Someone is Writing

A great funeral is planned for the old king of the world. As he lies upon his bed in the throes of death, he writes his own procession, and his word is carried out. It has been that way throughout his life; his written word was the law, and was more powerful than anything else in the world. Now in the twilight hours of his life, his family weeps; his wife, old and aged like fine wine, sheds silent tears for her beloved, the only man she will ever have loved. After a day of goodbyes, the old king closes his eyes for the final time, knowing that since he has written it, his wishes will be fulfilled to perfection.
Not that any of it matters. The turning of one page just leads to another.
The young man opens his eyes. He takes in a deep breath and smiles. That was a good life, if he says so himself. Slowly he sits up in bed and grabs his notebook from the nightstand. He will need to write quickly if he is going to record everything that has happened in that lifetime. There will be no keepsakes, no treasures, from this life of wealth and luxury. Only memories; and even those fade with time.
After writing down the details of his last life, the man climbs out of bed and stretches. The first movements after waking are always awkward, like a newborn baby taking its first steps. He stumbles over to his writing desk and sits down. No need to take a break. While living as a king, he thought up another life he would love to try. So he jots down the details necessary to start living again. Just the basics, of course: the setting, the history, his birthplace. He decides to jump in at the usual young age of ten, which seems like a good starting point to all his lives. He whips up a beautiful world and, once satisfied, gathers the loose pages and binds them together. He found out long ago the details always work themselves out as the life goes on. He is getting hungry, so he hurries with the binding, and reminds himself to eat a large meal before dying this time. He places the newly bound notebook on his nightstand and lays back down, pulling the sheets over his body, and waits. He waits for sleep to overcome him, and for the first words of the new life to begin.
A lifetime later, he opens his eyes once more. He smiles, even though his last life, that of a poor orphan living on the streets, was not glamorous. It still gave him a new sensation, a new feeling. After writing down the details, he places the notebook on a shelf next to the last one, and sits at his writing desk once more. He picks up his pen and goes to write another life, when suddenly he stops. From the pen come no words. From his mind come no ideas. He sits back and relaxes, hopeful that soon he will think of another life to live.
However no such life comes to the troubled young man. Instead he finds himself thinking of his own little room, with just enough space to hold his bed, writing desk, and all the notebooks full of his various lives. He wonders what will happen once he runs out of shelf space. Will the room just get bigger? He thinks this is the case, but he cannot remember the room ever being smaller. He gets up and strolls over to his window, but when he looks out he sees nothing. No rolling green hills, no furious storm assailing the glass plane. Just the white endless expanse of nothing.
And for the first time in his little room, he is scared.
New fears fill his head. How did he get here? Is he alone? There is no door from this room, so how did this all begin? He remembers the first few dozen times and how amazed he was at this new potential for living countless lives, but he remembers nothing of how it all began. Frantic, he tears down the notebooks, desperately searching for the very first. He finds it, but the first notebook holds true to its nature. It is the first; there is nothing written about what came before. Nothing of his previous life.
How many times has he drifted off to sleep to live again, without ever knowing why he does this? He must have a family, somewhere, but he can recall nothing outside this little room. Even the window only gives him glimpses of settings for him to place his lives. The young man sits on the bed and cradles his head in his hands.
It is only by chance he looks up and sees the corner of a photograph sticking out of a pile of papers. He slowly pulls the picture out and stares at it. In it he is happy, and with him are a group of people surrounding him. All close together and laughing, and the young man realizes this is his family. Not just a family he created, since there are no souvenirs from those lives, but his actual, real family. Somewhere out there, this family is missing him. Somewhere out there is a world he did not create.
And that means somewhere out there, someone else is writing.

Bad Sign

“END OF THE WORLD”
Those words were written on a sign in all capital letters. The sign was a little wooden plank, and the words were carved into it. The sign was about at eye-level, and stood just on the edge of a cliff overlooking a barren wasteland. The ground was dirt and covered in dust as far as the eye could see. Nothing moved, not even the wind, and the air was stale and tasted dry.
“Where are we?”
A middle aged man bit his lip. It was his habit when he was nervous. He found he did it a lot, even when he wasn’t conscious about his anxiety. Everything about his life made him nervous. His nine to five, Monday through Friday office job made him nervous. His plain, ordinary personal life made him nervous. His average looking wife and average kids made him nervous. He was just a nervous man.
“Isn’t it obvious? The sign says the end of the world.”
The little red-headed girl shook her head at the nervous man. It was obvious, at least to her, but she wasn’t sure the nervous man was all that smart. He had no idea why they were all together in the first place. She didn’t either, but at least she could fake it. Plus she wasn’t nervous at all. It took a lot to make her nervous. Usually she was just excited about new opportunities. This was just another adventure for her to learn and grow from, and she loved every bit of it.
“But…this isn’t the end. The land extends further, I can see that. How can we be at the end if we can take another step?”
The nervous man bit down harder on his lip. He really just wanted to go back home. Back to his old, boring, but consistent life. Nothing excited ever happened, but he was content with the monotonous lifestyle he led. He definitely did not like being around these two people at all. The little girl was just too optimistic for his liking, and the old…man…hardly talked at all. But when he did, it just made the man even more nervous.
“I don’t think the sign means we are at a place. I think it means we are at a time.”
The little girl was always practical and logical, though much more happy than the nervous man, and especially more chipper than the old man. She looked up at the sunken dark eyes of the elder companion.
“Wouldn’t you say so, Grandpa?”
She called him Grandpa, even though she had no idea who he truly was.
“Yes.”
The old man was more skeletal than any living person should be, and gave the impression that his body had died long ago, but his mind would not lie down to rest. He scared the nervous man, since the nervous man saw the old man as a future version of himself.
“But how did we end up here? I didn’t think we could travel through time.”
The nervous man wrung his hands together. Another nervous habit; he was very nervous now. He didn’t remember much of anything that happened lately, except what the little girl told him, which he wasn’t sure if she made up or not. This lapse of memory only made him cling to the past more.
Answering the nervous man’s question, a little worm popped out of the dirt at the base of the sign. The worm had no eyes, no ears, no mouth; it was just an ordinary worm. Yet the trio could hear the worm speak clearly.
“I can answer that for you. Are you sure that’s what you want to know?”
The three companions looked down at the worm, and then the little girl spoke. She was the first to speak to new, unusual things like this. These kinds of things scared the nervous man, but the old man remained unnerved. He had seen far too many things in his life to be startled by a talking worm.
“What else would we want to know, if I may ask?”
“Why certainly!” The worm was very polite. “There are two questions you may ask me that I must answer, but I can only answer one. After that, you are on your own.”
“What are the questions?”
The nervous man bunted in, talking loudly to make himself seem more intelligent and understanding than he really was. Nobody fell for it.
“How did we end up here? And where do we go from here? Those are the two questions I must answer. But remember! I can only answer one. So think it over carefully amongst the three of you. I can wait as long as you need.”
The three travelers huddled together to discuss their options. The nervous man wanted badly to know how they got there. He did not care to know what they need to do next; all he cared about was the present, and getting the facts straight about the past.
The little girl desperately wanted to know what to do next. She did not need to know how they got there; they were there, and nothing could change that, but knowing what to do next would be a great help.
The old man said nothing.
They talked about this for days, neither of them budging on what they wanted to do. The worm sat there listening; he had heard these arguments plenty of times before, and would hear them plenty of times more. They always ended the same way. This was no exception.
Finally, the trio had had enough. The nervous man walked away pouting, saying something about youth being wasted on the foolish. The little girl stood there crying, but eventually walked away as well; the tears still streaming down her innocent face. The old man was left alone with the worm.
“Well I’m sorry, but I can’t answer anything unless everyone is present. But you already knew that, didn’t you?”
The old man nodded his head. He had seen this many times, and each time was the same.
“Better luck next time, old chap.”
The worm buried back into the dirt, leaving the old man staring at the sign. He would not walk away. He would stay there, just as he always had, and await the arrival of the new travelers. They never remembered how they got there, but they all got there just the same.

Forgot my Pen

Just had a wonderful thought but I forgot my pen
I’ll use my blood to write out what needs to be said
Would you like to hear the words of my life?
The words carved out of my bloodline?
Nobody likes the truth and there it stands
For all to see but none believe
So easy to hide in the lies
So easy to live in disguise
It’s not like me to disagree
But there’s the truth for you to see
I’m looking for the cure for monotony
Do you have it?
Can you give it?
The answer’s simple yet hard to say
Put it off until the problem goes away
Following a trend that compasses all
Dying like the blinded fools we are
Nobody likes the truth and there it stands
For all to see and some to believe
So easy to hide in the lies
So easy to live in disguise
It’s not like me to disagree
But there’s the truth and you should see
So make your mistakes and think you’re right
While some can’t sleep on through the night
Not sure where human ends and monster begins
But you’re playing a game that nobody wins
Nobody likes the truth and here it stands
For all to see and all to believe
So easy to hide in the lies
So easy to live in disguise
It’s not like me to disagree
But here’s the truth and you need to see

Failure

This is not a story. At least, not in the typical sense. In a way it is a story, in the way that you would acknowledge a happening you heard from a co-worker as a story. There doesn’t seem to be any plot, nor any climax or direction. And the only purpose evident is to try to make someone understand, besides for him. You see, many people go through life not understanding much of anything at all, and yet that seems to be a perfectly fine way of living nowadays. More people are obtaining more education, yet less seem to understand any of it. Perhaps this is not so. However, it would be hard to say otherwise.
Some may say it is not a good habit to dwell on the past, while others say we must learn from our mistakes in order to prevent future disasters. Both have proven to fail when put against human nature. The past, in life, is the only thing concrete and undeniable. What has happened has happened, and nothing will change that, and to not think of the past is impossible, and to learn from it is even harder. Some learn, which is why we are where we are, which supposedly is a good thing. But no matter how much we learn, there are still aspects to life which evade our understanding, regardless if you are an understanding person or not. It is these aspects that he thinks about the most.
He is a keeper, a thinker, but you can call him what you will. His name is not important, nor is it important what he is. What is important, however, is what he does, or in many cases what he fails to do. Life has a funny way of making some failures more important than most successes. Success, once achieved, can be repeated again and again, but failure is a chaotic and haphazard element to life, and is rarely duplicated. It is in these failures that he thrives, so much so that one can say he does not allow himself to succeed in anything, for fear that upon success, he will lose what makes him, him.
Now, as for what he does, it is not easily explained. As said before, he is a keeper; of incidents, of personalities, of all the little details that truly make a person who they are. Nobody is perfect, and it is in these flaws that he finds beauty and perfection. It is in these flaws that he seeks out what he feels is missing from his life. He is lost in every applicable meaning of the word. Blindly searching through the souls of those around him, he looks for that thing that will make him stop thinking, and start existing.
He is a thinker as well, and he does this quite well. Too well, in some opinions, but that is all a matter of perspective. Very little can happened that he has not already thought of happening, and very little brings the excitement of surprise to his spiraling mind. Of people he thinks most, and when he has found someone interesting enough, he observes and thinks, making a detailed report of who that person is. From the abandoned lover to the floating soul, he has seen all the personalities a person wishes to see in his lifetime. He has embraced them all, from the beautiful to the repulsive, and has torn them apart, piece by piece, to see how they are who they are.
He has done this for everyone he has met, including himself, and has yet to find what it is he is missing. Perhaps it is because he cannot fully analyze himself. Perhaps his file is sitting on a shelf, covered in dust, half finished and waiting for someone who can analyze and understand people the way he does to come along and finish his own report. Perhaps this person will find what he is missing, and be able to set him on his path. Or perhaps, even more likely, he is not missing anything at all. It could be, through all the dissecting of everything around him, he has lost the meaning of what it means to truly live. Being so focused on what’s around him, it could be he has forgotten who he is, and it is this revelation that will set him free. But, for now, he will have to wait. He is busy with his failures, and just like this story, he has no plot to follow, no climax to rush the emotions, and no direction through life. And his only purpose evident is to try to make someone know what it’s like to truly understand.

The End

“The End is nigh” A homeless man held up a sign with this statement on it. He had a disgusting appearance, his face black with dirt and grease. He had a long, brown beard, which was littered with little fragments of garbage and crumbs. His hair was long and greasy, and in some parts matted down from the grim he slept in. His clothes were tattered and torn, just as dirty as his body was, and his toes popped out of his shoes. The flies that covered his clothes were his only companions, besides the intangible forms that lay heavily on his heart. He lived by a dumpster outside of a gritty little pizza shop in the shadow of the great city. At night he slept, and during the day he slumped against the dumpster holding his sign.
Very few people saw his sign and those that did just passed him by, shaking their heads or mocking him under their breath. He had very little recognition of the meaning of his message, other than the obvious end it signified. He could not even remember the reason he communicated his message, but he had an uncomfortable feeling that he did because that is what he wished for most of all. He cursed the people who walked before him, and denounced his god for causing him this misery.
How this man fell to this level is uncertain, even to his own mind. Perhaps it was his own greed, or maybe the corruption of the company he worked for. Regardless of the reason, this man, who was regarded as successful by his peers, fell into this spiral of despair and poverty, which continues today, even after seven long years. He had lost everything he had, but it was not his house, or his TV, or his money that he longed for most. What this grotesque creature wanted most was what he had taken for granted long ago. He wanted love. He wanted happiness. He wanted to feel the warm water of a shower over his aching body. He wanted a bed to sleep in. He wanted more than just scraps to eat. But even as he thought of this, his thoughts quickly turned from innocent grief to hungry greed. Even at this level, the modern human still contains greed and corruption in his heart. If a man this low in life can not be relieved of the darkness of the human soul, than what hope have we?
Today is just like every other day. The same people pass him, and the same customers enter the pizza shop. The same routines are followed, day in and day out. Which such freedom in their lives, he thought, why do they conform to the monotonous schedule that they do? He, who had nothing, had no choice but repeat his hell every day. He had resolved long ago that, if by some miracle, he would find a way out of this hole; he would lead a life renewed. But promises made with no hope attached to them are as hollow as the empty dumpster which he leaned on.
However, something was different about today. Instead of sitting against the cold metal box, he walked out of his familiar, and stood at the sidewalk’s edge. He held his sign high, still not sure of its meaning. As he looked around at his new surroundings, he made notice to things he could not have ever noticed from the dumpster’s shade. He noticed the clear blue sky. He saw the clouds float on down, undisturbed by the smoke he was so accustomed to seeing. He felt the sun beat down on his dirty skin, and felt it’s warm for the first time in a long time. He looked around, unsure of what he saw. He had only seen a small view of this world for such a long time, but now he saw with his eyes what he had only heard with his ears. The vivid colors of the signs and cars assaulted his eyes, and he heard the laughter of the people. But this laughter was not the same he had heard from his tormenters. This laughter was of joy and happiness. He saw the women smiling, he saw the children giggling. The buzzing of the flies, which had been left with the dumpster and grim, was now replaced with the fluttering of the wings of birds. A myriad of new smells flew to his nose, and delighted the wretched man.
All these new sights and sounds, these new feelings and smells, they reminded him of his past memories. The memories of happiness, of his time with his long lost friends and lovers, overwhelmed his senses. The ecstasy of his pleasant memories brought tears to his eyes. He looked at his sign, his beloved possession that had given him the comfort he needed during the cold nights and rainy days, and for the first time saw clearly the gospel he was preaching. He lowered his sign, and it slowly slipped from his grasp, falling to the ground. No longer was he going the play the doomsday prophet. No longer would he curse his fellow man. He looked towards the heavens, and praised his lord, giving thanks for the joyous memories he still possesses, and the chance for a new life. Hope filled his darkened and empty heart, and he no longer wished for his last day. The end was never here, nor was it ever coming. This was only a test, and a chance to see the world in a new light. The homeless man saw this clearly now, for he saw the world not with just his mind, but with his heart as well. The man stepped out of his familiar darkness, into uncertainty, and found what his heart desired most.
Isn’t about time we did the same?