BURYING AMELIA WAVERLY
     
     AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF SIMON SOCORRO
     
     
     By Jason Wilder Konschak
     
     
     
     
     
     
     ONE
     What happened, happened.
     
     
     
     
     
     This is a competition. This is nothing less than a 
competition with God. It’s me versus God, or Fate, in a 
contest to see which of us can create a better story, to see 
which of us can dream up and carry out a more entertaining 
future.
     This book is my submission to the contest.
     The rest of my life will be God’s.
     God and I have rules that we can agree to. For 
instance, we can’t change the past. Nothing up to this point 
can be altered to make the story more interesting. What 
happened, happened. I have to report it honestly, and God 
can’t tinker with the existing flow of time-space to fit his 
particular needs.
     Furthermore, we won’t add or remove characters with 
a thought or a delete key, though we may introduce and exit 
them as the story naturally unfolds. In keeping with this, 
characters must behave as they really would behave. God 
can’t make people suddenly forgive one another, and I can’t 
make people kill themselves for no good reason, and vice-
versa. 
     Things must happen as they really would happen. What 
I mean is, God can’t generate pillars of fire to make his 
story better, and I can’t make myself capable of lifting a 
Buick to improve mine. We both have the powers of reality to 
play with. We both have the same world to manipulate.
     The setting, the characters, and the background: 
that stuff is all set in stone by what we call reality. When 
you read about my past, my situations, my friends, and me, 
you’re reading about the truth, with names and details 
changed to disguise the unworthy and unwilling. But, 
everything from that point on – as long as it proceeds 
logically from the past, is fair game.
     On the other hand, God is allowed to steal good 
ideas from me, and I’m perfectly allowed to steal good ideas 
from God. We just can’t steal the entirety of one another’s 
work. At the game’s end, one story has to be better than the 
other by a great deal, afterall. The victory has to be by a 
much larger spread than two points.
     In this writing of the future, extra points will be 
given for irony, coincidence, and poetic justice. Though, 
points will only be rewarded in the case that believability 
has been maintained. Things can be shocking, amazing, and 
unlikely, but they can’t be downright impossible. What I 
mean is, we all know that God can spin a good one, when he’s 
dividing seas and raising the dead. I don’t think we’ll be 
seeing any of that in my lifetime, so I’ll keep the aliens 
in space, the FBI in Washington, and the end of the world in 
the Book of Revelations.
     I think those are the rules. There are others that 
I’m forgetting, but let’s assume those are implied. I’m sure 
that God knows them well enough. If he cheated, I couldn’t 
do anything about it anyway. And if I cheated, I really 
don’t think it’d put him at that much of a disadvantage. But 
we’ll try not to cheat. Writers and Gods are such good 
cheaters that it might be hard to avoid.
     And we’ll see who can create a more thrilling and 
entertaining future.
     In all honestly, I hope God kicks my ass.
     ***
     
J. WILDER KONSCHAK
BURYING AMELIA WAVERLY
2

3