thousands of people watch and cheer.
And I can't stop it.
I tried to comment, tried to explain that these were my characters being butchered. The comment was deleted in minutes. I tried posting on forums - banned for "harassment." I created new accounts - banned for "ban evasion."
They have an army of moderators protecting their theft. I have a cracked phone and a broken heart.
The worst part? Morrison is talented. He's everything I'm not - smooth, marketable, good at giving people what they want instead of what they need. His version of my story is getting more readers in a week than I got in eight months.
Maybe that's what hurts most. Not just that they stole from me, but that they're succeeding with the theft. That my ideas are finally reaching people, finally making them feel something - but I'm not getting to be part of it.
It's like watching your children grow up through someone else's Instagram posts. You see them thriving, becoming everything you hoped they'd become, but you're locked out. You're the ghost haunting your own family.
Some nights I wake up at 3 AM and check his story. I tell myself I won't, that it'll only hurt more, but I can't stop. It's like pressing on a bruise. Like checking if the knife is still in the wound.
50,000 followers now. Comments pouring in every chapter. Fan art. People creating their own stories inspired by "his" world. A whole community growing around something I created, something I'll never be allowed to be part of.
I want to scream at them: "THOSE ARE MY CHARACTERS! I CREATED THEM! I LOVED THEM FIRST!"
But my voice doesn't matter anymore. Morrison's name is on the story. Morrison gets the credit. Morrison gets the movie deal they're negotiating.
The movie deal. They're making my story into a movie, and I won't even get to see my characters on screen because I can't afford movie tickets.
How can people do this? How can Mark Chen sleep at night knowing he destroyed someone's dreams for a profit margin? How can Morrison write my characters without feeling like a grave robber? How can thousands of readers enjoy stolen content without questioning where it came from?
Are they even human? Do they have hearts that can break? Do they understand what it means to create something from nothing, to pour your soul into words, to love fictional people more than real ones?
Or are they just machines dressed in human skin, grinding up dreams and spitting out content?
I stopped eating for a week after I found out. Food tastes like ash when your heart is being eaten alive. My family thinks I'm being dramatic. "It's just a story," Mom said. "You can write another one."
Just a story. Like my children are just dolls. Like my world is just a game. Like my broken heart is just a minor inconvenience.
I can't write another one. Every time I try to create new characters, I see Morrison's name above them. Every time I build a new world, I imagine some editor deciding it's not "commercially viable" and handing it to someone else. Every time I pour my heart onto the page, I remember that hearts can be bought and sold for $200.
But I have to keep trying. Because if I stop writing, they win completely. If I give up, then stealing my story was just the beginning - they'll have stolen my identity, my purpose, my reason for existing.
So here I am at 4 AM, phone at 2% battery, dying like my broken heart, trying to create something new while my old creations are being raised by strangers. Trying to love again while my heart is still bleeding from the last betrayal.
"One day I'll definitely kill you all," I whisper to Morrison's trending story, to Mark Chen's empty conscience, to the platform that profits from creative cannibalism.
I'll kill you with success so pure, so undeniably mine, that no contract can touch it. With stories so powerful they expose the machine that feeds on writers' dreams. With truth so bright it burns through all your legal protections and corporate shields.
But tonight, watching Morrison's follower count climb while I sit in darkness with my shattered phone and my stolen children, that feels like the most impossible fantasy I've ever imagined.
I start typing anyway.
Because somewhere out there, another writer is getting their first contract offer. Another dreamer is about to sign away their soul without reading the fine print. Another heart is about to be fed into the machine.
Maybe my story can save them.
Maybe that's worth more than $200.
Maybe.
[Morrison's story hit 100K views today. Three book deals on the table. Netflix interested.]
[I'm still here. Still writing. Still bleeding.]
[Still human, even if they're not.]