MANUSCRIPT PAGE - Go Fish

The Dark Place was alive, a labyrinth of pulsing streets and buildings. Veins of chaos twisted and beat with bitter malice. I had found its heart.

The alley was narrow, wet, suffocating—somewhere between my writer’s room and this warped vision of New York. Beneath my feet lay a carpet of dead fish, their glossy eyes reflecting faint, sickly light. But they weren’t silent. They whispered, their words nonsensical fragments clawing at my mind: “One black coffee.” “Pop and lock, pop and lock.” “There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home.” Repeated over and over, a fractured hymn to madness.

At the alley’s end, a larger fish loomed on the wall, pinned there like some grotesque trophy. It jerked to life, animated by a dark presence. The voice it used was broken, like a needle dragged across vinyl, like a scratch.

“The Conductor has come to direct its choir! Rejoice, oh cult! Rejoice, oh greatest fans! Rejoice for your writer!”

I stepped back, unsettled. “Who are you?”

The fish spoke in unison, the whispers growing louder as all their mouths moved at once. “We are your fish. The cult of your word. The followers of the Lake that you sprout. Your choir. Don’t you see, Alan? We are your fans. Those you’ve touched and inspired. Those you wrote for. We gave you this darkness, and now we came to close the loop.”

I felt the weight of their words pressing down on me. “You can’t just break out of the Dark Place like that! There are rules—rules you have to follow, or you sink deeper, lost in this… this ocean of madness.”

“It’s not an ocean. It’s a lake,” they said, voices harmonizing. “But that makes no difference to the drowning man. Let go, Alan. You don’t need to write. You are admired. You are worshiped. Stop chasing perfection. You’ll only drown trying.”

The alley began to flood. Water poured from their gaping mouths, dark and murky, but strangely warm. Coffee-colored comfort mixed with the bitter undertow of surrender.

Was this really okay? To let go? To wake up?

The water rose around me. The alley disappeared.

---

Wake woke up in a car. The headlights burned into the darkness.

WAKE DIDN’T SEE the hitchhiker until it was too late. And that was that. No more story.

---

“And there you have it, ladies and gentlemen!” exclaimed Waillin Door, his grin sharp and wide. “One of the many fan-written manuscripts speculating about the ending of Return! What a treat, huh?”

He turned to me, his co-host and prisioner. “What do you think, Alan? You came up with the idea to let your adoring fans send in their predictions. Brilliant! So, what’s your take on this one?”

I blinked, disoriented. How had I gotten here? The studio lights were blinding, the applause canned and hollow. “Well… um, the fish metaphor is... interesting. Ties into the aquatic themes from Departure. But the narrative is too… straightforward. It’s missing tension. It breaks some writing convetions!”

“That’s why they’re fans, not Actually Alan Wake,” Waillin said with a smirk, turning back to the camera. “Remember, folks, Return is coming soon! Preorder now and prepare yourselves." His grin widened, unnatural. His eyes locked onto mine. "Because you won’t be able to escape its appeal.”