notes from bookcase

currently listening to CA album If I Don't Survive the Nuclear Winter

October 17th 2023

Personal Writings

Been writing a book for fun and wanted to share it even though it's not complete yet! There will be about eleven chapters as far as I can tell


Immortals Anonymous

Preface

When the world was falling apart in September of 1940, there was an 18-year-old boy who had a free day from school. There was nothing he could do about the world falling apart -- there’s nothing any of us can do about the world falling apart. So instead, we wake up every morning and go to our silly little jobs and drink our silly little coffees and live out our silly little lives, desperately wishing it would fix itself.

After the day was over, this boy, just like us all, would lay in bed at night and in the dark of his room, raise his hand to the ceiling, and watch the outline of his fingers reach up, as if the sight of his hand was the only real part of his body, as if that was all that existed of him in the world. He would do this because there was nothing else he could do. He was alone in a crumbling world, and even though everyone else lays in their beds and does the exact same thing, the boy didn’t know he had company in the experience, mostly because he was 18, and partially because he didn’t talk to anyone about it. So instead, he spent his free day taking his dog, Robot, for a walk in the woods.

He walked and walked and walked until he realized his dog had disappeared. The boy panicked, but after a second, Robot poked his head out of the ground and came running toward the boy. The boy was relieved -- but confused by what had occurred. With a stick in hand, he investigated the area from which Robot had disappeared. After poking around the leaves, the boy uncovered a hole in the ground, big enough for him to fit through.

Most people in this 18-year-old boy’s shoes would have thought Ah! A hole in the ground! Perhaps some wild animals live in the area. I must evacuate! Perhaps the really nice people would think This hole is a tripping hazard, I should mark off the area with tape. But this boy did neither of those things. Instead, he elected to take the most illogical route and stick his head into the hole.

When he crawled to the mysterious otherside, he was greeted with wonders that had not been seen in 20,000 years.

A few days later, the boy brought his friends to the cave and showed them what he had discovered: paintings of deer and mammoths, of wooly rhinos and bulls. They wandered through the cave and, though they could not explain it at the time, they experienced a feeling like walking through a silent and unguarded art gallery. Deeper in the cave, the boy found something that echoed inside him so deeply it ached and would not stop aching for the rest of his life. The prints of outstretched hands, hundreds- no, thousands, all layered on top of each other.

He stretched his arm out in front of his face, the movement so familiar, and placed it on the hand in front of him. In his palm, he could feel the skin of another. Deep in this rock, there was the human who made this handprint. They still lived. And though the world was crumbling around him, in his mind there was only one thought.

I have to protect this.

Next Chapter