Marcel could hardly contain the feelings of excitement and wonder that filled him the moment he looked inside the small, packed bookstore. It was one of those old, musty, ancient beyond years places, the walls of which would have had hundreds of stories to tell, if one could only read them. It was all warping wood and peeling paint, a place that had seen more adventures than he could imagine. Each wall was lined with shelves from floor to ceiling, and the dim, flickering ceiling light cast mysterious, inviting shadows throughout. Lost in the rapture of Tolkein and Asimov, he stepped inside the building, ignoring the balding owner, and began his journey up and down the stacks of worlds. His drab, colourless real life melted away into the splendour and beauty of adventure and excitement.
Marcel was a book addict. Every spare moment of his life he would spend in fantastic worlds, feeling their sensations and thinking their thoughts. Only in these leather-bound, crackly-yellow sheets of paper did he feel alive. His own life wasn't as real to him as the cliff-top dragon caves or the mystical peninsulas that he visited so often.
He passed by book after book, desperate for world unseen and
deeds untold, his thoughts absorbed into the manuscripts before
him. When the door to the small shop opened, he was too busy
examining realm after realm of struggle and achievement to notice
the entrance of two men, dressed in dark, leather jackets, and ski
masks.
One man, taller, slightly heavier, pulled out a black handgun and pointed it towards the old man at the desk. The owner's eyes showed fear, but he calmly raised his arms above his head. The second man cautiously revealed his pistol, and held it with a nervous, shaking hand, at the owner.
"Hand over your money. All of it."
The first man's voice was calm, in control. The owner's hands started towards the till, but his eyes caught another movement.
Marcel walked out from behind one of the bookcases. "Do you have. . ." he started, then his mouth dropped and his eyes opened, as he came face to face with a situation he had been in hundreds of times, in stories.
The second man, startled, turned to face Marcel, both hands grappling with his weapon. "F-Freeze, man, I'm w-warning y-you. D-Don't move."
Marcel dropped the four books he was carrying, his mind refusing to accept what it was seeing. His hands were up of their own accord, and he realized his mouth was babbling nonsense.
"B-b-b-but w-w-w-wha. . ."
"I said don't move!" shouted the second man, the gun still waving in front of him.
Without thinking, Marcel took a step back. He could feel his foot coming down, knowing instinctively that something was wrong, but helpless to stop it. His foot hit something hard, and he felt himself falling, out of control and powerless. At the same time, he heard a new sound, one he had never heard before.
He could almost feel the air being pushed in front of the bullet a fraction of a second before he felt something else new, pain. A hot branding fire encased his heart, and he could feel his life being torn and burnt by anguish. He started to scream, but he couldn't move, couldn't think, and all there was was the hurt and the pain. It continued, forever and ever, as the real world around him fell in slow motion. He couldn't think, only feel that is was not fair, that he wasn't done yet. He thought of all the things he'd never do, all the things he would never be able to do. He said good-bye to his family and his friends, wishing he could somehow see them all again. He never saw the end of his agonizing
collapse, but instead watched through dimming, shocked eyes as the
world spun and was no more. The darkness came, and then a
sensation of relief like the snapping shut of a horrific book.
There was no sensation. No up, no down, no light, no dark. Nothing. He waited. His mind was foggy, incohesive, but different, somehow active, changing. Slowly, he felt a light, a presence, a something, and he moved towards it. Nothing was making sense; his mind was telling him that it made perfect sense. The light before him was inviting, welcoming, loving. It drifted towards him, getting larger and larger until it enveloped him, and he was inside. His mind was working harder, seeming to work better and more powerfully by the second, seemingly receiving information from nowhere. He felt, sensed, became more aware. He was becoming a part of the light. No, the light was becoming part of him. And it wasn't light, it just simply was. Memories were coming back, memories of what truly was and wasn't. The light was what was, everything else wasn't. There wasn't anything else.
There wasn't anything else.
He screamed.
A long, drawn out, anguished scream that went nowhere except within himself, for there wasn't anything else. A scream that went on for centuries, but was over before it began.
He was. He knew that. Nothing else was. He screamed from the very fabric of his being, he screamed in loneliness, in sadness, and in unfairity. He screamed to no one, for no one but himself, for there was no one else.
It wasn't fair! Existence had to have more meaning, more
substance, more depth, more purpose.
He cried for an unknowable amount of time, anguished by the
power he had over nothing, and then made up his mind. There was
nothing for him here, this world had no purpose.
A gunshot.
He could almost feel the air being pushed in front of the
bullet as he fell backwards. His heart seemed to have stopped, and
he felt the bullet's heat pass just over his shoulder. He crashed
into the ground, and the world went blank.
"He's coming around."
Faces. He looked up into concerned faces.
"You alright, son?"
"I-I-I, uh, yeah, I think so."
"Good, we're just going take you down to the hospital to make sure, okay?"
"Yeah, sure."
His heart was pounding inside him, adrenaline that he was never used to. He thought of the thousands of close calls his friends of literature had been through, and felt a kinship that had never existed before. He had evaded death, and he could see life in a new, more fragile way. He could re-read his adventures and really live them this time. Thank God, he thought as they loaded him into the ambulance. Thank God that bullet wasn't a millimetre lower, or I'd be dead. Thank God.