24 Hours

Chapter Eight

Chapter Eight

                When I was younger, I wanted to be an author. It wasn’t for the money (although that certainly became a priority later in life), nor for the fact that people will be reading my books. It was the feeling I wanted people to experience when they finished reading my books.

                So that’s what I began to target as I got older; more emotionally-provocative books. In fourth grade, I wrote a short story in which a girl finds an ancient, cursed book in a river. The first part of it was a girl running through the woods being chased by a monster, hundreds of years before the main plot began. This was supposed to create suspense, to scare the reader.

                But, of course, fear isn’t the strongest feeling you have. Some people think it is – and I’m not saying you’re wrong. It comes down to the two most simple (yet complex) things ever known to be felt in the entire universe; happiness and sadness.

                Happiness was created with happy endings, something I myself wasn’t too fond of. Now, now – of course happiness isn’t created just with a happy ending! It’s made with relief, and love. Especially love.

                Sadness? That’s made with suspense, and tragedy, and lack of hope. Sadness was a rare feeling to most people, so in fifth grade, I decided I was to try and evoke it into the reader.

                The assignment was simple; write a story about a runaway slave. It was supposed to tie into what we were learning in social studies as well, so it seemed reasonable to make mine as realistic as I could manage.

                It was no surprise that everyone allowed their slave to escape at the end of the story, to finally experience the joy and relief of freedom. But… that wasn’t quite true. Not everyone made it out at the end. It simply wasn’t accurate.

                So I re-planned my story. The slave was not to make it out. She would reach the border, but she would be snatched from the hands of freedom at the least moment.

                I made the journey long, and tragic. People got hurt, and the slave told the reader of her old family, whom had been killed long ago as the evil English and Americans invaded Africa and stole oh so many of its inhabitants, forcing them to endure everything cruel that ever laid an egg and nestled its way into the souls of mankind.

                She reminisced on the death of her father as she lied under the warm, patched quilt of the person who kindly took her under their wing along the journey. She waded, tripping, in the river of which trampled roughly at her foot.

                All along the way, she was traced. Followed. Never quite safe.

                And she never made it to freedom.

                Never.

                By the time I’d finished reading it, three people were crying. As I look back on it now, it wasn’t even that good, yet it was such an accomplishment. I made people cry, with my writing.

                And that was why I had wanted to become a writer.

                I wanted to put on paper what nobody else dared to say. I wanted to make people aware of things they couldn’t see, and to clarify what others thought they knew. And to dismiss the excuses of those who have committed the act of wrongdoing.

                So, let’s get back to that post-book feeling.

                Sometimes it’s warm, and fuzzy. Sometimes it’s solemn, and cold. But then there’s the outcast of the three; awe.