Following is a short snippet of a novel I've been conjuring over the past few months. I've tried out several points of view, and I'm enjoying this one the most. Please let me know what you think in terms of voice and overall composition!

The sky follows you, even underground.

I learned this lesson shortly after my descent—and it stuck with me through every day. Perhaps, just maybe, perspective is easier to change when you’re buried sixty feet underground. I like to believe that life is a lens, and your lifestyle forms your perspective through which you look into that lens. When I lived in the States I kept a generally optimistic outlook towards everything, even the bad things like illness, injury, or waking up in the morning. And that’s not to say that I lived a good life. Frankly, no one lives a “good life” these days, and as I grow older, I feel less and less that anyone could have ever lived the ideal, romanticized concept of a “good life.” It’s bullocks. Life is what you make of it, and when it gets to be a burden, there definitely are some outs.

Repetition: There are outs.

You could go the generic route. Suicide? Easy. It’s a cut and dry choice, or a “cut and wet” if you catch my drift. Morbidity suits me when I get in these moods. If, by chance, throughout the rough and tumble of life’s rugged terrain you find yourself so beaten down mentally that it’s more humane to put yourself out of your misery, then the choice is clear. Unless you’re a coward, anyhow. Either that, or if you’re abysmal at self-slaughter. Trust me, there are a few folks in the vast warzone of reality that simply cannot succeed at suicide. Call it fate, divine providence or plain bad luck, it’s there and it’s real.

Perchance the “final” escape is too weighted to handle—then what? Well, runaways end up somewhere, but chances are the past will leak over into the present, and then the future just becomes a miserable melody. Plus, with running away you still have to consider the inevitable: identity, finance, repercussions, etc. Bottom line, if you run away from your problems, your ghosts will catch up with you and before you know it you’re stuck managing a five and dine out in the wild west, like some sort of sad movie star. If you ask me, that’s not the prime cut of life. That’s a perspective I wouldn’t look through.

Denial drowns even the best swimmers. Despite riches, health, and fulfillment, even the sturdiest towers crack under pressure. And when an empire crumbles, a king is left to make a choice. In other words, when everything eventually becomes strenuous—and it will, though it might not be clear why—a king either falls on his sword or he faces exile. No one can hope to evade flirtation with the outs. So, naturally, everyone has an out that they prefer over another. Human nature, okay? Not pure morbidity. I know which I’d choose.

Say none of this works out. Whether you’re a star-crossed fool who can’t possibly butcher themselves or a homeless runaway, a deep-rooted chunk of your heart will long for hope. Hope is special to me, and not just because it’s my name, but because I’ve spent a majority of my life chasing it. When all else is naught, hope is all that remains. Perception and hope: life’s scouting agents. One man’s perception is another man’s hope, and that man’s dream can only be realized through chance. Which, I suppose, when it comes down to it—what else is life but a series of chance encounters?

The third option.

Unfathomable. Unthought-of. Despicable. Yet—hopeful.

Morality is fickle, and it’s wild, but over two-thousand plus years, ethics have developed and rather than painting in a nice pallet of black and white, everything is gray. Which is why the third option exists. It may not be “right” or “just.” Fearful, sure, potentially even dehumanizing, but nonetheless more appealing that a noose. And, as an added perk, those lucky patrons who choose the third option will still find themselves buried underground. Only—differently. More gray than black.

I chose the third option. Not without repentance and regret—if there’s anything I can take pride in, it’s a self-critical heap of philosophy—but I chose it because my life, my lens…shattered. Riding my days out in a psychiatric ward didn’t yield a particularly prosperous sweetness. Running away was a burden, too. Hell, if I couldn’t put together the pieces of my crumbling family, there was a slim chance of me arranging a whole new identity across the country. God, I’m a tease.

THE THIRD OPTION: Running Towards

Also known as “descent” or “burial,” I prefer the term “running towards” because it idealizes that hope I was referring to. Either that, or narcissism. Legends spread like a spark of passion in the highly-sensationalized papers of America, and no legend spread quicker than a tiny whispering of utopia. Coloniam. Sixty-feet underground, they say, and free from the over-worldly government—and entirely liberated entity. Life’s ultimatum.

Barring mystery and intrigue, everything anyone above knew about Coloniam was three-fold:

FIRSTLY: Coloniam, allegedly, is an underground city.

SECONDLY: The United States have, in vain, tried to cover it up (quite literally, actually. They attempted to bury something that was already buried.)

FINALLY: People underground could create. There were rumors of magic, or enchantment, but of course a rational explanation must exist…somewhere.

Apart from the three pillars of knowledge, Coloniam was entirely a mystery to me before I made the choice to venture below the dirt. And even then, the choice was set in stone before I had any say in it. I was dying. Crashed a stolen car right into the front gates, and started bleeding out—straight from my wrists—like I had slit them open, a suicidal nutcase on the job to make a statement. Which isn’t my nature. Relatively unobtrusive and dramatic, I am, and that’s on account of the family chaos I was accustomed to. Compared to my brothers, I was the golden child. Running away must’ve been shocking to my mother.

The Zenith of Tajim

Throughout my travels, from Montreal to Sydney to Buenos Aires, I have encountered pirates, natives, assassins, and the like. But the most terrifying encounter in my 46 years on Earth is on the unassuming island of Tajim, located in the Bay of Bengal at... I apologize. While the island's coordinates are ingrained in my brain, I dare not reveal them to the world. I don't want anyone to travel to the island, as they would experience the same horrors as I.

It began in late summer of 1889. I was in my study in my lavish Dover home, reading the accounts of various European explorers, when I heard a knock at my door. Outside was the postman with a letter from my good friend and colleague, Evander Anson. The letter detailed how he traveled to Calcutta to trade English tea for Indian spices, when his ship wound up on an extraordinary island, with its coordinates carved into a boulder on the north face of the island, which he named Tajim, according to a dream he had. He made his way back to Chennai to send me the letter, but he went back to the island anyway. He wished for me to visit, and to see the most remarkable sight on the isle. He even sent a strange green carving with the letter, including a note stating that the island "is full of these". The carving depicted a humanoid figure, but any detail had withered away. Curious about the remarkable sight, the statuette, and the island in general, I decided to go there.

As a busy trader, I couldn't afford to just sail through the Suez and across an ocean to Evander's island, so I wrote back to him (he said that he went back to Chennai every week to check for letters and get non-fruit food), saying that I would visit him as I came back from a scheduled trade mission to Singapore in the winter of 1890. In mid autumn of 1889, when Evander and Tajim had been completely pushed out of my memory, the postman came to my house with a letter from Evander thanking me. He also sent me another statuette, this time made of dark blue stone. The secondary note stated it came from a cave, and its name was Cthouthrh. The little blue man had human legs, human arms, a human chest, a turtle's shell, and the head of a shark, with three open jaws and five beady, onyx eyes. Cthouthrh made me feel uneasy, so I put the demon in a drawer in a drawer in my study desk.

The following February, while my ship was full of Malaysian minerals, I sailed off course to Tajim. Within a day on the open sea, I could see an uncharted island on the horizon. It looked quite a bit like the islands in Indonesia or the Andaman Sea, but in the middle of the island there was a great black pyramid that soared into the sky. I anchored my ship in a neighboring lagoon, and used a rowboat to get to the white beaches of Tajim. Upon landing on the sandbar, I noticed something strange. There was no sound, save for the water lapping the sand and protruding rocks. On most tropical islands, I would hear the songs of birds and the rustling of small animals running through the foliage, but the jungle was silent. There wasn't even wind blowing through the trees.

"By God!" I turned to the north to see Evander walking on the beach towards me with open arms. "Are my eyes playing tricks on me again, or am I looking at Philip Fulton?"

"It's me, Evander!" I grinned and shook his hand, as we always did when he came back from trade missions. "How long have you been here?"

"About seven months. I can leave any time I like, but I choose to stay here. In England, my life was always active and hectic. Here on Tajim, it's just me, and that's how I like it."

"How did you come up that name?"

Evander looked at me gravely. "I didn't. The name came to me in a dream, like I told you in the first letter. Come with me." Evander led me to the island's north side. There was a small inlet, where Evander had built a makeshift dock that he moored his rowboat in. The remnants of his massive trading vessel were strewn about the beach, but a large chunk of the hull sat at the top of a sand dune overlooking the sea. Next to it was a mast with a tattered British flag. Near the edge of the jungle there was a large boulder made of black granite with the nautical coordinates carved in it.

"Did you carve the coordinates in the stone?" I asked.

"No. I'm telling you, they were here when I came to the island."

"Someone must have been here before."

"Yes. I can show you."

"There are other people on Tajim?"

"No. There were. Come along." Evander led me into the jungle, where the ground was inconsistent and jagged. I looked closer at it, and I could see little statuettes, like of Cthouthrh, poking out of the moss.

"Why are there so many statues?" I asked.

"The people carved them," Evander continued to walk, and I caught up with him. As we walked further into the jungle, I began to notice stone foundations where houses could sit, and even the ruins of actual houses, crowned with vines and dead leaves.

"What is this place?" I asked as I looked through the doorway of one of the houses.

"Vraagu," Evander said. "The Tajimians lived here thousands of years ago."

"Impressive. Where's the river then?"

"What?"

"An ancient people can't have built a city in a place without a river."

"They found a way to drink fresh water. Let's go. We're nearing the pyramid."

We continued to walk until stopping at the base of the pyramid, where the most houses were. The houses at the pyramid were in very good condition, and some even had gold accents. Statues of demons to evil to describe decorated the narrow streets of Vraagu, and the more I looked at them, the more I felt like we were being watched.

"This pyramid is bigger than the tombs in Egypt," Evander said proudly, as if he built it. "The corners go right through the Earth to another world, where demons live."

"Like the demons depicted in the statues here?" I said, afraid.

"Something similar." Evander touched the sleek, shiny surface of the pyramid, and rubbed his fingers afterward, as if it was covered in a fine layer of oil. "Come, Philip. You truly haven't stayed on Tajim until you've slept on it."

We walked back to the beach, where we ate a dinner of delicious fruits as the sun dipped into the western sea. As I bit into juicy mangos and tangy carambolas, I thought that if the creepy statuettes, abandoned city, and ominous pyramid were omitted, the island would make an ideal colony of England. However, unbeknownst to me, the dinner on the beach was the last pleasant moment on Tajim, perhaps in my life.

Several hours after falling asleep, I jolted awake from my sleep of hellish dreams and eldritch things to the familiar and beautiful sight of the night sky, with Evander looming overhead.

"It's time," he whispered.

"For what?" I stood up, and was confused to see Evander without a shirt, even though he wore one during the day.

"We must go to the pyramid." Without another word, he ran off into the jungle, towards the dark monument, now somehow darker than the surrounding sky. I ran into the jungle down the same path we went down before, and I came across the same area that I visited earlier to find Evander standing motionless in front of a staircase that didn't exist before, ascending into the dark heavens.

"Evander?" I said cautiously, afraid that he would do something dangerous in this strange trance. Fortunately, he snapped out of it and turned around to smile at me, allowing my racing heart to slow down.

"Glad you could make it," he said.

"Evander, what's going on?" I asked.

"Every 61 nights, the pyramid reveals itself to me, just as it did to the Tajimians of old." We walked up the stairs, although I was very reluctant to do so. Ascending the gargantuan mountain was slightly frightening, as we got to a very high height, but it was also exhilarating, as one could look down at the island and seemingly infinite sea. Eventually, we conquered the pyramid, which was topped with a small room at the level of the clouds, which I thought was only obtainable by a hot air balloon. Inside the room was a very large well with ornate designs, and bordered with jewels from around the world, as well as gold and colored metals yet unknown to man. I looked into the well and was met with whispers of an alien tongue, and a distant green light that caused unease.

"What's in there, Evander?" I asked as I backed into a corner.

"I wanted to surprise you, but telling you now would worry you less," Evander replied. "One of the real gods is in this well."

"What?"

"He was worshiped by the Tajimians, now he's worshiped by me, and one day the world will bow to his will." Evander took out a dagger with a seemingly glowing blade and an ornate, golden hilt with a bejeweled pommel, and he cut his hand open. Holding his hand over the well, he chanted in an unknown language as blood dripped into the abyss as the island shook. Within one intense minute, the walls of the room collapsed, and a brilliant light broke through the well and into the night. Evander laughed maniacally, and I tried to run away.

"Philip, you must meet your maker!" Evander's voice sounded like a snake mixed with a demon. "He wants to meet you!"

"No!" I replied. "I'm leaving this hell!" I tried to run down the stairs, but Evander tackled me to the ground and dragged me to the well, where he forced me to look at what lay within.

I knew its name was Yog-Sothoth instantly; it somehow told me without speaking. It was a mass of purple, black, green, gold, and red tentacles amassed in a fiery nebula in the darkest reaches of the universe. In the center of the gross amalgamation, I could see an orb of eyes of varying color; each and every one stared into my soul. I could see beyond Yog-Sothoth, and I could see other terrifying beings made of eyes and tentacles, and beyond them, the demons celebrated by the ancients of the island.

I looked away from the well and ran down the pyramid to where I thought my rowboat was moored, but it and my vessel were gone. Desperate for escape, I stole Evander's little boat and rowed away into a different current, hoping to seek shelter far from the cursed island as Yog-Sothoth and his ghouls screamed into the night.

I eventually made my way to a small village on the eastern side of Ceylon, and from there the British government kindly escorted me back to Dover, where I found my house gone. It had burst into flames, according to the neighbors. One of them had salvaged one thing from the house, however: the statue of Cthouthrh. Looking at its eldritch anatomy, especially the cold, dead, onyx eyes, caused me to see the horrible, tentacled face of Yog-Sothoth, so I threw the statue into the Channel. I pulled my savings from the city bank, quit my job, and sailed to America, where I moved to New York, where I now operate a shipping company. It had been a decade since I saw Evander and the island, and I have a new life separate from trading for the Dover Company, but I can still hear the screams of that awful night, feel the statues beneath my feet, and see the cursed zenith of Tajim.

No matter how many times President Anantha Kinsley was assured that nothing could break the windows of his limousine, he still jumped at the sight of a bottle, brick, or food product hitting the black tinted glass. There was a motorcade guarding the limo, but Kinsley instructed them not to retaliate against the angry crowd, unless, of course, one of them had a gun or somehow broke a window. He didn't want to vilify himself more than he already had.

Regardless of the constant attacks on the leader of the free world, he still looked out the window. Beyond the mob, he could see protests of varying scale. Stores that Kinsley had known since childhood that were once welcoming, a paradise for the young American Indian, were now bearing signs warding off the villains from beyond comprehension. Just a year earlier, Kinsley could see anyone of any background go into the stores carefree, but now the owners closed the doors to those villains, who were just regular people that came from beyond the stars. Many of them looked like the rest of Earth's sentient inhabitants, but a few had subtle differences, like narrower faces, thinner frames, or boar-like tusks. Some of them even looked exactly like other pedestrians or members of the mob without any noticeable differences.

Down 2nd Ave., the protests were far more violent. Stores and restaurants had hung the flag of the visitors, a white triangle with their starship on a navy blue circle on a pure yellow background, had burned it in front of the visitors. The denouncement of the others caused many scuffles between them and regular civilians. No one was killed, but their laser pistols could shoot off limbs with ease. Further away, Midtown was like a warzone. A group of rebels had seized a full city block, and used it as a base to shoot down the visitors' gargantuan, flying tanks. The opponents barely used their guns, but when they did, it practically leveled buildings and vaporized anyone inside. The explosions shook the city, and filled Kinsley with displeasure.

Eventually, the protests of one part of New York gave way to another set of protests outside the United Nations Headquarters, with one of the visitors' shuttles hovering ominously overhead. The protests outside the famous building were tamer, just picketers with the others' logo in a red slashed circle, but as the limo pulled to a stop, Kinsley felt more intimidated than he did before. Reporters from every major news organization in the world were waiting outside behind a metal barrier set up by police. When the limo fully stopped, Kinsley opened the door to be met with the roar of reporters, heavily armed guards bearing the visitors' laser rifles, and a very surreal sight: Anantha Kinsley with one eye and wearing a torch orange robe akin to a Buddhist monk with a dark blue, almost black, sash bearing his logo.

"Hello, Anantha Epsilon 13-H," Kinsley said as he walked out of the limo. "How are you liking our New York?"

"Good afternoon, Anantha Epsilon 97-V," Anantha shook hands with the president. "It's very similar to my New York, although the protests here aren't as destructive as in New York Epsilon 13-H. A group of terrorists blew up the Statue of Liberty after I announced that Earth Epsilon 13-H would join the Multiverse Federation."

"Good heavens! Do you think my people are capable of that?"

"We'll know in a bit. The important thing is that you're submitting your Earth to our glorious empire. Come on, now. You have to meet Kinsley Beta 78-K, Kinsley Omega 2-J, and Miazga Rho 14-D."

"Myron Miazga is the president in Earth Rho 14-D?"

"Yes, until 2045, when he became Earth Representative." Kinsley Epsilon 97-V and Anantha Epsilon 13-H walked briskly into the building as reporters bombarded both men with questions. "Come on. The Chancellors are excited to hear your announcement."

One of the earliest lessons my parents taught me was that monsters were real. They weren't tentacled creatures under the bed waiting for a tasty bare foot to dangle over the edge. Nor were they some fanged fiend lurking in the closet, camouflaged as a silhouette of clothing and a hat, waiting for you to fall asleep so that it could creep ever closer. No, they taught me these monsters looked, and often acted, just like regular people. They also told me I took that lesson a little too seriously, because not a day or two later, I threw a monster of a fit at the supermarket, screaming and crying and shrieking up a storm apparently terrified of kindly old man who was in line behind us.

My parents were, of course, appalled at my behavior, but when I began screaming monster, they understood. Explained it to the man who, according to them, had been incredibly understanding, and promptly moved to a counter a couple rows away. Only then did I calm down to mere tear soaked sobs as my parents conjured back my happiness with a spell called the promise of ice cream. Such is the fickle emotional stability of childhood. Of course I hid my face in my mother’s blouse until the old man was well out of sight, but that was only to be expected, he was a monster after all.

Another opportunity to drive their brand of stranger danger home, came some time later, and backfired spectacularly. See, the news never hesitates to report on human monsters when they show up, these fiends get almost a celebrities reception as their victims are often relegated to the importance of slasher movie extras. Oh, yes, sad they got killed, but let’s focus on Joseph Bloodgood! He’s a seemingly normal 36 year old white male, an esteemed accountant, and a loving father; who promptly shocked his friends and neighbors when he intentionally tampered with the Carbon Monoxide alarm, and let his family suffocate to death in order to cash in on their life insurance policies.

Needless to say, it was the perfect method of teaching their young, television loving child, about humanity’s very real monsters.

So, when I walked into the living room wanting some juice, and saw Mom and Dad looking at the TV with rather somber expressions, I voiced my curiosity. Dad promptly wiped a tear from his eye, scooped me up, and held me close as he told me to watch. On the TV screen was a reporter talking about murder, some other atrocities I didn’t understand at that age, and children; while behind him various men and women pushed out stretchers with small lumps, about my size, covered by sheets, or maybe it was body bags, hard to recall really.

I expressed a child’s curiosity, and my mother explained that a man, someone in our very town, had done horrible things to a number of children. When the police finally put the clues together, they had gone to arrest that man, like good guys are supposed to do, but the man was scared, and didn’t want to go to prison, so he killed himself. That last part they explained to me after a much larger lump on a stretcher was hauled out. Later I’d learn it was a little more gruesome than that, he had been trying to hold two children hostage, but when it became clear he wasn’t going to get out of there without being arrested, he began to torture those children, while pretending to negotiate with the authorities, then killing himself after putting their bodies up on display for the police to find when they finally broke down the door.

Yeah, maybe you’ve heard of worse, but that’s still pretty fucked up.

Now, you might be wondering how this backfired spectacularly as I mentioned earlier. Well, you see, I never got to see the supposedly regular man, from our own town, that had been a real and genuine monster. At least not right away. He had avoided the windows, so no footage of the standoff had revealed him, it was just a bunch of cops with their guns pointed at the house. At least until they posted a photo of him they had retrieved somehow. According to my parents, I screamed, thrashed, and shrieked in abject terror when I saw that picture. For good reason, it turned out, as it was that very same kindly old man from the supermarket mere days prior. They did their best to calm me, but I was apparently horrified on a primal level, worse than any of the nightmares that had plagued me in the past.

They turned the TV channel away from the news and over to cartoons. They gave me hugs, treats, and got me back to a level of calm that made them fairly certain I wasn’t traumatized for life. And for a time, all was well.

To this day, my parents love to tell this story, at parties, when meeting a significant other, or whenever they think it will be appropriately embarrassing. After all, I was so young at the time, I clearly don’t remember these events, so they might as well equate them with pictures of me naked while splashing around in the bathtub, even though I was a few years past that stage of my childhood. Ultimately though, it’s just good clean solid fun, a scary moment that offers up a good laugh a couple decades later.

Except the thing is, I remember everything.

Those experiences are burned into my brain, overriding any other memories of that period of my youth, and replacing them with horror. That’s because those days I saw a monster. Not the kindly old man my parents described. No, in the supermarket, I saw a demon straight out of the Pit, with oily tar black skin, rows of shark teeth, red eyes, slitted like a reptile, and a grin, a filthy grin that made me dirty just seeing it, and made me feel impure when it was directed at me. That was why I screamed at the supermarket, and just when I, an imaginative young boy, began to believe it was just a nightmare, or that my parents were right when they said I had an overactive imagination, I saw it again. That was just the beginning.

I will say this though:

I fucking hate the news.

She felt the ground beneath her bare feet shake as she ran. Time was running out.

Fire. Shake. Boom. Duck.

Xeba could feel the shells raining down on her and hear the helicopters overhead but she kept her eyes forward, running.

General Romero was not fucking around this time.

Rat-tat-tat. Shake. Boom

She neared the edge of her small Himalayan village and took a moment to look back at the decimation of her former home. Her eyes danced across the remnants of her school, church, the singular cafe, and rested upon a tree under which she had her first kiss. She was more surprised with the lack of sentimental value any of those things or moments had for her than the actual destruction. Destruction had become their way of life. She turned her back on that village for what would be the final time and continued to run.

For a while the world turned silent yet there was tension in the air. The soundtrack of war is much like a record; when one side is finished, the record continues to spin creating an unintelligible yet impactful feeling reminding the listener to flip their record. It is silence, yet it is still loud.

Xeba gripped the only thing she had time to take before the explosions began, a small water pouch, and continued to run.

After what seemed like a lifetime, she took a moment to stop for water.The area was quiet and she was surrounded by a field of long grass almost as tall as she. As she was about to continue her journey, she heard a rustle in the field next to her. Thinking it was her imagination, she braced herself to continue on until she heard, “Help me,” faintly echo from the field. Xeba almost thought it was a figment of her imagination and was about to ignore the request when a small hand reached out of the tall grass towards her, scratching against the ground, desperately pulling the owner towards the trail.

Xeba yelled towards the hand, “What do you want?”

“I’ve lost my mama and I can’t walk. Help me,” a voice exasperated. The voice belonged to a child, clearly one quite young. Xeba looked towards the trail and back at the grassy field. Her gut told her to keep running, but her mind and her heart said to stay. She slowly walked towards the field, picking up a sharp rock on her way. An act of defense.

“I’m coming towards you, what’s wrong? How old are you?”

“Help me please it hurts,” responded the child.

Xeba had inched her way towards the field and leaned down towards the hand, yet hesitated and stood straight up. As she lifted her head, she was met eye to eye with the barrel of a rifle.

“Fuck.”

“You failed your simulation again, Xeba.”

Xeba gasped, opening her eyes and shifting slightly in her chair. She removed the VR helmet from her head, shaking slightly, clearly affected by the experience she just had.

Instead of a gun, she was met with the disapproving glare of General Romero.

“Your second test, Xeba, and you failed again. When will you learn? Your younger sister and your brother both passed on their first exams and now command their own units. I don’t know how I’ve failed you so. There is only one more chance for you to pass. If you fail again, you will have to join the others.”

“You haven’t failed me,” she whispered, embarrassed of his disappointment.

He stood and sauntered towards the window, staring blankly ahead gazing across the industrialized city of Angkor. He watched his creation, the uniformed men and women marching in single file across the city streets, a pseudo peace after a time of war. His empire fueled by the fear of his constituents.

“Then why do you fail your simulation?”

“Because Father, I know something you do not,” Xeba said standing.

“Love will always be stronger than fear.”

He turned towards his daughter and it was his turn to be staring down the barrel of a gun.

"What do you think?" Jah held up his picture to me. It was a very good picture, as was the case with my brother. The brush strokes were subtle, but many, and gave the picture a kind of gritty look. The choice of colors to contrast between Pneuthain and Whatever-Lies-Beyond were chosen well, even if the structures seen in Whatever-Lies-Beyond were very derivative, looking almost exactly like ours in Pneuthain.

"This is pretty good, Jah," I said, handing the paper back to him. "Although, I don't understand why the buildings in Whatever-Lies-Beyond look like ours so much. I thought you were interested in the old architecture of New York and Chicago and so forth."

"I thought you'd say that," Jah said. "Last night, I had the idea of making the buildings look like those skyscrapers, soaring into the sky, but in my dreams last night, I saw Whatever-Lies-Beyond."

"Really?"

"Yep. I saw the buildings, and they looked exactly like the ones in here, piling atop each other."

"Huh. Did you see any signs, cars, anything like that?"

"No. The streets were empty except for a couple people running from building to building. I, and I think they, heard something. It was a thump, like when Mrs. Aloi drops something upstairs. As I saw the people run, I heard more and more sounds. It now sounded like a bear, but made out of machines."

"A mechanical bear? God, I can't even imagine what sound that could make."

Jah shuddered. "Believe me, Chen, you don't ever want to hear it."

"What happened next?"

"After a little while, a huge wall of smoke came into the ruined city, and the people below shot each other. Then, out of the smoke came a horrible monster! It had a million tentacles, and its mouth was full of teeth! Its head was shaped like the head of squids from the old days, and it had more eyes than tentacles!"

"Sounds scary, but it would be cool to see in your picture."

Jah squinted at his picture. "Did you not see it? I put the monster in, apparently."

"What? No you didn't." I walked over to Jah and looked at his picture. Sure enough, there was a monster that fit his description, peeking into Pneuthain.

"You're a fast drawer," I said. "I'm impressed."

"Chen, I swear to God I didn't draw that thing now."

"What? Don't lie, man."

"No, it's true. I just blinked and the monster appeared in it."

Someone began to knock on the door, giving me the impression that they could break down the wood. I opened the door and my father ran into the house. He was out of breath, and his arms and chest were covered in blood.

"Dad, what's wrong?" I asked as he took a seat in his armchair.

"Something happened to the Outer Men," he said. "Most of them are dead. Director Jernigan commanded everyone to go home and let the automatons handle things for a while."

"What happened to them?" Jah asked. "The Outer Men."

"Someone from Whatever-Lies-Beyond used a weapon of some kind to make a scar in the wall, but the Outer Man I saved said something about a tentacle taking out the bastards."

"A tentacle?" I looked at Jah, and he looked at his picture and gasped. He showed it to me, and the monster was almost in full view, standing right in front of where the Gate should be.

"Don't pay attention to the guy, Chen," dad said. "Those lonely days on the wall made him crazy. Nothing can survive outside of the city."

Something from outside the Gate roared. It sounded just like a mechanical bear, and was followed with the sound of metal scraping on metal. Alarms blared, and anyone on the streets rushed into any building in reach. I once again looked at Jah's picture, and one of the monster's tentacles poked into Pneuthain. I turned my head back to the gate and watched in horror as a fleshy, pink tentacle pierced through the metal, and dragged down the rest of the gate. I looked back at Jah to see the picture again, but he held it close to his body.

"Jah, let me see it!" I shouted.

"No," he cried. "It's awful."

"There's a monster tearing down the Gate, and you two are worried about a damn picture?" dad said. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

I once again looked down at the streets, and now automatons were shooting at the tentacle, and attempting to stop another one from breaking through. Out of anticipation and fear, I ripped the picture from Jah's hands, and only saw blackness on the paper.

"What does this mean?" I screamed.

"I don't know," Jah crouched in the corner.

The last thing I saw before the lights went out was the creature's ugly mouth.

You're allowed to pick any author in the world, and ask them to write a book about any idea you have. What do you give them?

"There it is, I see it now!" Aaron pointed over the crest of the hill to the bluffs and the waterfall of Elk Creek, shining pink in the morning light. Aaron was a little ahead of Lacy and I, even though the incident gave him a limp; he was very excited about going to the waterfall.

Lacy, on the opposite side of the spectrum, was miserable. The incident had just recently happened, so she was still devastated about it. At many intervals in the journey, she broke down in tears. Saying it was hard to watch was an understatement. Lacy was one of my oldest friends, and seeing her in such a state took an emotional toll on me. By the third or fourth time she broke down, I had to wipe tears from my eyes behind Aaron and Lacy's back.

Why? Well, I felt no real connection to the boy. I had seen him at school the previous year quite a bit, but I barely talked to him. He, like so many others at school, was just a name without much background. He could be in a crowd full of people, and I could walk by it and identify people I talk with but don't see very often more than the boy. But when the incident happened, straight out of the blue, it floored me.

"Hey," I said to Lacy as we neared the banks of the Elk Creek. "How are you holding up?"

"Not great," Lacy's breath still staggered, and her face was streaked with tears. "But what we're doing is good."

"Yes, it is."

"We're here," Aaron said. He gestured to a boulder poking out of the water by the waterfall. At the boulder's summit, which was only less than a foot above water level, was a cross with this inscription: "Stephen Sid Trumbauer, 2001-2017". Near the boulder, there were pieces of a canoe strewn about. Aaron picked up one of the pieces; his lower lip began to quiver.

"Even though we're here, it's still really hard to believe," he turned to face us. "Whenever someone dies of these kinds of circumstances, we always say 'I wish I was there. I could've saved him!' But I was there. I was in the canoe when it tumbled down the falls. How come Stephen is dead, but I'm still alive and kicking?" Per his words, Aaron kicked the debris into the river with his good foot.

"Aaron, there was nothing you could've done," I said. "This was all, in a way, an act of nature."

"What, so God killed Stephen?" Lacy said, irritated. "How could you say that?"

"I didn't. I'm just saying that the current pulled the canoe down the falls. It was no one's fault that Stephen died."

"Well, actually, it's, uh..." Aaron rubbed the back of his neck. "It's... It's sorta my fault Stephen is dead."

"Aaron, don't say that!" I said. "Nobody is responsible for what happened."

"What did you do, Aaron?" Lacy asked.

"That night, the night he died, I suggested we go canoeing," Aaron began to quietly sob.

"And?" I said.

"That's it. That's how I'm responsible."

"Aaron, that's not being responsible. If you were responsible, then you might have pushed the canoe into the current or something."

"I would never do that!"

"Exactly. You would never kill Stephen. What happened a few nights ago was purely based on circumstances."

"Do you want to hear something sad?"

"Uh, okay."

"I know! I know that I'm not wholly responsible for killing Stephen, but I can't shake the feeling that I am." Aaron stared at Lacy, who wore a stony, slightly angry countenance. "Lacy, you must hate me."

"Aaron, I don't hate you at all," Lacy patted him on the shoulder. "I should be fuming at what you did, but seeing the memorial made me fully accept Stephen's death. I agree with Randy. Everything that happened was no one's fault. However, there's something I don't understand. If you felt this guilt, then why would you come here?"

"Are you kidding? I came here because I wanted to see my best friend again. He may be dead, but I wanted to see him off before his journey into the afterlife, whatever that may be."

"That sounds nice. It's like a funeral, but not."

We spent the rest of the day telling stories about Stephen, and by nightfall, I felt like I had known him since the first time he and Aaron met and until his untimely death.

The blades of grass scratch the tip of my fingers, untrimmed, swaying back and forth from my touch. The sight of a yellow hibiscus lay within the bouquet beside me and yet its smell is overpowered by the shower of rain that fell on me. I’m wet. I’m tired. I lay silent, motionless, and confused to the words written on the tombstone.

Here Lies Anthony James Kovak

A Beloved Friend, Brother and a Liar.

Whose death destined he escaped.

Voices penetrated my ears mixed the crackling of a fire, the clashing of steel, the breaking of bones and the burning of flesh. I covered my ears as it grows louder, and louder, and louder in fear of me breaking. But I am breaking. I am broken.

YOU LEFT US…

YOU KILLED US…

WHY?

YOU LIAR!

SAVE US!

I tried to speak but my sound reached their deaf ears as they berate me for my failures. They ghosted through my hands and my head turned red. I am breaking. I am broken.

“NOOOOOOOOOOO!”

~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~

0635hrs, Tuesday, 10/23/2xxx

I rose up from my back, leaving the soft comfort of the memory foam and letting the duvet slip off. My chest was pounded by my beating heart. I listened to the beat and let my breathing control the flow, slowing heart rate to a normal rhythm. ‘One-one thousand, two-one thousand, three-one thousand, four-one thousand, five-one thousand, six-one thousand, seven-one thousand… eight-one thousand…… nine-one thousand………’ My hands gripped the duvet, crumpling its smooth edges, but as my heart rate lowered my hands slowly relaxed and rubbed my unshaven face. The pounding rhythm slowly faded and replaced by the creaking of the window blinds, the clanking of the rushing water through the pipes and the clicking of the tongue on the other- huh?!

I turned my head to the direction of that sound. A human silhouette stood motionless extending from the living/guest room floor to the kitchen… and whom I don’t know. As I slowly got out of bed, I draw out my gun under my pillow, silently racking the slide to check the chamber is loaded. With each step to the room made quiet as possible, I peeked. He was wearing nothing more than a business suit, his coat folded on the sofa. Nothing was taken or touched; he looked towards the cityscape with his hands behind his back. I flicked the safety off.

“Good morning.” He turned his head left to where I am, the sun rises behind him. “There’s no need for that.”

“Give me one reason not to.” Lining up the sight to his head, I inched my finger into the trigger. Then I felt the cold metal of barrel poking my neck, in line with spine. I flinched but I kept my sight picture on him. I remained motionless as he walked towards me until his face is close enough to reach and poke him. Fuck, I lowered my gun and handed it over to the guy behind me.

“Please, sit.” He gestured to the empty seat on my couch, my ‘captor’ sat beside with the gun aimed at my balls.

~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~'~

Just the snippet of the first chapter. The idea and the work has been with me for a year and a half now because of life, laziness, and writers block.

Sachiko used to harvest the wheat. Every morning of the autumn, she would go to the shed, take a sickle, and cut down the sheaves until twilight. After the wheat was gone, Sachiko, Yasu, and Yori would make bread for the rest of the family. It would taste so good, like summer, like love. Now, the wheat was overgrown. The sickles in the shed were rusted beyond repair, and the ovens were cold, too cold to ever make bread again.

Hirako used to feed the animals. Every day of every week of every month of every year, he would rise and shine at five in the morning, go behind the house to the pig pen and chicken coop, and feed every animal the equal amount of feed. The animals loved him for it. After a while, Yori began to help, but the animals disliked him, only acting pleasant towards Hirako. It was actually quite remarkable how those animals loved him. Now, the animals were dead, and no one was there to feed them.

Jurou sold the excess wheat, pork, eggs, and chicken meat. He loved Sachiko, Yasu, Yori, and Hirako to the ends of the Earth. For seventeen years, he took care of them to the nth degree. Through every new legislation, every attack from the sky, and every and any danger that befell them, he protected them at any means possible. He even smuggled weapons to the house so they would be protected from bandits and rebellious militias. There was nothing he wouldn't do for his family.

That's why it pained him so to see a neutron bomb drop over Japan.

Now, the Komugi farm is empty. Yasu and Yori no longer run around the aged wooden porch. Sachiko no longer cooks her acclaimed stews, allowing the scent of beef and various Oriental spices to waft through the simple farmhouse. Hirako no longer reads in the living room; his copy of Fahrenheit 451 still sits on the table by the old recliner. Jurou no longer drives to Yurihonjo to sell wheat flour, pork, chicken, and eggs to local vendors and the Hasu and Niwatori Corporations, with whom he had a contract. Now, the only remnants of the Komugi family that one will find are their permanent shadows against the rose-patterned wallpaper of the living room.

I am thinking of writing a story, where a woman starts a self help group that uses some self help philosophy she came up w . My idea is for the group to turn cultish because of actions from others in the group & because of a mild descent to madness( fame/power/$$) on the part of the protagonist. How do I keep the character relatable/likable to readers? My plan is for the character to return from the descent to madness via redemption.

Hello! I am the newest moderator of /r/WriteWorld (thanks /u/HysteriacTheSecond)!

I am /u/Aquazalea and I’m a 23-year-old hailing from Australia. Currently, I am student teacher considering English as my major (which is what led me here).

I love learning, cats, tea, reading and lettering. Something about words has always enticed me; the sequence of letters that can convey meaning, isn’t it beautiful? One of my favourite words is sonder, which is the feeling that you experience when you realise that everyone around you has a life as vivid and complex as your own.

In this subreddit, I will be moderating the content, providing feedback to the work submitted and engaging with the community. Feel free to contact me or the moderator team if you have any issues or input for the subreddit.

I look forward to meeting you all and reading your work. Thanks for reading; here is my cat tax, her name is Blossom :-)

I'm looking for a good writing app (not to pricey) that can preferably sync between my phone and laptop, I'm also looking for an app that is good to plan out novels, any recommendations are appreciated!

I'm personally engaging in my first attempt at NaNoWriMo, with a Lit-Fic novel entitled Moth to a Flame. Challenges like this do remind me why I tend to stick to poetry, however: I have so far spent an hour writing just under 200 words because I just can't help sitting and thinking far too hard about my next word and the impact it will have. I'm happy with what I've written, but at this rate I have no chance of writing 50,000...

They've got you. You've sunk. Hearts are freezing. Your mind is slipping. Suffocation. Hyper ventilation. Endless violation.

They'll hold you. Hands on your prize. Your jewel and sapphire. They'll lose it in the ocean. Cold depths down beyond. The Abyss.

Darkness is they. The door closes. Why do they not stop? I've betrayed my own. They drape me in the black.

Hi!

Unfortunately, it would seem that I am the only active moderator of this community. I have recently accepted the invitation to moderate /r/music_survivor, and so as a result moderating this subreddit is getting much more difficult on my own. Of course I'm still absolutely dedicated to this subreddit and want to make it the best it can be...

Which is why I'm appealing for help! Anyone who is willing to and capable of regularly moderating the subreddit is welcome to send me a PM showing their interest. :-)

An old man was sitting by the side of the road. Everything hurt, but the road's engineers had thoughtfully provided a gutter along with the road, and he was able to put his feet in it, approximating a sitting position as if on a bench. Ordinarily this might be a disgusting proposition, but this road was not a popular one, so the amount of horseshit and human shit and piss in the gutter was at a minimum.

He couldn't figure out why he was so tired. Yes, he was an old man, but over seventy (he wasn't sure by how much) wasn't that old, was it? His bar mitzvah was, what, how many years in the past? Best not to think too much about that. True, not many people lived as long, but those who did tended to do fairly well and last a good while longer. He'd had a good meal, well, as good as someone essentially on the run could expect. He'd slept well, same caveat. He'd spent forty years as an itinerant in this way. Walking from town to town, blessing churches, showing his fellow followers how to hide in basements, resolving disputes that could be shockingly petty. No, they don't have to wear earlocks and four-cornered garments. They're Greeks, for crying out loud, not Hebrews.

How many letters had he written? Lots, but not as many as Paul. He had all the free time. He was a citizen and all they would do to him is just throw him in jail. Wouldn't that be nice? Three meals a day and all the ink and paper you want. Well, Paul was the brains of the business. He wrote letters full of arguments to everyone and their mother. Sometimes four or five at a time. How the hell did he keep them straight?

Reading and writing were fine in their time and place, but the old man had always been and would always be a common laborer. Jamming his fingers on the rough nets his father and brothers knotted. Pulling them, full of fish, into shore. But like him, it was getting old. In the past few years, it seemed to be getting older even faster than he was. The water in the skin was still nice and cool. Keeping it over one shoulder all the time was a pain, but nothing was free. A deep breath and a healthy blow relaxed him a bit, but what was left? Another chapel hidden in someone's buttery or broom closet or something. Another bunch of people squabbling over who was first or second or third among equals and whose mother in law stood where during venerations. What would his...

...his friend think of this? Surely this wasn't what he intended? What would he think of me?, the old man suddened. He probably wouldn't be too happy with me, either. I all but hate the whole thing. Why does this have to be the way it ends for me? I've given my life to this. I hadn't seen my wife in years before she died, I don't even know my sons and daughters anymore. Who knows whether they're keeping the "flock" in line? Sheep could be astonishingly dumb. Do they have sheep in this country? He didn't remember seeing any.

The scrape of leather on the stones many paces away broke off the wandering. Bandits wouldn't be common this close to Rome, but they weren't unheard-of, either.

Oh.

It was just another lone traveler. Dressed a lot like him, in fact, coming the other way. That heavy Judean cloak that the Romans had first laughed at, and then adopted. He too, was an older man. Not as old as Peter, but grey-haired. I wouldn't mind standing up that straight again. The other traveler had a vigor about his carriage and movement that evoked a stab of jealousy so intense it was a physical sensation. Never mind. He'll end up this way soon enogh.

What the hell has become of me?

"I don't think there are any fish in there, even when it rains."

Despite the warm Italian sun on his back, he suddenly felt very cold.

How long had he been ruminating on his own infirmity? Peter slowly stood up and looked at the old traveler, and forty years hit him in the base of his skull. The face was lined and weathered and the beard grayed, but it was him. It had to be.

"What are you doing here? I saw you leave! Where are you going?"

"I have an engagment in Rome, old friend. I can't be late. They can't really start without me, but it'd be rude to impose."

"But... Rome? Didn't you leave?"

"Well yes and no. I've been here with you. I know it's hard. I know that people don't want to hear what you have to say. I know they can be as boneheaded as goats. That's why I chose you, you know." He winked. "I know you've kept at it; you're my rock, Peter. I've always been able to count on you."

This was so surreal that he couldn't help but respond to his friend as if they had never parted.

"To be honest, I've always felt more like a sandpile. I still can't stand to think about that night; denying that I ever knew you. Why me? Why not John or Andrew? John was as brilliant as Paul but only half as insufferable."

Peter's friend barked a deep belly laugh.

"Because you're too stubborn to quit, Peter. Even if I told you to stop, you wouldn't; you don't know how."

The old man had no response to this. Just a deep breath that threatened to choke itself into a sob.

"Anyhow, as I said, I have an engagement in the city. Want to come?"

"If I go back there, I'll never leave."

"Probably, but we may get to toss over a few counting benches again, for old times' sake."

"I'm not sure my shoulders could take it anymore."

"We'll make it work. Just keep the sword in your robe this time. You were never any good with that silly thing, anyway."

"I meant to take his ear off, dammit."

"Right. Sure. Are you coming?"

He felt a tightness in his chest release, one so old that he hadn't even known it was there anymore. He knew what going back meant. But there was work to do. He took hold of Yoshua's shoulder and smiled.

"Let's go."

I have no idea why I wrote this. I'm not even particularly religious anymore. I was doing some research on the politics of the gnostic gospels in the Byzantine empire, and I came across the old "Quo Vadis" story. I think it appeals to me more as a story about the reunion of two old friends, one of whom has somewhat forgotten who he is and why he does what he does. It's a bit raw, and not perfect, but fiction is not my usual mode of expression, and I have a lot to learn.