The archive of the forgotten

How do I end my epilogue?

Trigger warning: blood and dark themes

My hands are sore from typing, my fingertips are bleeding through the endless plasters and my eyes are crying. The last two pages of my masterpiece. My last adieu, a bittersweet goodbye, a testimony of greatness, or perhaps a testimony what could've been greatness. I stare into the flames of the candle dancing in front of me as I decide how to end this book. What can be the last line, what is a line that can measure up to all the failure these characters have endured? I know the answer. Because it's right here by my side but perhaps I don't want to see it. 

I cough and wipe the blood from my mouth, I have known my faith for half a year now. All I want to do is finish this. I have nothing left but pain, loneliness and my work. My works, the books that are world renowned, the new classics as they say. Written to reflect the very soul of the writer the critics tell me. I laugh, if only they could really see it. See it as clearly as I do. Is this not all that I wanted? Plenty of money in my bank account, fame, prizes for my work. Than why does it feel so.....hollow? 

I want to love this life. I want to continue writing, I want to become staple of literature. I want to become somebody like Oscar Wilde, Shakespeare, Charles Bukowski. I want to look at the world and see more than hopelessness. I want to dance through life, knowing I have a purpose. Knowing I will be remembered but my brain denies me the pleasure. I take off the bandages to write the last page, this must go with pain, with the agony that my character feels. The page writes itself, the impact it has on me is too big for it to be considered human. I do not believe I can or have felt this but I also believe I have never felt another way. 

And there we are. The very last sentence, the goodbye of the characters I've spent more than a year shaping, sculpting, understanding, living. I am giving up on the world I spend so much time building. And it's the right moment to give up on it. It is a bittersweet moment, I want to end my masterpiece but I am afraid to say goodbye to the only people who truly know me. I shall say goodbye I think as my bloody fingers stained with the red elixer that gives me and so many others life hits the keys of my typewriter. And there it is. The last sentence.

"And they drove to the horizon, wind blowing through their hair, both beautifully unaware they would never arrive there" 

I look at the finished page. A teardrop falls Right next to it. I take a deep breath. The only that on the paper are the crimson red fingerprints reflecting my agony in this moment. I blow out the candle which has transformed in a pile of melted wax. I walk around my apartment. It is so old, it's made of dark wood and it would be every writers dream to have something like this. I walk through my library with a rolling ladder, the thing I dreamed about as a kid. I smile perhaps he would be proud of me. Maybe even envy me, although I envy him. I trace my fingers along my first editions of my favourite books, careful not to get the blood on it. I close my eyes and breathe in, the heavenly smell if knowledge fills my nose and makes me happier. 

I walk into the sitting room I've arranged everything beforehand. All I have to do is gather the courage. I feel my lip trembling, fearing I do not have it. What if I do not have the courage? What will become of me? A once great writer withering in old age and sickness. I look at the noose, the thing that will seal my promise to death. I put it around my throat

The next morning the news was flooded with the suicide of the great writer Andreas Lazslo Calland. Some people were shocked, other had seen it coming. His best friend (and rumoured partner), Soren gave a statement to the public. Revealing he had written a note where he said he wanted his masterpiece released. Some people thought it was classic Calland, valueing his work above mourning and sadness. Others said that Soren was profiting off of it. But all the money Soren made withr the books was donated to a suicide awareness and prevention program. Along with half of the fortune he had inherited. The rest of it he used for other charities and helping young writers to find themselves. One of the few things he kept to himself was Andreas' apartment. Nobody knew why he kept it, the rumours are he does not change anything about it. Only sits in the sitting room and talks with Andreas' ghost.

"That's a hell of a story about a book". The young lover said to her fiancee while they were reading the epilogue of Callands book. "I liked the book" the boy said, not that he fully understood it. But he did feel it, and Andreas would be proud. "I wonder what drove him to commit suicide" the young women asks. "We don't know that sort of things Charlotte" he says while looking at the lake. "Because we are incandescently happy" she smiles "don't I know it Edwin" she says as she stand up and dances towards the vintage Cabrio they are renting. Her flowy dress hugging her figure in the beautiful beautiful wind. And how he loved her, how happy they were, but still curious for agony. He kisses her and they step in the car, and the beautiful drove to the horizon, wind blowing through their hair, both beautifully unaware they would never arrive there.

I'm quite excited about this one. I kinda adore it because it digs into writes that are better than myself. It makes me want to be the best writer I could possibly be. I also think I could really make Soren and Andreas likable