Jalex oneshot stories

Under a paper moon

Alex stood staring at the bookshelf for what seemed like forever, skimming the books one by one as he searched for one to satisfy his wordy hunger. He eventually picked up the soft material of a paper back novel and tossed it in his hands, feeling the creases down the spine from the amount of times Alex had read this particular book. He flipped it over onto its front to read the small printed name across the top.

'A holiday from real', read the front. It was a book about addiction and letting life give you the slip. Following the main character Jack Barakat, of whom Alex had developed a small fictional crush on. Alex had never been one for going out and meeting real life people anyway, but he always found his love, instead, in books. And yes you'd have guessed it. Alex Gaskarth was not the straightest of men, finding appeal in many a man. Just not- "real men". These men could range from gale hawthorn in the hunger games books, to mo in inkheart. He had a weird taste that was for sure, but he didn't hate it.

And then there was jack barakat. A troubled man fighting addiction to drugs and alcohol while casually hooking up in the background, waiting for someone to really settle with him. Sadly, jack never finds his happy ending at the end of the book, and instead, leaves an implication that jack himself had died. Alex hated the ending with a strong passion and yet there wasn't much he could do about it, besides love the book. And that's exactly what Alex had done. He must have read it at least fifteen times over and kept finding his way back to the creased pages and falling apart cover.

So one day, Alex sat reading to try and put himself to sleep. A holiday from real in one hand, and a coffee in the other. Alex wasn't sure what time it was, but quite frankly, he didn't care.

11:09

Alex flipped the pages gently like there was nothing to it. Reading about the tragic life of Barakat and gorging himself upon the words he knew so well. The words he loved more than anything.

11:10

Alex's mind was clouded with thoughts of jack and what it would be like living in his world full of sex, drugs and alcohol. Alex wasn't one for having many of those three but he felt the uncomfortable urge to want to aid the thirty year old man in the novel and push him through the struggles that life was throwing him. Alex knew what it was like to be addicted to alcohol. He knew the dangers that it brought. He didn't know them first hand from himself, but saw them first hand destroy others. He guessed his little fictional crush wouldn't be so little were jack a real person.

11:11

"I wish I could help him." Alex sighed to himself. He placed a book mark into the chapter he had barely finished and put the book down. Alex normally loved the scene he was reading, but today, he felt unbelievably saddened by the event in the novel. It was a scene of jack sat under the oak tree his mum used to take him to as a younger kid. They used to sit and watch the sunlight fade together but in that particular chapter, jack was sat with a bottle of unopened beer in hand, crying, while staring at the full moon in the distance. It always made Alex cry but it also showed the humanity that Barakat still had left in him. The urge to chug that final bottle of beer and yet he still kept himself from opening it. For a novelist to write, it was pretty deep stuff.

Alex held the coffee mug in his hand and walked over to the kitchen, not feeling like finishing the rest. He poured the coffee into the kitchen sink and placed the mug on top of the side that the dishwasher lay under. That's just how lazy Alex was. He stood staring at the dishwasher and debated on whether it was worth the extra little bit of effort to bend down and open it to place the mug inside, then decided against it and walked off.

As Alex turned around, head down and arms folded, he heard a hiss. Startled, he lifted his head and turned to search for the hissing noise, only to see the kitchen and his entire house, disappear from around him. The floor underneath him crumbled to dust as green grass began to protrude from under his sock clad feet. His stomach fell to his feet as the rest of his house disappeared behind him. In a state of panic, Alex wasn't thinking clearly and searched for any sign of his missing house, when he noticed a bright light above. He shielded his eyes with his arm and looked up to the sky to see a full moon glistening in the distance. A tall oak sat in the middle of the grassy plain and a figure sat beneath it. If Alex wasn't already scared, he was now.