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❝Under the bridge on castle street
we wrote our names in the concrete❞

- Lewis Watson in "Castle Street"

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I N S C R I P T I O N

This book is a work of fiction and all parts basically make the whole book that my fictional character Derek Flynn wrote about Imogen Falls. There are no additional descriptions or explanations so there is freedom to interpret. 

WRITING ABOUT IMOGEN FALLS

Derek Flynn

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DEREK FLYNN is a novelist and journalist who started off as a freelance writer in 2011. His previous novels have all been critically acclaimed and include Aftertaste, Vagabond and Stories Of A Telescope. He wrote numerous essays and poems that have gained much recognition online. Flynn remains a mostly anonymous artist.

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Copyright © Derek Flynn, 2015

All rights reserved

The moral right of the author has been asserted

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To Imogen,

who disappeared after I jotted down her story

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p r o l o g u e :

Imogen: strong despiser of ignorance, fearer of (being in) oblivion

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As a writer I have come across an amount of people and fictional characters that is impossible to obtain, and some of them go unnoticed just like unreported deaths on the high seas.

Side characters are often created to make a story more interesting, more appealing, although they are never quite in the focus; they exist in the purpose of moving the story along.

Imogen was such a side character before she met me. She now exists as living proof that nobody in life is just a side character and therefore shouldn't treat oneself like one as if one lacked any means of relevance or significance.

Every single person we come across on jam-packed streets, in spacious malls, on public parking lots and at mute libraries has layers. The difference lies in the composition, the texture and the depth or thickness of those.

The concept is incredibly simple: if you decide to be shallow, you'll see the layers in people, their existence, their shape. If you decide to immerse yourself in the things that matter to someone, you'll feel them, every single crease, the depths of their skins, the thin borders to their insides.

I got to feel the layers of Imogen Falls.

When I first met her I was convinced she was on drugs or otherwise intoxicated because the first thing that left her lips was to ask me to write about her. My publisher still eyes me strangely whenever we have a meeting and my agency expects a huge story out of this.

The thing is, it's not a huge story. Not something I would usually write about.

Imogen Falls was a complete stranger when she first came to me. She was a stranger who somehow knew about me and the place I worked at. She was someone who somehow knew that I was looking for a raw, unfiltered story — one exactly like hers.

I did not accept that completely ridiculous request when she first appeared in front of me, although in my subconscious I already did.

You know those book stores that wrap books in gift wrapping paper and put tags on them with keywords about the story? That is some excellent Don't judge a book by its cover action and I felt similarly excited about Imogen Falls. Except there were no tags or keywords. There were just layers.

As time went on, I created my own tags for this very exquisite, spotless, significant, ferocious mind that Imogen herself found to be hideous.

Imogen Falls is no one special. She's a hero. She's the hero of her own story. And she didn't need saving. Instead, she needed someone to write about her.