The final word flows off the line without the faintest clue of finality. The climax is but a goddamn farse of dribble, fed to the reader with the least amount of nutrition possible. I reread the last paragraph with my eyes closely following along, but there is nothing left to dissect, no clever built-up twists, no magnificent moments of regal splendor; just the utter emptiness. I flipped a few pages forward, but it was empty of any material pertaining to the story: almost as if that were it. I, perched upon my chair in my study, was alone with nothing but the vague aspirations of wanting more than what was given.
Against all reason, against all moments of effort and dedication, our journey was but a fantasy; born out of the mind of the insane. All of the well-placed clues, all of the mindless banter about the crystal, and in the end, it was all for nothing. I stared off into the musty air, with these insatiable desires of more. The emptiness of the house began to dawn on me again for the first time in a week. I could not escape from it; that feeling of all-encompassing absence. A sudden shot went through my body like a fire ignited within my gut. I tossed the sorry paperback piece across the room at the shaky bookshelf, and buried my face within the palms of my hands. Within the solitary darkness, I was no one and nowhere; free of the present to fly without stress or fear of my current situation. That lowly escape from reality, to become without disturbances of the soul, felt divine in the manifestation of the unconscious wants. Once the snap happened though, I was back in the solitary room; alone without a goddamn hand to grasp or a person to call. Alone in a world without reason to continue, and all I could do was bury myself in the books of a by-gone era.
I rose from the chair to pace about the dimly lit room; for I could not escape those feelings, those desires that I had avoided to remain within some level of ignorance. I walked over to the window next to my desk to uncover it from its hiding place behind the curtains, to reveal the moon bathing in the broth of the abyss above. As I stared out across the empty fields basking in the meager light of the still body in the sky, I could not but wonder at the universality of my situation. To feel those real emotions born out of the strife of experience, is truly human, but how many people truly feel that? Even in the experience of these emotions, I had no real moments to compare these movements of the soul to another. Again alone against a tide of internal strife, for to whom is a man to turn, but escape into another world of distraction? He can run away all he wants across the fields of space and time, but how can a man divorce the flesh from the soul?
The flood walls have fallen now to reveal only the inevitable — that which has been hidden right in front of me. I am continually pacing around the room, procedurally biting each fingernail till the sensitive root of the nail bed lay bare. Around and around I strut across the floor, as if I were on a stage giving a monologue to an imaginary crowd about the virtues of fate. I turn again to pace back and forth, caught in a loop of zemblanity, alone without anything to grasp, leaving only the man to free fall into the abyss. The pace has been set to turn again and again till the eyes of solitude finally take that great sleep under the dirt. Thoughts swirl around and around leaving only confusion; in which the question still remains, is that it? The results of an experiment to sift through the rubble of these emotions, only to reveal pain.
Outside of the manor, the grain sways back in forth with the current of the wind. They move in a trance akin to what the master of their actions model. The recurrence of movement and thought brings men back to the beginning, in which the manor windows were full of lights. Those joyous days of activity, in which we worked by day and dined by night, for the hot blood of youth was channeled into those fields, leaving only the calmer temperament for the evening. Those arduous days of dredging grain — muscles aching and clothes seeping with sweat — but even amongst the hardness of the fields, we were happy to be accompanied by conversation. In the moments away from the monotony, we would sit amongst the razed fields and drink from a bottle of whiskey, glazing over old glories in which time was encased in that golden veneer of idealism. After those long hours in the abundant fields, we huddled back into the manor for the night. Within the still images of my memory, I could see many nights spent with the people I adored. The merriment of good moments overshadows the lesser ones, to crystallize a time in the mind, in which everything was of supposed perfection.
One by one, men of brotherhood and women of sisterhood vanished like dust in the wind to return to the earth. Who was I to challenge the path God had set out for them, but I still wept for long hours into the night, surrounded by the place with which they once inhabited. When I, alone, stood upon the mound of dust; there was nothing left for me to wonder. I am alone.
The walls of this mortal shell are slowly closing in on this immortal soul, but there is so much left unsaid for me to feel anything close to satisfied. This mound upon which I stand is the summation of the past, for there is no future here. There is nothing else, besides the cold embrace of regret that comes with the past.
As I pace faster across the uneven floorboards, I feel my age with how nauseous I am becoming. When I finally stop pacing, I find myself in front of the rickety bookshelf behind my chair. I examine the many titles that lived upon those shelves. I had lived within these worlds for many hours on end, to get a glimpse of those golden days. Like sand within a sieve, those golden moments were fleeting. To find it and lose it all in the same moment — was that better than to lose it all forever? The questions continue to swirl, and only then does anger seem to catch up with them. The slamming of my foot against the bottom stand of the bookshelf caused the fragile structure to bottom out, sending a cascade of books down upon me. The large tomes were not the worst of the assault though, for the shelf proceeded to land on top of my fragile frame. The weight of those wooden planks carried my frame downward into the pile of books upon the floor. Upon the boards of my office, I am brought to tears by the pain of this experience. The tears slowly flow down my cheeks, only to land upon the tan pages of old novels. There is nothing else but the aftermath of the past. As I stare out from this concave vantage point, all I can think about is...happiness.
“Where can I get that?”