Work Text:
I try desperately not to think of how utterly stupid this idea is as I type away at my keyboard. I try not to think of how anyone I know personally would think of me as I hammer away the story, letter by letter. I try… and I fail.
This is why I need help. My mind’s a mess. It needs to be fixed and there’s only one story I’ve gotten to experience that has helped my mind.
“Hey there, sorry I’m late.”
I turn to the child, Razputin Aquato, and cock my eyebrow.
“You’re not late. I just wrote you in,” I say to him, more than a little exasperated from the stress I’ve put myself through for so long.
“Meh,” he replied with that confident grin I remember so well from the games, “Just seemed like the thing to say. You know… heroic and all, like a real Psychonaut.”
“You are a real Psychonaut, Raz. Junior agent still means agent,” I tell him, far more capable of assuring someone else than I am myself.
He’s dressed in his classic outfit, the leather jacket number he wore for the original Psychonauts adventure. It’s how my mind always thinks of him, though I do like the new outfit just fine. The colors just feel better to me, stronger even. The psychic wiz-kid chuckles as if he read my thoughts, which he probably did if I’m being real.
“You know, therapy would probably help a lot more than asking a fictional character to enter your best approximation of your mind,” the kid points out.
“Therapy’s for people with money and, frankly, maybe I might actually enjoy myself a little do this with you,” I retort.
Razputin smirks and pulls out the PSI-portal he got way back at Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp.
“Ready to do this?”
“Not really,” I respond as I resist the urge to either sigh or sob, “but let’s do it anyway. You fight, I’ll write.”
Razputin nods and uses telekinesis to place the portal on the back of my head after I’ve turned back to my laptop. I don’t see it but I can picture him in my mind’s eye donning those flashy goggles of his as he hurls his astral projection into my mindscape.
“Good luck to the both of us. We’re gonna need it,” I say to him as he enters the psychic vortex into the confines of my mind.
Razputin lands far more softly than he expected to and, like all his heroes before him, examines his surroundings to get his bearings. The inside of the author’s mind is a city but one devoid of all the lights and sights and sounds that a real city would have. There were colors around on both the buildings and the people but it was all washed out to the point that everything would actually seem more vibrant if it all just turned gray.
“Yikes,” the young Psychonaut remarked.
He clearly had his work cut out for him but nothing would get done if he simply stood there. The young psychic acrobat eagerly rushed forward and snatched a few figments in the shape of depressed office workers trudging along on the sidewalks. The oppressively dull landscape did nothing to slow him down, which Raz found quite odd.
“Where are the usual problems and mental defenses?” he wondered, “I haven’t seen so much as a Censor since I got here.”
A full city block was rushed through before Razputin found something that piqued his interest, a worn down old boxing gym. Despite the signage around the building declaring it closed, the door was wide open and even glowing slightly, though the color of the light was just as washed out as everything else.
“Déjà vu from being in Edgar’s mind,” Raz remarked as he entered the building.
Unlike the city outside, the interior of the boxing gym lacked color completely. Even Raz himself was just various shades of gray. It reminded him of the old TV he and his siblings shared during some of the nights off the Aquato family circus took, few though they were. Worn equipment was strewn all over the place and the sounds of people practicing came into his ears as a quiet echo. Despite those sounds, only two people seemed to actually be in the place.
A scrawny boxer, beaten, bruised and clearly exhausted beyond reason was slumped in one corner of the boxing ring that took up most of the space of the building while what seemed to be the boxer’s trainer yelled at him.
“Get up, ya bum! Ya can’t retire until after you manage to win for once in your lousy life!” she yelled at the boxer.
“What’s the point? I’m too tired to stand anymore, let alone fight. We gotta face it coach, I ain’t got what it takes,” the boxer replied with a speech pattern that sounded like a sigh had somehow gained life.
Raz entered the ring and approached the pair.
“Hey there,” the Psychonaut greeted them.
“Didn’t you read the signs, pipsqueak? The gym’s closed. We ain’t accepting any new members until we can afford some repairs around here,” the trainer growled.
“Well how much do you need for repairs? I can probably scrounge up some funds,” Raz offered.
“Not how it works, kid. You gotta earn it in this world and you can’t earn nothing if you don’t fight for it,” she replied with a roll of her eyes.
“Okay, so let me fight then. I’m pretty good in a scrap,” the young man said confidently.
The trainer groaned and walked away whilst grumbling wordlessly. Raz shook his head and stepped closer to the boxer.
“You know, you should consider finding a new trainer. That one doesn’t seem very… supportive…” he said to the boxer.
“First impressions can be deceiving,” he said as he showed a weak smile, “Believe it or not, she’s like that because she believes in me. Not really sure why though…”
The boxer sighed again and Raz had to resist the urge to do the same. The action was weirdly contagious.
“So why won’t she let me help then?” Raz asked.
“Like she said, the gym’s closed so we can’t accept new members and you gotta belong to a gym to fight. All the other gyms are full up, so you’re kinda outta luck. Sorry about that.”
“So let me see if I’ve got this right…” Raz began as he tapped his chin in thought, “You need funds to fix the gym up and accept new fighters but you can’t fix the gym unless you can win a fight and get the money to re-open, right?”
“A real catch 22, ain’t it?” the boxer said with a sad smile.
“So I can’t fight for you… but maybe I can get you a fight.” Raz realized.
“Why bother? I’ll just lose…”
“You don’t know that. You’re just being a pessimist,” the Psychonaut argued.
“Kid, I haven’t had a win in over 8 years. 8 years of fights and no wins,” the boxer retorted.
“Yikes,” Raz said while cringing, “How bad is your training if you can’t even win against the newbies?”
“My… training?”
An awkward silence echoed through the gym.
“Wait… do you not train? How do you expect to win fights if you don’t train for them?” Raz pointed out.
“Well we don’t got any equipment. How do you train without equipment, huh?” the boxer argued, thinking he had made some grand point.
“I come from a family of professional acrobats. We do sit-ups, push-ups, pull-ups and handstands before we start working with any equipment. Why not try some of those out?” Raz suggested.
“I dunno… I’m pretty tired…”
“Jumping jacks then. Think you can do those?”
The boxer thought about it for a moment and Raz saw a small spark light up in the one eye of his that wasn’t swollen shut. The junior Psychonaut allowed himself a brief smirk of triumph but quickly hid it when the boxer looked back at him.
“You really think that’ll work?” he wondered.
“Well, going straight from one fight to another hasn’t worked for you. Why not try something new?” Raz countered.
The boxer mulled it over for a moment and then nodded.
“Alright then, we’ll give it a shot. I’ll stay here and do jumping jacks to get ready if you go out and get me a fight.”
“Deal,” Razputin agreed eagerly.
The boxer held out his fist and Raz fist bumped him with a big smile on his face. He had no idea yet how he was going to get the boxer a match but he’d figure it out.
He always figured it out.
I sit back down in a huff, my feelings halfway between panic and dread. Once again, real life had gotten in the way of my desire to write. The need for sleep, the need to work for money, the constantly being pulled back to my mother for one-more-thing because she couldn’t be bothered to think of more than a single thing at a time in between me going back and forth to where she was and where I needed to be.
I blink rapidly to force away the bitter tears of frustration that threaten to blur my vision of the page even more so than the tiredness of my eyes had last night.
“Come on, damn it, “I whine to myself, “Just sit down and write. You’re the one who decided to make a fictional adventure to try and fix your damn head so just fix it already!”
Without any other good ideas in my head, I pull out my phone and put on the soundtrack for the second Psychonauts game. I slip on some headphones to block out the rest of the world in hopes that I won’t fall prey to the constant distractions of the other things in my life and stare at the page.
All that occurs to me is to just write down everything at that moment and that somehow just makes me feel even lousier. It takes far too long for me to realize that Raz won’t get anywhere if I don’t get back to him.
“Okay, now if I were a second boxing gym in a mental city… where would I be?” Raz pondered aloud as he rolled along on his levitation ball.
He had discovered by quite painful accident earlier that being on his ball was the only way he could use the mental city’s streets without being squashed by a speeding car. While he still had half a dozen Psi-pops left to keep him going, it hadn’t been a pleasant experience.
It took a few more minutes of high speed rolling before he came across a building with a large sign that read ‘Gym of Life’. It had its words surrounded by pictograms of things like washing machines, stairs and vacuum cleaners. Raz hopped off his levitation ball and headed inside, eager to get the boxer a fight until he got overwhelmed by the scents of sweat and cleaning chemicals. Barely able to breath, which shouldn’t be possible considering the whole thing resided in a mental world, Razputin rushed out of the gym as quickly as he could and took huge gulps of air while he felt able.
I sit at the small table in my office, trying not to hunch over as my mind once again goes completely blank. My momentum’s been killed and I’m not even sure if it’s my fault or not anymore. Raz shouldn’t have had any trouble getting into the gym and talking to the fighters. Hell, in his actual games he seemed to be able to talk to just about anyone with surprising ease.
I wonder if this is just my brain resisting my attempts to use my creativity as a weapon to try and repair it. It wouldn’t really surprise me if that was the case. Self-sabotage seems to have become my M.O. since I lost my last job and, with it, what little direction I felt like I still had in life.
“Hey, knock that off! I’m trying to get in there!” Raz screams inside my head.
I chuckle a little to myself as I type that and mentally apologize to the little Grulovian hero. He’s right, of course. Beating myself up isn’t going to make anything better so I decide I need to step away from the computer for just a little bit to get some lunch.
“Be right back, Raz. Maybe a full stomach will make a little less… obstacle-y… is that really the best word I can come up with right now? I mean confrontational doesn’t seem right and…”
“Dude! GO!”
“Alright, alright. I’m going,” I reply before I get up and stretch.
I’ll make sure to switch back to Raz’s perspective when I come back.
“Okay, let’s try this again…” Raz said hesitantly.
With a deep breath in case he needed to hold his breath again, the young Psychonaut re-entered the Gym of Life. Thankfully the smell wasn’t quite so overpowering this time and Razputin was able to start really looking around to see what he could do. The Gym of Life clearly had no shortage of either funds or fighters, since so many dozens around him were in engaged in various forms of boxing training. He walked up to one hitting a sandbag, a muscular fighter with a spray bottle for a head.
“Hey there…” Raz began before he was rudely cut off by the fighter.
“Whatever it is, make it quick. I’m busy here.”
Razputin rolled his eyes as the blunt, unfriendly tone of the fighter.
“I’m just looking for the manager and/or coach. I wanna set up a fight with a smaller gym,” the kid psychic explained.
“Head to the ring. Coach is there letting the Champ beat on the new guy… Laundry something, I think,” spray-bottle head said.
“Thanks…” Raz replied drolly.
He left the fighter to his sandbag and headed towards the ring near the back of the building. The tall man in the business suit he assumed to be the coach was standing silently outside of the ring with a smirk on his face while the two fighters inside brawled. Like the guy hitting the sandbag, neither of the fighters had heads either. One of them was just a ball of light with a cartoonishly perfect smile and the other was a laundry basket.
The laundry basket guy was getting the snot beaten out of him despite blocking almost every punch thrown at him.
I groan as writer’s block once again strikes. I’ve been wracking my brain for nearly 10 minutes now and yet I can’t seem to figure out what Raz says next.
I feel like it should be simple but it’s not.
Feeling defeated, I reluctantly step away from my self-help story in the hopes of finding the answer some other time…
“Huh… I feel like I’ve just been standing here for a really long time…” Raz mumbled to himself.
“You have, kid, and it’s been freaking me out. What do you want?” the coach said with a stereotypical mobster’s accent.
“Well… I currently represent a… smaller gym and I’m looking to set up a fight. Got any new guys who could use some ring experience?” Razputin asked.
The coach thought about it for a moment and then whistled at the two fighters currently in the ring. Both stopped immediately and the guy with a ball of light for a head leaned over the ropes towards the coach.
“What can I do for you, coach?” he asked with a voice that just screamed stereotypical superhero.
“Lay off the new guy for a bit. He’s got a fight coming up with… say, kid, what was your fighter’s name again?” the coach asked Razputin.
“Oh uh…”
Raz resisted the urge to face palm as he realized that he had completely forgotten to get the boxer’s name before rushing off to get him a fight. He reached out telepathically to the Author.
“Oh, uh…. Damn,” I grumble as I try not to beat myself up for forgetting such a simple detail.
I force myself not to overthink it and just quickly go over names in my head that wouldn’t come off as too… copywritten. That all-too-familiar urge to go too deep into my thoughts and put some big, deep meaning behind everything almost wins out over me. Thankfully, my sense of humor comes to the rescue and I decide on the name with a small chuckle.
“Fisty McMann... oh, and that’s not the name he used to go by either. New fight, new me kinda deal.”
“Fisty McMann. New on the scene,” Raz said with the practiced kind of bravado he’d grown up showing as a circus performer.
The coach rubbed his chin for a moments, then smiled and held out his hand.
“You got a fight, kid. Fisty McMann versus Larry ‘Lefty’ Laundry. Tell your guy to get ready and we’ll meet have the match at the arena downtown,” the coach said as he enthusiastically shook Razputin’s hand.
“Lefty?” Raz responded curiously.
“He’s a southpaw.”
Razputin just shrugged and headed out of the gym. Now that he knew a bit better where he was going, it didn’t take long at all for him to hop back on his levitation ball and make his way back to the nameless gym. The boxer was still in the middle of the worn-down ring doing jumping jacks and Raz noticed that his physique, while still slim, was far less scrawny than when he’d first arrived.
“Looking good, future champ,” Raz called out.
The newly-christened Fisty McMann stopped his workout and hunched over panting.
“You think so?” Fisty responded doubtfully.
“Absolutely!” Raz replied enthusiastically, “You were barely skin and bones when I first met you. Now you look like you’re ready to go a few rounds.”
“I mean… I guess it did feel kinda good to do something,” Fisty said with plenty of doubt still in his tone.
“Tell you what…”
Raz climbed into the ring and used his TK to pick up a deflated sandbag that had definitely seen better days.
“Give me a few hits on this and see if you can feel the difference.”
Fisty reluctantly nodded and struck a fighting pose. After a few more seconds of reluctance and self-doubt, he finally threw a punch. Despite the poor shape of the sandbag, a decent smack sound echoed softly throughout the empty gym. The sound caught the attention of Fisty’s coach, who came out of the back office and flew to the arena faster than Raz would have thought him capable of moving.
“Woah, woah! What are ya doing?!” the coach angrily demanded.
“Just trying to help our fighter realize the strides he’s made in his training,” Raz answered with his hands up in surrender.
“Training?” the coach said almost absently.
He looked at Fisty closely, a stern examination of the fighter’s new physique. After a few seconds, a large smile broke out on the coach’s face. That smile lasted only a split second before he turned an upset scowl to Razputin.
“Training’s my job, ya amateur. You don’t bring a sandbag into the ring to train! You’ll make a mess! Everyone knows that!” the coach berated Raz.
Raz sighed in annoyance and tossed the sandbag out of the ring. He didn’t notice any mess but figured that the coach just wanted to feel useful. The young psychic hopped out of the ring and watched as the coach pulled hand mitts from seemingly nowhere and started practicing hits. Both coach and boxer seemed to have a spark of passion in their eyes that had obviously been missing for far too long.
“We finally got some moxie back in ya! Now if we could just get you a fight…” the coach mumbled between hits.
“Oh, I already got you a fight. Fisty McMann here is set to fight Larry Laundry in the arena downtown,” Raz stated.
“No foolin’?” the coach asked, clearly impressed.
Raz nodded and the coach gave the young Psychonaut a brief smile.
“Ya may be a lousy trainer but you’re a heck of a manager, kid! Good job!”
“All in a day’s work,” Raz replied smoothly as he rubbed his knuckles on his jacket.
“Well why don’t you head there ahead of us? I’ll work on our boy’s form a bit more and we’ll meet you down there,” the coach offered.
I let out a big sigh of relief as I finally get to sit down and resume work on this battle within and against my own mind. It has been two days since I last worked on this due to life and family getting in the way. I could have started on this late the last night and I certainly had the drive to but I worried that if I started and got stuck because my body wanted to go to bed, I’d end up beating myself down as a failure again.
I couldn’t risk that and so I waited. A full night of sleep and an uncomfortably long drive to Anaheim Hills later, I sit at my keyboard and get back to work.
Luckily for me, Raz can keep working even when I can’t.
“C’mon! Give him a left!” Raz shouted to Fisty from his ringside seat.
The brightly-colored arena reminded him vaguely of his own wrestling matches in the mind of Edgar Teglee, though thankfully this arena wasn’t just a black void with a few random people and their signs surrounding the ring. The fight was in its tenth round and, despite complaints about how tired he was in between every round, Fisty had managed to keep himself standing and striking back against Larry Laundry.
The fight could still go either way though and all Raz could actively do was cheer so that’s what he did.
The bell rung and Fisty McMann stumbled awkwardly back to his corner. Raz wasn’t sure that the fighter he backed would even be able to stand up for the next round. He was so focused on his worry for Fisty that he almost didn’t notice the murmuring around Larry Laundry’s side of the arena. The referee (a stereotypically-shirted body with a whistle for a head) had stopped over by Larry’s corner to check on the fighter and had been there for a long time.
Without warning, the ref whipped around and waved his arms to signal the end of the fight.
“Larry Laundry is unable to continue! Winner by technical knockout: Fisty McMann!”
A mixture of boos and cheers emanated from the crowd while Raz hopped out of his side to stand by the coach as he helped Fisty hobble his way out of the ring. Razputin gave the worn out fighter a grin and thumbs up, which Fisty responded to with a tired smile and a tiny fist pump.
“Well, you’ve won one. Ready to retire, kid?” the coach asked his fighter.
Fisty didn’t respond at first and Raz readied himself to make a big speech to raise the boxer’s spirits but that proved unnecessary.
“I won… but I didn’t beat him,” Fisty responded, panting.
Razputin smirked and gently hit Fisty’s shoulder in the same encouraging manner he’d been hit by Lili Zanotto.
“You’ll get him next time. Just give yourself some time to get ready before jumping into the next fight, alright?” Raz said.
“Leave him to me, kid. I got it from here,” the coach butted in reassuringly.
Raz nodded and watched the pair walk away for a few minutes before he pulled out his smelling salts. So far as he could tell, his work here was done and it was time to call it a day. He cracked open the foul-smelling tool and flinched as he ejected himself from the author’s mindscape.
I lean back in my chair with a feeling of satisfaction as Raz, now free of the confines of my mind and the third person, strolls up to me and raises his goggles.
“Looks like you’ve a functioning will to fight again. How are you feeling?” he asks.
“Honestly…” I respond, a little hesitant to answer, “Better. I mean I’ve still got issues but somehow, despite all common sense saying it shouldn’t have, this actually helped. Thanks Raz.”
“All in a day’s work,” Razputin says, trying way too hard to come off as cool.
I chuckle at the childish antic and hold out my fist. He bumps it and then readjusts his bag. The smile on his own face fades away and I see concern in his eyes.
“Hey, you know if you still need help I can always come back. Right?”
I nod.
“Heroes always do,” I say as I turn to back to the page.
My stories can’t fix my problems. They can’t really fix anyone’s problems but that’s not what they’re here for. I make my stories because people need them.
Because I need them.
Sure, I’ll probably never be famous but then I never really wanted to be. I wanted to make people happy, to give them something to hold onto as life happens all around them.
I still want that and I want to do it with my own characters too, not just the characters of others that live in my mind so deeply that they’ve practically become real to me. I can’t just stay in the stories forever though, much as I would like to.
The real world beckons me with all its problems, trials and tribulations. The odds are stacked against me just as they’re stacked against almost everyone. For now though, it’s time to say “Until next time”. For now, it’s time for:
The End