My name is Robby Schwartz. That day I was out with my family for camping; we were walking through a thick forest. My family means my parents, my sister, Dawn, my little chubby brother, Sam, and yes, our friend Brooke.

Brooke was our mutual friend. My parents loved camping, but Sam and I didn’t; yet, Sam pretended that he liked it. I am passionate about drawing comic strips. My newest strip was about Dr Maniac — a crazy super villain with his crazy experiments and negative powers who would always succeeded in creating trouble in people’s life.

Sam did not like my new comic strip. Sam asked why I didn’t create a hero and I told him that I liked villains more than the heroes, because there was so much evil to them and they played havoc with peoples’ life and I was creating a lot of crazy stuff in the story for my Dr Maniac.

So coming back to the real situation, after walking for a while we decided to settle down. Everyone started unpacking their stuff, I took my laptop out and sat down under a tree to finish my comic. I groaned as I saw there was no network! My father nudged me and asked if I could bring some firewood. I got up and looked around.

Coincidently, the comic strip I was working on had the same scene just like the place we were in. In the comic, I was in the woods just like now and the crazy doctor suddenly appears and urges me to eat a raw squirrel.

As I was picking up some firewood, then heard a crazy laughter. I looked behind me and saw my comic strip villain, Dr Maniac. He was standing with a smirk on his face and just like the scene from my strip, he asked me to eat something, a raw squirrel!

This was the moment I literally feared my own created villain. I was horrified. I ran back to the camping side. There, I saw my mum and Dawn sitting worried. I gasped and asked what the reason was, they told me a person wearing yellow dotted shorts and shirt and a doctor’s coat appeared and threw a smoke can towards them. There was all smoke around them and they could barely see. When the smoke disappeared, there was no Sam, Brooke and his dad.

I knew my mum was right, it must be Dr Maniac, and he had kidnapped my dad, Sam and Brooke. But how could he come to life? My mum was sad, Dawn was crying. I was dejected as I felt myself responsible for the disappearance of my dad, Sam and Brooke. I realised that villains really played havoc with people’s life and this time it was my own creation.

Then mum asked us to pack the stuff and leave the place immediately. With a heavy heart, we headed to home.

We reached home in the evening. I opened the door, and walked towards the living room. There I saw someone sitting. From the back, I could guess it was Dr Maniac due to his dressing. My heart thumped, and I shouted, “Mum… Dr Maniac is here!” and I jumped to get the bat lying there.

My mum came behind me, and held me, “Wait, Robbie!”

“It’s not Dr Maniac, it’s your dad.”

And I saw Dr Maniac turning his face towards me, it was my dad, in the same villain’s clothes.

Suddenly, Sam and Brooke also came out from the other room, all smiling. I could not say a word and saw all of them in disbelief.

My mum held me from shoulders and said, “Robbie, it was all Sam’s plan. Sam told us about your obsession with villains and their negative powers and this made us worried. We wanted to tell you that heroes are positive characters and they should always win while villains should never get victory in their cruel acts.”

That made me a little mad on all of them, but for a while. Because throughout this time, I went through mental anguish and cursed myself for creating a negative character. I also realised that heroes must live and save the world from villains of any kind. My villain was also making people’s lives hell, and therefore I needed to stop him from doing that. And from then onwards, my comic strip had a super hero who always came in the way of Dr Maniac.

Published in Dawn, Young World, December 5th, 2020