Plot
Coming home, Victoria West (Phyllis Kirk) spots her husband, playwright Gregory West (Keenan Wynn), through the window sharing a drink in his study with Mary, an attractive, affectionate blonde. When Victoria barges into the room, Mary is nowhere to be found.
Gregory explains to his wife that any character that he describes into his dictation machine will appear according to his description. To make it disappear, all he has to do is cut out that portion of the tape and throw it into his fireplace. He demonstrates this, first with Mary and then with an elephant in the hallway. Gregory discovered this talent when a male character he had put a great deal of effort and attention into approached him as a real flesh-and-blood person with his own independent will, shook his hand, and thanked him.
Believing none of this (despite seeing and hearing the elephant), Victoria tells Gregory that he is insane and she is going to have him committed. In response, Gregory pulls a section of tape from his safe and explains that it contains her description. Victoria snatches the tape away from him and throws it on the fire to prove he is insane, and promptly begins to feel faint. "You don't mean you were telling the truth?! You were right!" she cries, and disappears as the flames consume the tape. Frantic, Gregory rushes to his dictation machine and begins to re-describe Victoria. He quickly reconsiders and instead describes Mrs. Mary West as his wife. Mary reappears and mixes her husband a drink.
Serling appears on the set and says, "We hope you enjoyed tonight's romantic story on The Twilight Zone. At the same time, we want you to realize that it was, of course, purely fictional. In real life, such ridiculous nonsense could never—"
"Rod, you shouldn't!" interrupts Gregory, who walks over to his safe and pulls out a tape marked "Rod Serling". "I mean, you shouldn't say such things as 'nonsense' and 'ridiculous'!" he continues as he throws the tape into the fire.
"Well, that's the way it goes," replies Serling, in a resigned tone as he fades away.
Nevertheless, Serling's voice comes in at the epilogue, as usual, and describes Gregory West as once again happy and "apparently in complete control of the Twilight Zone."
Read more about this topic: A World Of His Own
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“Those blessed structures, plot and rhyme—
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I want to make
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—Robert Lowell (1917–1977)
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—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
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—Franz Grillparzer (1791–1872)