War of the World - Part 1

Author's Note: I say "Part 1" in the title of this blog because this story hardly has an ending. However, that doesn't mean it will ever continue.

It's a story that told itself to me during a class today, but what you see is the entirety of what was told. As the story has stopped telling itself, I refuse to force it out, calling it forth from whatever depths it came. Whether or not it will continue and/or conclude is up to the story itself, as well as the One who tells these tales to me.

So you probably don't want to expect any more parts to this narrative. It is what it is, and that's all that it is.

- Britton Peele

I sat quiet in the darkness, the cold steel of the weapon pressing hard into my palm. My body was shaking ever so slightly, but I controlled it. I had become accustomed to controlling certain motions and expressions.

They wouldn’t know. They couldn’t know. No one would ever understand. I would only see the immense disappointment on their faces as their hearts sank, so ashamed they would be at what I had become.

So I hid it.

Maybe they’ll award me a posthumous Oscar.

This was it, then. No more pain, misery, confusion, doubt, or struggle. The millions upon millions of stray thoughts bounding incessantly on the inside of my head would finally stop. No more voices, no more manic laughter, no more uncontrollable desires… No more worries or obligations. I could finally get some rest. This would be the way my world ends.

Not with a whimper, but a bang.

Safety off. Finger on the trigger. Now or never. Time to bore the thoughts out.

Couldn’t control the shaking this time. So easy in theory, but so hard in practice.

Time to die. Pull the trigger.

Click.

Damn.

No bullet in the chamber. Just another thing for me to screw up.

I had originally intended to just wait until I died of other causes, but that was taking too long. Chaos was taking over far too quickly. Funny how most people don’t even see how quickly the world around them is falling apart.

But I do.

One more try. Nothing left to lose, nothing left to gain. There would just be…

Nothing.

I was sure I had pulled the trigger. Is this what death felt like? Was I dead before my brain had time to tell my body it should be writhing in agony?

That’s almost a disappointment. I really deserved the pain.

I opened my eyes slowly, not entirely sure what to expect. My apartment, probably. Damn gun probably didn’t fire.

All I could see was barren plain in every direction. It might have been purgatory, because it sure as hell wasn’t heaven.

Not that they’d want me in the pearly gates anyway. I’d only muddy up the streets of gold.

No, wherever this place was, it wasn’t heaven, and it wasn’t my apartment unless a nuke had gone off and someone forgot to warn me.

It was in this desert that I met Dennis.

“Nah, you’re not dead,” Dennis told me when I stumbled upon him. “Least not yet. You gotta learn a lot about yourself before you decide whether or not you really wanted to pull that trigger.”

The gun in my hand had been long gone. Vanished when I arrived wherever it was that I was. “Then where am I?”

“The war between the worlds,” he answered simply. “Or the war of the world, you might say. You’re not here, you’re not there… You don’t know what or where you are, which in your case might not be that different from the world you’re used to.”

“Then why am I here?”

“You tell me,” Dennis said, resting his foot up on a large rock in the middle of the expansive nothing. “Why are you here? What are you looking for?”

I didn’t answer. Dennis prodded me further.

“You got a job?”

“Not really.”

“A home?”

“Lonely.”

“A woman?”

This struck a nerve.

“Ah. Lost her, huh? That’s a common one.”

“Look, I,” I started, trying to defend myself.

Dennis raised his hands. “Hey, hey, it’s not really my place to know. Maybe you’re like most of the male population and screwed things up. Maybe you don’t really know what went wrong. Maybe this girl was just a bitch. There’s a whole host of possibilities. But what’s done is done. No use killing yourself over it.”

I clenched my fist. “I’m not killing myself over her. Even though she was…”

“What, your life? Your everything? That’s what they all say, brother, and it’s only true a bit of the time. To be honest, usually when it doesn’t work out like this, it wasn’t really meant to be. Especially for you. You’re young. The younger ones typically find someone that’s more suitable for them in a shorter amount of time than they expected. Or sometimes they give up the opposite sex all together.”

I wasn’t sure if I wanted to ask what this meant, but Dennis caught himself. “No! No! They aren’t gay, man. I mean single. Celibate. Unmarried and abstaining. Do try to keep up. That life isn’t for everyone anyway.”

He was silent for a minute before speaking again. “Ah, but the girl was just the catalyst, wasn’t she? This had been building for quite some time. Something up there,” he bounced over to me and tapped me hard on the head, “has gone wrong. Has been for awhile, building and building and building until BAM!” he slapped his hands together with force, “You burst.”

He knew a lot. More than any other random stranger who casually decides to strike up conversation about potential mental abnormalities.

“So,” he said lightly. “Did you come here to fix it?”

I blinked. He made it sound so simple. Like my only problem was that I just hadn’t tried. But I decided to bite. “Can I?”

Dennis shrugged. “Depends on whether or not you’re actually seeking.”

“Seeking what?”

“The truth, of course. How do you expect to fix your life if you don’t have basic knowledge of how life itself works? You need to seek truth, light, salvation… God.”

I scoffed. “God’s voice is faint at best.”

Dennis stroked his bare chin. “Well, now. How do you expect to find God if you don’t know what he sounds like?”

He lost me.

“Looks like you’ve got a lot to learn, man,” Dennis said to me. “But are you willing to try?”

There weren’t a lot of options. On one hand, if I just ignored him, there was the good chance that I would eventually just die. For real this time. Could I still die from starvation in this place?

On the other hand… If there was any hope…

“Yes,” I said. “I’m willing.”

Dennis grinned. With his left hand, he held out a sword in a sheath that I didn’t see him carrying before now. In his right hand, he offered to shake mine.

“Well then, brother,” he said. “Welcome to the war.”