Questlamation Mark Todd (Fiction)

I don’t want a period at the end of this sentence. Or at the end of this one. But they’re there. They’re always there. Just like the dash you’re about to see—there it is. And the commas, and the “quotation” marks, and the semicolons; there to piss me off, one at a time. I want to write like Kerouac, like the beats, freeform, run on sentences, gibberish, jazz, but I can’t. Todd won’t let me. Todd makes me put periods at the end of my sentences, and commas between ideas, and sometimes even before the word “and,” which he then insists must be in quotations. Todd is a prick. Period.

It’s like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but it’s not—it’s me and Todd. Todd is somewhere in the back of my mind, and I can’t get him to leave me alone, to let me write without punctuation. Why do I need a question mark at the end of this sentence? Isn’t the fact that I started it with the word “why” enough to let my audience know that it is indeed a question? How can a sentence start with the word “why” and not be a question? Or “how,” or “when,” or “what,” or “who?” And enough with the goddamn commas and quotation marks! I hate you Todd! Exclamation point!

I wasn’t always like this. Todd didn’t always exist. He was created, like a monster. He evolved through years of education, from grade school all the way up to the university, where he really made himself apparent. When I was a child, I didn’t need Todd. I would just write and write and write with no trouble or worry of using any punctuation and boy did it feel good boy did it feel free but then I was introduced to Todd, and I noticed that my writing slowly changed, becoming something that I never intended it to be. Now it’s filled with these marks, these symbols that distract the reader from my words, which break up the flow of my sentences.

And I’m worried that Todd’s starting to take over. I’m worried that my voice will never be the same. From here on out it’s going to be filled with pauses, and stops. When it should be a freeform expression of my thoughts and ideas and dreams of who I am on the inside and not the kind of writer that Inspector Todd and the grammar police are demanding that I be. But I’m afraid that it might be too late. Period.

Todd’s getting cocky. He’s starting to use more dashes—see; and more semicolons, even going as far as experimenting with both in the same sentence. I’m not sure that it even works, but Todd doesn’t care. Todd has begun to do whatever he wants.

Todd thinks he’s getting clever. He claims to have invented a new symbol, a new piece of punctuation. He calls it the “questlamation mark” and he thinks it will put him in the history books. I try to tell him that nobody cares about the history of punctuation, but he doesn’t listen. He’s obsessed. “How do you emphasize the importance of a question?” he asks. “Through the clever usage of words,” I tell him. “No,” he replies. “You do it with a questlamation mark.” A father finds his son drawing on the living room wall with crayons and yells, “What are you doing?” But it’s not “What are you doing?” It’s “What are you doing!?!” Because he’s obviously disappointed and pissed off. He knows what the boy is doing—he’s drawing on the wall. What he really wants to know is “Why the hell are you doing this?” But that’s not how people talk, so he yells, “What are you doing!?!” And that’s why we need a questlamation mark—to emphasize the question. I’m beginning to wonder if Todd’s insane.

I try to explain it to Todd that you can’t simply invent new symbols, but he won’t hear of it. It’s already done, he says, it’s already invented. You take a question mark and put a vertical line through it, and there you have it—the questlamation mark. But they’re not going to just add a new key to every computer in the world, I try to explain. But Todd won’t listen—he’s obsessed. He says that I need to start calling the computer companies and demanding to speak with their designers, that the questlamation mark will become a reality. I don’t think it’s going to be that easy. Todd doesn’t care what I think anymore.

John refused to call the computer companies, so I had to take matters into my own hands. I always thought John was a bit of a pussy. He was always trying to write run-on sentences that didn’t make any sense. He was always talking about style, and art, and all that bullshit, like he was some sort of hack novelist from the early 1960’s. He didn’t understand that grammar exists for a reason; that without punctuation there is only chaos. But I don’t think we’re going to have to worry about that anymore; I think we’ve got it all under control—now that I’m in charge. No periods? No commas? No quotation marks? I mean, who the hell did he think he was!?! Questlamation mark.