It was a normal day for Henry until he gave away half of his hamburger. Henry thought of himself as an average person. People like him didn’t have any type of “magic” or distinguishing features except that they could blend in well with a group of people as long as they did not wear neon pink. If there should be more description of him, it would be fair to invoke his strong Boston accent which suggested that he grew up in Boston.
Henry’s family was fate gone wrong. His mother was a short and squat woman who earned her physique by managing magazine subscriptions at a computer for seven hours a day in a tight cubicle. She was always grumpy, since she had been a country girl in the early days of her life when the sky and land stretched everywhere. She could run until she collapsed and never meet a brick wall. Her life took a turn when she realized that her family could not support themselves from their annual crop of corn and wheat, and she was forced to take up the responsibility of magazine subscriptions in a small company. Later, she got married to Henry's father, which didn't change her humdrum life, quite contrary to her expectations.
Henry’s father was a barber who started his own salon in Salina, Kansas, leaving the farm to his brother’s family. The salon was not very popular, since the father’s talents were limited to removing all of the hair off a head. Later, the father, along with the mother, moved to Boston where they founded a new salon together and gave birth to Henry. Henry's happiest memory with his parents was when he played with his toy piano in a corner of the empty salon with his parents, drinking in the sweet, chemical smells of hairspray and hair gel. Like most ordinary children, he was always proud of his parents; his dream had been to own and manage the salon following his parents.
His dreams were wrenched apart when his parents mysteriously died; he was left with a meager inheritance when all debts was paid off and got stuck in a studio room in Salt Lake City, Utah for many years.
Every morning at 5:00 A.M., he woke up from a nightmare involving hordes of monkeys attacking him, drenched with sweat and panting. This resulted from a childhood accident when he accidentally fell into a cage of monkeys at the zoo and was ferociously attacked. Thankfully, he was rescued by a nearby zookeeper in seconds, left with a few scratches and one deep cut on his cheek. However, he got the biggest scare of his life. He had to recall the harrowing experience every time people asked about the scar left by the cut, although, by a stroke of luck, people rarely noticed him at all.
After the typical breakfast of bacon, eggs, and coffee, he boarded the overcrowded bus at precisely 6:45 A.M. and arrived at his job, Three John’s News Printers, at 7:00. This was a very uninspiring and mundane job, as he sat down in a cubicle and processed requests of newsprint for other companies from morning to afternoon. He ate his lunch in Pedro’s Diner, where cheap food was served to anyone who had a few bucks to spare, and greeted the homeless man who sat there for longer than Henry could remember. The homeless man never said anything but a polite “thank you” as Henry offered him half of his hamburger. But this time, other than the casual small talk, the homeless man said something strange. “Look behind your computer when you return to your job." Henry stared at him until the beggar’s cane shooed him away. Henry quickly shuffled into the office building.
As Henry disappeared into his building, the beggar took out an ancient pad of paper and a fountain pen from his dirty and battered sack and started writing.
Puzzled but doubtful, Henry walked back to his cubicle and reached behind his computer, fumbling. Surprisingly, there were two packages wrapped in thick brown paper. He hesitantly grabbed them out and opened the bigger one, which turned out to be a leather pad of paper. The old-book smell hit him in the face and made him recoil.  Henry, wondering what the paper was for, tore the remaining package open, finding a dusty and heavy wooden box that smelled like his grandfather's wooden clock. Intuitively feeling that this contained something very important while flicking open the latches, he found a fountain pen with a gold nib concealed by sheets of leather. He shook it to keep the ink flowing, and glowing gold ink splashed out. He watched as it landed on the screen of his computer. Henry paused to wipe the ink off, but smelled smoke; the ink had burned a hole in the screen. He gasped, and was overtaken by a spasm of surprise and dread. Another drop landed on his finger. He couldn't budge due to the fear that the ink would reduce his hand to a blob of disgusting goo. Fortunately, the ink dissipated, and his finger felt fine. While Henry was making a desperate effort to conceal the hole by pasting post-its in front of it, his phone vibrated. Breep, Breep. He grabbed it and leaned back in his chair. And saw a message that made him freeze.
Yes, I know that you have the pen. Please give it to me. I will meet you in the men’s bathroom. I know that Aedifex has given you other instructions that are quite contrary to what I have said, but if you choose to follow him, I shall destroy him-and you. -Katastrofeas
This message had no number included. Henry, his mind blank in fear, stared at it in confusion, only to convulse as another message arrived with a terrifying ping.
I know what Katastrofeas has told you. Meet me in the women's bathroom. -Aedifex
Henry, flabbergasted, lowered his phone. How did they know his phone number? This message, too, contained no number. In a heartbeat, another message vibrated its place into the screen.
You will be dismissed now. -Aedifex
Henry looked at the clock. It was 2:24. Who'd get dismissed at this time? He looked at the manager's office. The door opened and the roly-poly manager appeared, squeezing out of the doorframe and jostling passing employees. The manager stopped in front of Henry, who was pretending to work.
“Henry, good work, you’re dismissed.”
Speechless, he packed his bag and stuffed in the fountain pen and the leather pad of paper in a daze. He walked out, drawing envious glances from other employees.
Henry headed for the bathrooms. A flight of stairs splashed with flickering red light led down to the men’s bathroom. Bright LED lights lit the whitewashed stairs that led up to the woman’s bathroom.
Here, Henry was faced with an impossible choice: the women's bathroom. He could not help but go to Aedifex as he instinctively felt that Katastrofeas was evil. Henry headed towards the women's bathroom with shaking legs, nervous about being seen on a nearby CCTV camera. In fact, Henry had never been to the women's bathroom since he was six years old. This was a choice that he would not regret five centuries later.
Henry had expected stalls and sinks, but all he saw was a flat expanse of white. The floor was white and smooth, the sky was blue, and wispy ethereal clouds were floating around in the slight breeze. He looked back. The door was hovering between the sky and the ground.
“Ah, Henry, I have been waiting for you. I knew you would come to me. I also knew you had to urinate,” the man behind him said.
He was the beggar. He was wearing white robes that glowed in a magnificent blaze, which hurt Henry’s eyes. The beggar was carrying a beautiful fountain pen and a leather writing pad in his hands, almost identical to Henry’s set.
“Hello. I am Aedifex, one of the creators of the modern world. How are you, Henry?”
Henry had to go to the bathroom, and in a choked voice he said, “I really need to go.”
“It's all yours. Go ahead.” Aedifex said.
Aedifex started to write on the pad of paper with the pen. Immediately, a toilet and stall appeared. Henry hurried inside. Aedifex kept waiting patiently outside. There was a flushing and Henry stepped out, relieved.
"Now I shall tell you about what I have given you. Anybody who can use these pens and paper can write the world. We control anything that happens in the world. We can make islands rise out of the Mariana Trench. We can make deserts turn into rainforests." Henry’s heart jumped.
“Think about what you want to do and write it with the pen and paper. It will happen. You may do anything but kill anyone directly or affect anyone's free will. Okay, now you can try-“
Suddenly, a red steel door formed and burst open. Three men jumped out. Each was identically dressed in red blazers and pants with black ties. Their eyes were concealed by red tinted sunglasses. They pulled pads of paper and fountain pens out of thin air. The tall and skinny man in the middle spoke first, towering over Aedifex. 
“Aedifex. I don't have anything to do with you, so don't make me mad. I'm merely here to carry out a few promises I made earlier. Henry will come with me, and everything will be fulfilled. C'mon, Henry." Henry drew out his pad and paper, feeling threatened.
“Henry shall not go, Katastrofeas!” Aedifex cried.
The fat man at Katastrofeas’s right started writing. Arrows appeared in the sky, and rained down. The sun was blotted out for a moment when the projectiles flew at them. Henry was petrified with fear, his feet rooted to the ground by an invisible power.
Aedifex started writing. His hand was a blur. A brick wall erupted out of the ground, and the arrows bit deep into the brick. It crumbled and the rubble, which was propelled at the fat man, caught him in the stomach. With an oof, he flew twenty meters away and lay still.
The third man with a military haircut and a long scar across his face was coming at Henry, running. The man began writing, and his pen and paper pad melted into a long metal pole. It flashed towards Henry, who tripped and fell on the ground in an effort to duck the stick like in the martial arts movies he had watched when his boss hadn't been looking over his shoulder. Henry scrambled away unscathed and thought about anything deadly, such as a handgun. Sadly, empty bullet casings clinked uselessly on the ground.
Henry then thought of monkeys that appeared to him every night. His pen began to move. The words were an unintelligible scrawl that no normal person could understand, but the writing was legible like the neat print of a book to Henry.
Suddenly, monkeys began appearing. The first few monkeys that came at the man were knocked aside, but when dozens of monkeys started to appear, the man backed away, his stick swirling in a hypnotizing pattern trying to keep the monkeys at bay. As the dozens became hordes, all kinds of monkeys launched themselves at the man and pummeled him. When Henry stopped writing, the man was bruised and knocked out, his once impeccably tailored suit in tatters. The monkeys all dissolved into fine gray sand.
Henry was quite proud of himself, but he swallowed his pride when he saw Aedifex and Katastrofeas dueling. Lightning and fire flashed and smoke and debris clouded the air. When Katastrofeas summoned stones and hurled them at Aedifex, lightning blew them to bits. When Aedifex made snakes and lizards, swarms of wasps stung the reptiles and killed them. When everything stopped, Katastrofeas’s suit was in bad shape and Aedifex’s robe had burn marks on it. Henry could see that the brawl was at a stalemate. Without warning, a rock fell from the sky and hit Aedifex’s head, who crumpled to the ground. Katastrofeas dusted his suit off and turned his attention to Henry.
“Now you shall face the fate of your master and your parents. After I finish you, I will kill Aedifex,” Katastrofeas gloated.
Henry had a moment of confusion. Why had Katastrofeas invoked his parents? He had a flashback to the moment that he had played the piano in the salon. Energized by this thought, Henry started writing for his life, but Katastrofeas's pen moved like a tornado. With a slithering sound, a trail of knives wound itself around Henry. Suddenly, a Steinway and Sons grand piano hovering over Katastrofeas’s head dropped. With a musical crash, various chords, and a dissonant scream, Katastrofeas was buried under it. When his head poked out of the mess, a vase shattered on his head. Soon after, Katastrofeas, slightly concussed with pottery sticking out of his hair, stuck his head out just in time to feel the pain of a Ming dynasty vase crash on his head. This happened for about ten minutes, going through twenty five vases. Henry, getting impatient, dropped a five-story mansion on Katastrofeas to complete the job.
A haggard Aedifex came up to him. His eyes looked more like a blank in space, black and sunken down. Henry shuddered when Aedifex looked at him. Aedifex looked like a ghoul, his clothes beyond repair and his face dirty and creased with hundreds of years of age. His voice was weaker, and he was slumped. His pad of paper was almost used up, and his pen was marred with new scratches and burns, dented and blackened. "We should go" was all he said. He was silent and brooding. They went through the bathroom door and appeared on the roof of an unfamiliar building.
"Henry." Aedifex called, startling Henry. 
"I was going to tell you about what we are."
"Okay. Go on," Henry said, brimming with questions.
"We are the creators of the world. Before anything, or any creature lived, we were here. Do you know the creation story in the Bible? The god? That was our first creator. It became customary for our creators to choose a person to create the world and to bestow a long life. This extended life lasts for about six hundred years. My master was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who had found me in New York City.  I then presided over the world with him, and when he became president, I was forced to work without him as a full-fledged creator." Aedifex continued with his eyes closed, remembering his past.
"Katastrofeas and his kind with the horrible fashion are the destroyers of the world. They are responsible for the shortcomings. As much as I would like to make the world a Utopia, Katastrofeas always has to mess it up. His master was Adolf Hitler. Do you believe that Hitler killed himself? That never happened. We killed him with severe casualties. That was the hardest job I had ever faced since the Great Depression.”
Aedifex drew back a singed sleeve and showed him a disgusting scar. Henry gagged and threw up on Katastrofeas’s head, which, quite annoyingly, poked out again. It promptly disappeared.
“Let me help,” Aedifex said and started writing.
As the rubble and house flew away, Henry raised a questioning eyebrow.
“He will be in the void, trying to figure out how to breathe,” Aedifex smugly replied to Henry’s unspoken question.
“Henry. Let me tell this to you the easy way. You are my apprentice, and you'll get to manage the world with me. I'm sure you'll do it,” Aedifex cried enthusiastically.
Henry left the myriad of questions he had behind and saved only one.
“Why...why did you choose me?”
Aedifex sighed and took a vial of ink out of the folds in his robes and opened it. A drop of golden ink floated out, levitating in the air. It multiplied quickly, and solidified into a circular tablet. On it, words appeared.
Dear Aedifex,
Katastrofeas is almost upon us. Our child, Henry, is now almost an adult.
Please tell him the truth about everything that has happened to us and everything that is to be.
       Best,
       Ledrophta and Cinna
Henry gasped. “Ledrophta and Cinnia...my parents...that means…” Henry trailed off.
“Yes. That means that your parents were like me. They were killed by Katastrofeas. I promised them that I would tell you everything that is to be and protect you with my life,” Aedifex said. “That is why I chose you.” Henry was silent, his brow furrowing into a mass of wrinkles.
He finally found his words.
"I have always wished to be like my parents. Were they good creators of the world as well?"
"There's no question. They were one of the most respected ones."
"Now I know what I have to do. I'll be a barber."
"Then you shall be exactly like your parents," Aedifex declared.
"I'd be a better barber, though."
“It's a long way to being a creator. You better start studying. On top of that, I don't need a haircut yet.”
Henry and Aedifex looked at each other and burst out laughing. The streets echoed with loud laughter as the sun splashed its rays on the roof, illuminating two figures merged in a single silhouette.