Chapter 1:

As I like to write poetry I thought about writing a short story. Tonight I wrote my first chapter and decided to post it here. Let me know if you liked it, if you read the whole thing. lol

Chapter 1:

There he was standing in a open field with nothing surrounding him but wavy oceans of weeds and sagebrush. In the distance rounded bales of hay were scattered about from a few days before in which farmers had sweat to make their living. They surrounded him in random patterns among the further and more distant fields waiting to be hoisted onto flatbed pickups for further transportation. The wind came in soft yet sometimes violent bursts as if it were a beast beating on the cell bars in which it was contained. He didn't remember the wind he thought to himself and found his mind drift back to his younger years where he only remembered catching water snakes and frogs with his friends as young boys do.

As his mind drifted further back into a time frame where all seemed to be purely blissful, he saw himself from a third person perspective with his friends riding their bicycles around the small town in which he lived, finding meaningless things extremely entertaining. Somehow having those small and unimportant things filling the days of their childhood was closer to heaven than any man realized. As a burst of wind once again beat upon his blonde hair and tossed it about he was somewhat violently torn from his trance and found himself wondering how such days had been so long abandoned. He tried to find his way back into the deep memories from which he was summoned out of, due to the immediate and surrounding environment but could not find the focus necessary to travel back into that euphoria of ignorance in which he had lost so long ago. No, he thought to himself, I have become this man by my own choice, I have chosen pain over comfort, truth over ignorance, reality over fantasy. I have chosen the painful truth as compared to the comfortable ignorance so many others seemed quick to embrace. I told myself I was to be different he thought. I wanted to be different from everyone else he told himself. In his lack of purpose in life he somehow found purpose in what many considered meaningless. He somehow found sound tranquility sheerly in the fact that he could accept reality as it was, that he could take blow after blow from the truth and keep marching even though insanity and loneliness knocked and sometimes banged on the door of realization in his mind.

But he could not help but deny the question constantly pushing itself upon him of, if he might have actually been happier not knowing the truth. He could not help but feed the fire of thought as he could no longer push the question aside. He had to answer the question arising within his soul and burning itself like a brand into his mind. He finally brought himself to fully and consciously allow the question access to his conscious mind. He had so long run from this question and had so long found new reasons in which he could push that powerful wondering into the darker part of his mind. But as he thought of his previous life and then afterward, compared it to his now current life, he could no longer deny this bubble rising up from the depths. He could no longer allow his mind and thoughts to run from this contstantly tailing question. He quickly came to realize that within himself, here, now, was a pivotal turning point in the course of his life and what one might consider destiny. He, at different times in life wondered about destiny and fate. Many times he could rationalize and tell himself that fate had some part in his life and throughout had chosen him for a specific purpose. Other times he found himself wondering if he was committing the crime he condemned so many others for. He wondered if he was thinking that by fate having a hand in his life, he was brainwashing himself into believing he was different and better than others, as many others had done. He could not help but wonder if he had fallen into that trap that so many others did and had allowed lies and hope to mold his thoughts and actions. As thinking upon those things, he had to continually tell himself that, no, he had no special purpose and that if destiny did have a hand in his life, he would deny it for the mere fact that he would not subconsciously allow himself to do what others had done by thinking they were somehow superior to the masses. His sole purpose was to not recreate and commit the crimes of sly thought in which brainwashing and religion had upon the masses for reasons of hope and superiority. He would remain neutral throughout time and eternity until he had hard proof of something.

Approximately 5 years ago he came to the conclusion that religion was nothing more than a method of mind control, fear tactics, social status and something that gives meaning or purpose to specific individuals lives that were without what they considered meaning. He had come to realize, through his own experience and by watching his family succomb to this fantasy that, any organized religion was a scourge in which those victims allowed themselves to be controlled. It was a virus that infected the minds of the weak and wanting. It always seemed to him to eventually find its way, infecting the minds of those that looked for purpose and meaning while in a temporary shell of existence. Many of those that grew weary of average life and that longed for meaning in their lives turned toward religion for hope and from there slowly, sometimes quickly, but surely created their own fantasy under the premise of denial for self purpose, as a child would, with his imagination filling the days with trivial and childly things. On other and many occasions, children such as he was, were bred into religion from birth and brought up to believe it, not knowing any better. After the child matured into later stages of life and adulthood, fear kept their logical minds from drifting into the relevant conclusions and contradictions that many denied.

Children that had been brought up as he was and taught from maleable ages, had been to afraid to leave their religion and look for something better because they were scared for many reasons but mainly by the slight and semmingly very real possibility they would be damned to hell because they had veered from the road of aged and traditionalized religion their parents were so sure of. They would no longer be accepted socially by their families if they chose any separate path and he understood how this worked. He understood how it had effected him and understood how religion was continued regardless of how false and contradicting it was. There were so many aspects to it but through hours and hours of thinking and reading and experience he had understood it all or so he thought. He kept a sharp mind as his weapon and had somehow managed to push fear into submission when choosing to abandon his childhood religious beliefs. He had chosen the path of social destruction within the small town he lived in and understood the full consequences of such. He had chosen to rebel against the accepted ways and take note of every fault within them. Even when thoughts tried to resurface and haunt him with the fear of making the wrong choice and potentially damning himself, he pushed those thoughts also into submission within the far and inaccessible reaches of his subcouscious.

On sometimes lonely and dreary days he longed for purpose but upon realization of his thoughts, he would immediately subdue those infecting viruses in which had lead so many others to believe lies and fantasies, so that he would not allow himself to be slowly initiated into the path of organized religion and delusion as he considered it. He told himself he could deal with the truth and expected truth to be painful as life taught him so. He was ready for the truth and embraced it over what he considered to be fantasy. But on this moment, this pivotal point in his life, standing in the open with his mind being flooded with torrents of thought, he finally asked himself consciously if he would have been happier and better off living the lie, living in a religion, following instead of choosing for himself.


As he fed the fire of thought the sun started slipping behind the horizon and he found himself realizing that his thoughts had taken their toll on the few hours of sunlight that was once left. Now as night descended upon the day and started its slow but entirely encroaching approach to consume what was left of the light he heard something odd and distant. He tried to determine what the source of the noise was but as it sounded so distant he could not recognize what it could be. It sounded like what could best be described as crying. As he further listened to determine what the noise was it grew slowly louder and louder until he was barely able to discern that the noise was a womans voice crying. As the noise continually grew louder he could not determine from which direction it came from, as it seemed to continually reverberate from all directions. Louder and louder it became until the point in which his hearing hurt and he eventually placed his hands over his ears to seek some kind of safety from the sound. Indescribably loud it grew and grew until the point in which his ears could no longer discern that it was a woman crying. All he could now hear was a high pitched rumbling within his ear cavities as similar to a insect scratching away at his inner audible instruments. As he huddled with his hands over his ears looking frantically in all directions but unable to locate the source, the sound entirely withdrew. He moved his hands away from his head in a slow and cautious motion expecting the sound to instantly return but it did not. As he placed his hands at his sides lost in confusion he could not fathom how something so odd could have just happened to him. Was he finally slipping away into the void of those that suffer from insanity? Had his mind finally lost its superb grasp on reality or did he really hear something?


As twilight came to a close he decided it be best he go home before darkness completely draped over the landscape. As he was walking toward his car, parked at a distance, wondering about what had just happened, he noticed in the distance, a swarm of what looked to be black storm clouds. As he thought it to be nothing more than a approaching storm the clouds unrealistically and instantly sped toward his location as if they were intelligent and alive. Within a total of approximately 4 seconds they were directly above him. he stopped walking and looked skyward lost in awe and wonder as these pitch black clouds above him seemed to do nothing but churn in seething anger. He could not describe how he understood the emotional meaning emanating from the clouds but as he gazed he realized the clouds were not moving and were completely stationary. This baffled him and actually perturbed him as he could not describe what was happening. They are just clouds he told himself, I am hallucinating he told himself, there is a rational explanation for this he told himself but there was nothing at all rational about what was happening. Quickly he noticed something within the clouds take shape and squinted to be sure he had not entirely lost his mind. Sure enough a object, something dark, something solid compared to the surrounding clouds began to form out of the blackened dark mass and took a form of what he thought to be a human heart, as could best be described.

As the form completed itself within the swirling and churning brew of clouds he rubbed his eyes and could not help but think to himself that he had officially gone insane. But then that thought was interrupted as the heart seemed to have pulsed. The heart appeared to complete a entire beat and just before he could think any further toward a logical explanation it beat again then again. He was now witnessing a completely black shaped, beating heart within a cloud, the size of it as large as a Orca whale from what he could discern. The beating grew louder and naturally, he expected it to get loud enough to drown anything else around because of the previous crying he had heard. Oddly enough, as soon as the beating starting getting louder a huge bolt of lightning struck and streaked across the sky as if it came directly out of the pumping, beating life form. Immediately after the lightning struck a ferocious ear shattering clap of thunder found its way out of that heart as if thor himself had just unleashed his final battle cry issued at the last battle of time. As he expected the thunderclap to diminish in ferocity, it did not. As it grew louder he grew intensely terrified and tried to run but on the moment he set foot to earth to run, the earth began to shake violently and he lost his balance. He tumbled across the turf and tried to get up again but his surroundings entirely and completely disappeared. He was now sitting up in his bed panting and sweating from possibly the most vivid and strange dream he had ever had. As he looked to his left outside of his window it was pouring rain and he twitched when he heard another clap of thunder after a flash of lightning. He realized he was dreaming but still felt as if he was stuck in between dream realm and reality and had a hard time separating the two.

With the available dim lighting that was ushered in through the partially opened drapes only minimal lighting was available to view the details of his surroundings. As his eyes adjusted back into reality from dream state he quickly regained his senses and realized he was only dreaming. He regained his senses perhaps too quickly compared to others and this was one of the things he prided himself on. Within a storm of confusion he always seemed to be able to find logical reasoning for any situation and from there take the best appropriate action rather quickly while others stood and waited. He prided himself mainly with the knowledge that he had obtained through years of reading and studying on various topics of interest. He however prided himself on the knowledge of experience the most. There had never been a topic or subject he did not want to know about as he considered knowledge the closest thing to truth and his ultimate self given goal in life was to find truth. There was no subject he would rather not know about because of what had happened to him and those he cared about and from this he understood what it meant when others would say "the truth shall set you free". Only, he still did not understand how knowledge could set him free. He knew so much and had learned so many things in his somewhat short 23 years of life. It almost felt like everything he had been through, had been the fast forward version of others life when it came to what he understood, had learned and had been through.

Still he felt caged within the knowledge he had as from time to time he would find himself confused once again. In these lonely and frustrated moments of confusion he would sometimes ask himself if he was better off not knowing the truth and accept living a lie as it would seem to bring bliss even though ignorance was prevalent in that choice. However those fleeting thoughts only entered his mind momentarily and usually were not there long enough to be processed fully before he banished them back into the depths for fear he would end up lying to himself, for meaning and purpose in life as so many others had. He would continue to bear the weight of the truth until the end of his time. He would be one of the few that dealt with the harsh realities of life. But in this thinking he also often wondered if this lifestyle was just another version of living a fantasy which lead him to wonder if truth was even real and existed at all. From that he would sometimes wonder if truth was simply nothing more than a perspective based on tradition and if truth or right and wrong was simply a opinion based on upbringing and other simple yet illusive factors.

If he thought to far along this process of thoughts he would somehow think so far and so hard that he would end up in a daze in which everything in the world around him seemed fake and somehow surreal. While in this daze he almost felt as if he were inches away from some grand revelation or ultimate truth but that revelation never came to him. Sometimes the daze could last hours in which he would think further and further into the dark places of his mind and where answers hide in their caverns, which many fear to tread. Sometimes he would get lost in thought and when finally coming back from the daze, he would tell himself that his thinking was nothing more than a mere circular hell in which would eventually drive him to insanity. He would never give up the search for truth but on those few and distanced days in which he longed to be part of something, in which he longed to have a more meaningful life, in which he got tired of the harsh reality, he would sincerely fathom the idea of living in ignorance and actually choosing it over the truth. Even if that happiness was fake and was allowed by living a lie, he might be happier and more satisfied than searching for enlightenment. But in order to fill that void which, on occasion turned its gravitational forces toward him, he found his purpose in avoiding ignorant happiness, in having no purpose. He found meaning in what others might call no meaning, purpose in lack of purpose.

As he turned his blurry vision towards his alarm clock which sat upon a night stand made of oak sitting next to his bed, he thought he saw something, some shadow perhaps darting through the room. Quickly annihilating that ridiculous and illogical thought he realized his clock said 4:44AM and he decided it was not to early to get up. He tired of fighting these thoughts of what if, wave after wave while trying to fall asleep, night after night. He would sometimes lay awake unable to shut out his mind for hours at a time and right now he felt as if trying to fall back to sleep would not be achieved until sometime after the sun came up.

He laid back down for a moment thinking about the dream he had and realized that his pillow was completely damp with sweat. He also, in his sharp logic, concluded that dreams are nothing more than dreams. He had read much on the subject as any other and considered the fact that they could also possibly be prophetic warnings but after much research he eventually concluded there was nothing extra ordinary to his or anyone else's dreams for that matter. On a Saturday morning most of his friends would be sleeping in as many of them were recovering from a drunken stupor, lost in the pain of a headache and laziness known as a hangover. He often would join them weekend after weekend, party after party and even then when he tried to sleep his mind plagued his sleep regardless of how intoxicated he might be. Last night he had declined his friends offer to go to a local party and found a novel to be more entertaining than the prospect of slurred speech and the spins. Perhaps today would serve more purpose than the limitless days behind this one. As he slowly climbed out of his bed, he had no idea what awaited him on this day and expected the same as any other fruitless, meaningless day seeking the harsh truth. Blissfully unaware, today harbored not just one but many pivotal moments in his life. Blissfully unaware, the dream had been a warning and because of logic he remained unaware of what illogical actions were about to unfold.

As he unfolded his covers and sat on the side of his bed, he put on his T-shirt. He slowly rose to his feet and wandered through the dark of his room toward the bathroom until he thought he saw something again dart through the shadows as a black cat scurries through the night so hidden. As the rain continued to poor, the pattering ruckus outside did not help to ease the thought that he was not alone. He thought he saw something but once again pushed it out of his mind and continued toward the darkened bathroom. Lighting flashed sometimes rather frequently in consecutive streaks followed by multiple crashes of thunder shortly afterward. With continued and sometimes forced logic he convinced himself he was alone again, until another flash of lightning seemed to reveal a small childlike, yet human form in the bathroom doorway within the seemingly lengthy milliseconds in which it flashed.

It would be nice if you had caused his thoughts to at least through a memory of a childhood friend in his dream to call his charactor by name.

The descriptives come and go manifest on certain and possible items of import, but it would fantastic in uniform consistency.
Simple xamples: What color and model of the car?
was the oak table stained? painted? antique? beat-up? perhaps a drawer?

The verbage use was adequate peppered with good.

A bit long winded in some philosophical arguments.

As I, (the reader) began to enjoy a comfortable flow and the story line cast a lure of interest, the anticipation of an elevating plot lost momentum just as suddenly.

I see where you are going with this, and hope it does expand beyond the blinders of where it would lead most science fiction/fantasy works.

I was beginning to enjoy it from leaving the field to waking from dream.

I would reserve recommendation until reading chapter two.

A chapter title, although not essential, would be an added positive.

That is my critique. I hope that is what you intendedto receive..feedback.

Without grading line by line I would give it a C+ so far.
Show that chapter two is worthy of an exceptional grade.

Originally posted by imd12c4funn
It would be nice if you had caused his thoughts to at least through a memory of a childhood friend in his dream to call his charactor by name.

The descriptives come and go manifest on certain and possible items of import, but it would fantastic in uniform consistency.
Simple xamples: What color and model of the car?
was the oak table stained? painted? antique? beat-up? perhaps a drawer?

The verbage use was adequate peppered with good.

A bit long winded in some philosophical arguments.

As I, (the reader) began to enjoy a comfortable flow and the story line cast a lure of interest, the anticipation of an elevating plot lost momentum just as suddenly.

I see where you are going with this, and hope it does expand beyond the blinders of where it would lead most science fiction/fantasy works.

I was beginning to enjoy it from leaving the field to waking from dream.

I would reserve recommendation until reading chapter two.

A chapter title, although not essential, would be an added positive.

That is my critique. I hope that is what you intendedto receive..feedback.

Without grading line by line I would give it a C+ so far.
Show that chapter two is worthy of an exceptional grade.

Awesome! Honesty! I seriously appreciate your constructive criticism and kind of threw it together while at work so it is a little messy for sure. There is a lot I could fix up and I will work on that with the next chapter for sure and perhaps clean this one up depending on how far I take this.

I didn't really think about detailing the car and the nightstand and some other aspects. Details are what is necessary for sure. Something to paint a picture in the mind of the reader yet not to elaborate to much. I should have also named his friend and probably named the primary character sooner also.

I imagine I was long winded also in the whole religion approach also. I need to learn to distance myself from personal issues within the text.

I tried to get the effect of leaving the reader hanging toward the end of the chapter but kind of feel I slaughtered it with a little to much information.

I can't tell ya how much I like the fact that you pointed out the flaws. A lot of people, being nice would just tell me how good it was when I need to notice its weaker areas. I offer my humble gratitude to you!
Needs work for sure but now that I have points to address from a readers perspective I will work on this, assuming work allows. Thanx again!