First Edition (Short Story)

Part 4 Shadows of a Memory

Jacob was starting to get a bad headache so he did his best to defrag his mind so he could relax and take a nap. He was mentally exhausted and the physical was following right behind. Powernaps were a godsend to Jacob since he only slept a few hours a night when his mind would let him. He managed his day by day with naps scattered throughout the day. He hoped this certain downtime would clear his head so that he could start from a clean slate to try and figure out why he was being nudged to search out a book which he had no idea what the title or even the author was. He wanted a sign to let him know if he was even looking in the right direction or at least to let him know if he should just give up on this impossible quest. Oh, man.

When Jacob woke up from his siesta he decided to tackle the junk shelf instead of spending one more minute thinking of a title that he would never figure out in this lifetime according to his progress as of lately. He managed to clear out the loose collectible toys, box them up and put them in the basement a couple of days ago thank God. All that was left were the three shoe boxes, some folders with loose papers and pages from some music magazines and a few old collegs-ruled notebooks. Jacob went and got another box figuring this finesse of mess probably didn't need to be separated or sorted. It had been in a state of organized chaos for a good while without disrupting any of his days so all of those happy little papers would consolidate, make friends with one another and commune with each other in their new Home Depot boxed home.

He chose to go through the shoe boxes first since they were semi- organized already. The first box was full of pictures from alot of disposable Kodak Fun Saver cameras. Jacob's generation grew up without the convenience of cameras on cell phones. You had to pray and be in God's good graces to get a few decent pictures although half of the time almost everybody looked like they were in the midst of transforming into a Lycan or werewolf for the layman or woman. Those red demon eyes haunted many a Kodak moment unexpectedly when the pictures were taken out of the protective film sleeves. Timmy's 5th birthday would never be forgotten thanks to the dark forces that created red eyes or as I like to call them - dead eyes haha.

Another box contained a bunch of cassette inlay cards from mostly 80's hair metal bands like Poison, Ratt, Motley Crùe, Cinderella, etc. Thinking back Jacob remembered liking glam rock and the first time he saw pictures of his guitar heroes he remembered thinking "wow these chicks are pretty hot for being dudes!?" It was a very confusing time. Thank God thrash metal came onto the scene and gave all of the testosterone back to the men. As it should be. Jacob also found quite a few personal notes from his couple of friends in high school. They used to pass notes back and forth between second and third period. Again, his generation lacked cell phones capable of sending notes to anyone at any time. Passing notes was the original form of texting. It was way ahead of its time, I suppose. All he found at the bottom of the box were some old homework papers so box number two was done as far as he was concerned.

     Down to the last shoe box, Jacob realized he was enjoying this trip down memory lane even though when he was living in the good ole days he hated high school, mostly due to his frantic social anxiety. His junior year was probably the best year of his high school life because of his guitar classes. Not only was it beneficial for his classical guitar studies (he had already been playing rock guitar for a few years) he was becoming known for being a really good guitarist. He finally had a repitation. He was more than than a blip on the radar. He was no longer the invisible man. That helped him break out of his shell a little although, when times were trying he still found sanctuary among his books. He later realized being surrounded by books or just being near hardcovers and paperbacks anywhere period would help calm him down and center himself like nothing else. Jacob made made many a trip to bookstores but not to only buy anything, he just needed to be amongst the books as if the full shelves were Sentinels standing guard protecting him and offering up a plethora of worlds he could choose to escape to from this cruel and cold one we called Life. He really enjoyed the safe quietness that the rows of books gave him so selflessly. It was his favorite sound in the whole wide world - silence.

     The third box was full of music notation , lyrics from famous bands and some of Jacob's poetry or rather his attempts at being a poet but for the most part, the end results for this bookish bard always ended up sounding like a Dr Seuss book. But alas, the sun even shines on on a dog's ass every once in a while as it also did on his poetry, so occasionally he had manifested a few pretty good lines of stanzas. Jacob definitely had his moments with putting his images to words, just not consistently. This was actually one of the main reasons he stayed a spectator only as a reader and collector and not a writer of books. It was often discouraging so he would just shy away thinking he had known his place in this literary way of life.