Once Upon A Time: Chapter 1: Haze

[doomoverlord]

This is un-betaed. English's not my first language too.

He’s often reaching for the orange ceiling.

In this world that he belongs to, he stands on his toes and raises his hands above himself, and even though he knows he can’t, he tries to touch it. It has become a habit of sorts. Whenever he comes here, unwillingly more often than not, he’s greeted by black walls with holes in them. The little patch of soft red ground is surrounded by them. There’s enough space for him to lie down and stretch fully, though he only sits most of the time.

The reason for sitting rather than lying is because it hurts otherwise. The red ground is wavy and it hides sharp pieces that lack in colour when picked up. They’re rather uninteresting, in his opinion. After he’s stepped on them for what seemed like fifteenth time, he started collecting them from the red ground and putting them in the holes in the black walls. He once tried using those holes to touch the orange ceiling, but before he reached the top strong wind knocked him down. His back was full of sharp pieces afterwards and he couldn’t move his leg for a while. He hadn’t tried again.

This world hurts, but it’s his.

Every time he closes his eyes for longer periods of time, he ends up in Her world. It’s definitely different from his. Everything’s white there, even the ceiling which he’s been able to touch. The ground is flat but blissfully void of sharp objects with no colour. If he tries to lie down he doesn’t touch the ground. First few times he panicked, but since it’s comfortable, he got used to it.

This world is the propriety of Her. It could be said that She is this world where everything’s white. He’s never seen Her, but She always lets him know She’s there. She’s gentle when he comes from his world gasping for air in unknown terror, and when he spends too much time in Her world she slowly sends him back to his. Unlike him, She’s never trespassed into his world and he’s grateful for it. It’s a mess and he doesn’t want Her to see that. She also gives him the Man that comes through a whole in a wall almost always after he ends up in Her world.

When the Man speaks, he doesn’t understand him. She has tried to explain Man’s intentions through pictures only he can see, but their meanings still elude him. The Man’s taller than him and has black hair. His eyes are green and they don’t make sense. The Man’s been the one who soothed pains in his stomach and made him want to spend time in Her world that he doesn’t understand. He doesn’t understand anything.

Then, one day, he woke up.



He wasn’t aware how long he’s been living in a hazy state, only the moment when it stopped and clarity took hold. Much, much later, he would wonder if it would have been better if everything stayed that way.

The Moment, as he would begin to call it, happened in his world. It was small, easily ignored but vital. He realized, not the names of things, but their purpose. It was almost instinctual, as if his whole being refused not knowing.

It started with a book.

One day, when he was cleaning the red ground which was grass that grew thanks to the light of the orange sky which can never be touched because it isn’t made from anything solid, he found it. A black book. It looked quite innocent, but the moment he touched it a voice screamed in his head… Or was it him? It’s confusing when a world is a part of you. He was burning and betrayed, and he couldn’t think. With a jerk he got his hand away from the black covers with silver lines on it. It was fear of what that book held that finally moved the metaphorical wheels in his mind. He began to think. He also realized that this black book was something bad for him. He hasn’t touched or came near it ever since.

Then, when he hurt himself on colourless pieces while collecting them with his right hand, his brain automatically supplied him with a name: glass. Unlike the red blood which helped him stay alive when inside his body, the glass, at least when broken, made blood leak out of him. He got the impression that it was bad just like the black book. That’s exactly why he decided to remove all of its pieces from the red grass.

The walls, he his mind told him, weren’t walls. The purpose of a wall is to hold the ceiling. Since sky was made out of matter that couldn’t be touched, those weren’t walls. On the other hand, there were wooden walls with holes which held things like that black book. Those were shelves. Multiple shelves with books made spaces called libraries.

That led to a conclusion that his world was a library. Library stores knowledge. Knowledge is names, meanings, pictures, smells and in short, everything. He thinks that’s good even though he doesn’t know why. But this library is empty save that horrible book on the ground.

So, where is his knowledge?