In Twenty Four Hours...

Hello! You may have seen this in the 'So You Think You Can Write...2!' thread. This is the only short story I've really ever completed. Comments or critique appreciated!

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In twenty-four hours, they’ll be laying flowers on my grave.

The world is still dark when I wake in the morning. All I can see is the dim, flickering bluish light of computer monitors in the other room. He’s still up, probably working on some master plan.

I sit, looking around my blank and empty room; my world. Where? What was I? I have so many memories. And they’re about to be erased, for all and forever. I feel the soft bed with the springs that poke and prod my back all night.

I stand. My bare feet ache for some reason. The floor is warm, too, and I feel on my sensitive soles the fabric of the carpet. I stretch, letting my tendons stress a little. It’s good for them.

I don’t turn on a light. I slip into a tank top and plain jeans before slowly opening the door.

I have twenty-three hours.

--

The sky is still the same when I leave. The ground is flat and clean, and the snow falls in trickles. In another life, another day, it would be beautiful. The way the amber streetlights, in their sodium-vapor glory, make the snow fall beautifully and seem to make the world a dark, but bright, place.

My shoes are old and cold.

The wind blows through me. Like the bullet will.

I reach the store where I work. Why was I coming here?

I entered and put my old coat away. I can’t feel my hands. I’ve had a dream before, it was like this: I came to work to find a gunman there, and I found a way to defeat him with amazing skill.

I don’t even have the strength to change a tire, or to climb high enough to change a lightbulb on the ceiling.

My manager hasn’t come yet. He usually has me do the morning work for him. I turn on only a small light in back, and prepare for the long and dull day. The paperwork is easy.

Just like me, the rumors say.

I have twenty-two hours.

--

I turn on the remaining lights to the shop, and start working on the first orders. Nothing particularly interesting happened.

A customer came in after we had been opened for a half hour.

“Do you have any G9 bulbs in 35 watts?”

Yes. We do.

Another came in, angry that his ballast didn’t work.

It wasn’t our fault; he wired it wrong and something broke. I didn’t care.

Why care?

I had always dreamed of living in the city. Of being free; to watch the sun set and smell fresh air, even as it snowed. To be inspired to write something good.

Instead, I write this.

“I bought this, but it doesn’t work.”

Nothing works.

I have twenty-one hours.

--

The clock ticks away. Tick-tock.

It is eight am. Right on schedule. The paperwork is done. No one is around.

I decide to draw. Circles, squares; they’re all shapes. Shapes are what I draw. They give the world a format. A curve here, a sharp point there. They’re all real.

Reality. That was something that I once wanted. The truth. The universal truth of the world. But it’s impossible to find.

At least in this mortal body. But that’s not why I have what I have left.

A song plays on the radio. I can’t make out the words, but it seems to be a sad song, like someone is mourning the loss of someone else. I wonder if they really are.

The paperwork is done, and my shapes are drawn.

I have twenty hours.

--

The manager finally came in. He smells of booze. He always does. I wonder why the owner doesn’t fire him.

He is the owner.

“We’ve made $37.48 today,” I tell him. I have nothing better to do.

“Good,” is all he says.

I wonder. My mind wanders. Wander, wonder, and ponder. They all sort of mean the same thing. Context is everything. And nothing, at the same time.

Like I am.

I frown, and stand to take a break. The lights are warm; the manager doesn’t like fluorescent bulbs. I don’t know why.

He doesn’t like many things.

My break is fifteen minutes of standing in the cold, and then back to dull reality.

I have nineteen hours.

--

Time. Once, I used to think that time was all I had. I had too much of it; too few things to do and too much time to do it in. Sort of like in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, “Come on! We have so little to do and so much time to do it! Wait a minute, reverse that.”

I feel like that now. Rush rush. Must finish and complete my story.

My story. What was my story? Did I have one? What was it? I won’t ever know. Some people simply don’t have what it takes to be a story.

I know it is irony that I should be writing this, as I have no real story.

Several more customers came in and asked further inane questions about energy efficiency and things like that.

All for the sake of saving future dollars.

A future. Whatever that really means.

I have eighteen hours.

--

Dreaming. What is the point of daydreaming when this is the last day of forever? The end of times are nearer, far nearer, than any of us hope. And we should not fear these days, for they are a cursed blessing.

Escaping is the point of daydreaming lost and hopeless dreams. I wish to escape. To be free. Freedom, it was a lie among lying liars of the world. There is no freedom. Only a heavy burden called life.

It is hard to breath. The air is warm, and my shirt feels tight to my chest. My manager doesn’t mind that. I’ve caught his eyes several times. Disgusting.

Life. Such a strange and unusual concept. What was the point of life if it was merely to suffer? To feel pain and agony for all the years one has on a too hot or too cold planet?

It seems pointless to me.

Like the customers that come in, and despite looking at an incandesce bulb, insist on asking for them.

Asking. For help.

Pointless. Like me.

I have seventeen hours.

--

Once, when I was young, I had dreams. I wanted to be a scientist. I wanted to be an inventor. I’d even managed, in my own mind, to invent many wondrous machines.

My teachers had been kind enough to play along with my imagination, but my father told me that I wasn’t smart enough to become a scientist.

Who’d of thought that he was right?

Now I’ve abandoned all dreams, except for the one last one: everlasting sleep.

Sleep.

I liked to sleep, and I found myself doing such for about six minutes.

My manager didn’t catch me. Too bad, so sad. It would have been a wonderful example of my worthlessness.

I search the newspaper while sitting behind the cash register.

MAN SURVIVES FALL FROM BURNING BUILDING

ONE HUNDRED DEAD IN SUICIDE BOMBING

PRESIDENT POLL NUMBERS DOWN

HEAVY SNOWFALL THROUGH MORNING

And so falls the snow.

I have sixteen hours.

--

The clock strikes one. One. What a number. It is both the first and greatest, as the smallest of them all. Both, a plural word for a singular entity; what a strange concept.

Words are weird.

A woman came into the store, her face red with anger. She roared, and it seemed that her eyes bulged from her face. Her otherwise plump form seemed restrained, as if she wanted to hit someone.

If she struck me, I’d let her. The pain would be as I feel.

A light sting, compared to later.

She was evidently angry that one of us had sold her an interior ceiling fan, and she installed it on her porch. Being made for inside, and being placed outside, it sparked and burned down her porch.

The idiot.

The world is full of idiots. Self-absorbed fools who think the world is out to get them.

Like me.

I have fifteen hours.

--

The boss’s friend stopped by.

They talked in one of the aisles of the store, and I watched them. They didn’t notice me, except for once when the boss
nodded towards me.

I suppose they talked about me.

I don’t remember what it’s like to have friends that you can share your true self with. They all vanished when college came.

I had a job, and I stayed here. They left the city, and stopped talking to me. That’s the way the world works. Once you make it, you break off contact with everyone else who haven’t made it.

Friends. They help keep you alive. They are there for you. And when you lose them, you lose a part of your life.

Or all of it.

As it turns out, the man had come to warn us a major snowstorm was on its way.

My boss decided to close the store early.

I have fourteen hours.

--

The storm strikes with amazing swiftness, and as I collect my thin coat and prepare to leave the dimming store, I see the first wave of thick, dense clumps of wet snow fall from the gray sky.

I open the door. The bell rings as I leave the closing store. Already it is too dark to see far; the sky has but gray emptiness to it.

And yet in the emptiness, in the gray nothingness, there is a sort of sad beauty to it. The snow is heavy, filled with the sorrows of the world.

This is my element.

I walk slowly among the accumulating snow, and I see the snow drifts undulate with the sudden, swift breezes. Even the bright lights from the morning, turned on to help the cars navigate the notorious unknown, are faint beyond the wall of snowfall.

It crunches under my boots, under my numbing toes. My teeth rattle, and I am sure my cheeks are red.

Red from blood. Blood that will soon flow from the wound that I walk calculated steps ever nearer to.

I have thirteen hours.

--

On the way home, I pass a park.

The empty skeleton of an old playground remains, covered in the white snow, unmarked by footprints or other tracks. It stands alone, amongst the windy snowdrifts.

I’m alone, too.

I remember coming to this park in summer and playing. There used to be a rocking chair there that looked like a truck. I named the park the “truck park” because of it.

Now the truck park is dead. No children come here any more, and few linger longer than a minute or two.

I won’t be lingering long, either.

I step off the sidewalk onto the snow-covered ground and walk towards the cold, metal swing-set. I run a naked hand on the bare, frosted steel, and I nod.

It’s been far too long.

The day--my life--is half over.

I have twelve hours.

--

I reach home by five o’clock. My body shook and shivered from the cold, and perhaps in fear of my impending doom. It’s hard to tell sometimes.

I throw off my frozen and quite wet shoes, peel off my socks, and throw my coat to the floor. With teeth rattling, I walk on warm carpeting to my room, intent on the idea of taking a nap. I’ve been up since five this morning, I needed a rest.

Before the fireworks begin, at least.

I set the alarm for seven, and after that, I quickly curled up in my small, lumpy, warm bed.

I was quick to fall asleep, and for a while there was empty blackness. And it was soothing. But then, after an infinity of darkness, I began to dream.

A young man stood before me, and glanced at me in the dark depths of my dreamscape, and he seemed to hum a peaceful song. It was alluring, and made me content.

Something was strange.

Somewhere, out there, the hour ticked by.

I have eleven hours left.

--

Dreaming.

We spend countless hours dreaming—dreaming for the future, for the past. We dream strange things, and sometimes they do not make sense.

And so it is with this dream. It is clear: I can see it all, within me, the passage of black motifs circulating amongst uncorrelated images. The man continues to hum, and although he seems just out of reach, he never leaves me.

I can see a stairway, going upwards into infinity and downwards equally far. I go to it and hesitate. Which way should I go?

My dreams are strange.

Once, I had a dream of my friends returning to me, becoming my friends once more. It was a peaceful dream, and I had awoken to the hopes of it being true.

Dreams are only fantasies. They will never happen.

And so it is: I near the man, his long black hair flowing all about, and I wish to hug him. And just as I reach to do so . . .

The alarm clock bellows, and I awake to the real world.

What a miserable, cold, dark place.

I have ten hours left.

--

As it was, so it is. I slowly sit up in bed, groggy from my short two-hour nap. The bright red LED clock tells me I’ve only slept so long, but it is just the same. I didn’t really need to sleep.

It was stupid of me.

I yawn and stretch out. What did I have planned for the last hours? I slowly stand, and walk out the door of my room. The electric glow of my roommate’s computer is still present, and so I knock on the door.

He grumbled, and opened it, his face silhouetted. “Yeah?” he says.

“Hm. Working on your plans of world domination?” I ask simply.

He moved a bit, as if to hide the screen. He narrowed his eyes—-details I somehow managed to make out amongst the dark. He must have suspected something.

He was smart.

“What do you want?” he asked. Our friendship had been sour for some time, since he discovered I had no feelings for him.

“Rent.”

“What about it?”

“Here’s my rent--I put it on the table for you. For this month.”

“Why so early?” he asked, his tone dark and paranoid.

“I have plans.”

Many plans indeed, and soon they shall come to fruition.

I go into the kitchen, and begin to draw up the beginnings of it.

I have nine hours left.

--

I sit at the small table, a blank piece of paper on it. The white page seemed to stare at me, as if to ask me what I would put onto it.

Paper. It is infinite potential. Anything can become of the paper: a drawing, a letter, even a plane. It could become freedom. It could be proof of the world’s wrongs.

It is such a waste to use up such infinite potential on anything less than perfection.

What is the point of all of this?

I take up my mechanical pencil. It was the crafter of limitless possibilities; out of it could be molded anything onto the leaf of paper. It is strange.

With a slow and calculated though, I slowly press the tip of the graphite utensil to the page, and begin to scribble something onto it.

“All that is, was once good.”

“All that was, is now gone.”

“All shall be returned.”

“All shall be made real.”

What did it all mean?

I slowly stand, and take a can of soda from the refrigerator.

I feel guilty. Why did I need to drink something?

I have eight hours left.

--

This world is blank.

Nothingness. A vast sea of nothing. It seems to consume all. A bitter finale to a pointless life. These are the truths that I now consider.

We are here to explore this reality. To explore ourselves. But what are we but empty shells? And if nothing fills that shell, what are we? Nothing. Our spirits, our souls, inhabit the shell, but what purpose does it serve? If our souls are immortal but our frames, our shells, are frail, decaying things, then why must we live this life?

What stops us from forfeiting this version of reality, and jumping right to the next one?

"The good has gone to sleep.”

“And soon we shall all weep.”

Nothingness. The world rotates ad infinitum through it, and in the vast sea of nothing, we are but mere specks of pointless chance.

Why is something as meaningless and worthless as I even thinking about these things? There is little reason for it.

"Amongst the winds the sands do cry.”

“For all the world’s a waste.”

“And we all go into our minds and pry.”

“To try to make haste with what we taste.”

“Of chaste eternity.”

I frown, and erase what I write from the paper. The beauty of a pencil: you can erase any mistakes made.

Soon, I’ll be erasing a single, great mistake.

I have seven hours left.

--
I leave the kitchen to sit on the couch in the dark living room. The table we have is covered in cans and old newspapers. I reach blindly for the remote, and I turn on the television.

The old cathode-ray tube cackled to life, along the way making a popping and a hissing noise. The screen is somewhat fuzzy, but nothing else was wrong with it. First I turn it to the local channels, and find that we are under a severe snow advisory.

Did that surprise anyone? The snow outside, from my vantage point of sitting near a window with only the amber streetlights glowing to light the land, can still be seen falling thickly. We’ve gotten about seven inches of snow today, according to the news.

I frown, and flip the channels. Nothing is ever on anymore. While it is only ten at night, the darkness makes it feel later. It is lonely, in this dark world.

Perhaps I should go outside.

But as I prepare to stand, I spot something on television. A young man is talking to a camera, speaking of how he fought the hard fight, and finally found a way to save himself from himself, from drugs and other ‘self destructive’ behavior.

The irony that I should fall upon this show is thick.

I sip my soda slowly, the fizzy nature of the drink making it hard to swallow. This show is hard to swallow, too. The man speaks of how he found truth and safety amongst his friends, and that in reality, those were not the truths that he should have been clinging to.

If those truths were untrue, they were not what he was speaking in the first place, right? Truths cannot be lies, but at the same time, a lie can be true from a certain point of view.

There is only one truth in this world: All things must end.

And so it is.

I have six hours left.
-----
I sit on the couch, my back twisted so that I can watch the snow continue to fall, and the light from the television shining off the window. I breathe slowly, and memories seemed to pour into me.

Guilt.

Everything that is me, is guilt. It consumes my actions, my thoughts, and percolates throughout my entire being. Guilt for things that I have done in the past; for those that I could not help at the store; guilt for those that are gone while I remain . . . these are what generate such feelings in me.

Soon I shall not remain, and I shall be among those that are gone. And hopefully, I will be granted a chance to beg forgiveness.

I doubt it. Those that are like me simply burn in Hell.

Why did the snow continue to fall? If it were rain, I would say that the sky was weeping, that the world itself cried in sorrow for the wars and bloodshed. But instead, peaceful snow falls from the sky, while bombs fall elsewhere.

On the news networks, all they speak of, as I flip past them, are of the war. Hundreds dying everywhere, with no one to save them or bury them.

It isn’t right.

I turn off the television and go towards my room.

There are things I must write before the end.

I must ruin more infinite potential.

I have five hours left.
--

am a failure.

Every part of my existence is failings that I wish to go back and change. Be it how I spent my childhood, to the classes I barely paid attention to. Maybe, had I done things differently, I wouldn’t be in the position I am now in.

But I will not fail this time.

I must write a note, but I find I can’t find the words to correctly examine how I feel. Or why I am going to do that. I glance out the window. The snow had finally stopped falling.

Isn’t it strange? At a time like this, when most people are going to bed, I sit in my kitchen and ponder how to describe my feelings. It is midnight. I should be in bed, sleeping. Preparing for another long and dull day that would inevitably come the next.

But tonight is different. There will be no more dull day ahead of me. They are all in the past. Whatever transpires in the next few hours will change everything forever.

“How does it feel . . .” I begin, before erasing it.

I will not fail again.

I have four hours.
--

“How does it feel to know that all that has happened, has happened for a specific reason? How does it feel to know that when all things have fallen, there was no one to pick up the pieces? All things must end, but when they must end is another thing entirely. Who knows what awaits in the dark, in the bitter finale that soon shall pass?” This is what I write, but I fear it does not say what I mean.

Why was I going to go through with this?

What was so wrong with what I am now?

“And so this is how it must be: for things that have been in the past. For those that are gone. When you are gone, too, perhaps you can rejoin them. How does it feel to be alone, forever?”

No. That didn’t work. I erased the second paragraph, and sigh.

“Why can’t anything work?” I ask the darkness that lurked beyond the window. “Am I failure here, too?”

I stand. I grab a pair of socks and put them, as well as shoes, and head outside. There was no point in me trying to write anymore.

I don’t even know why I intend to do what I have planned tonight.

There are many feelings tumbling about within me, and I just wanted to escape from them all.

Escape. Maybe that was the reason I wanted to disappear from this reality.

Maybe.

I have three hours.
-----

This place is a prison.

That was one of my favorite songs. And strangely, I am finding its title to be rather apt at explaining how I feel.

The snow had stopped falling, and the world was silent. Nothing moved, and everything was clear. I breathed in, and the sharp, crisp air bit at my nostrils. It was fresh and clean.

I slowly walk down the sidewalk, the snow crunching and giving way. This place was indeed a prison.

Bound to mortal forms, we live a life set by fate. And it seemed even gravity, the air, and even the sky all forced us down this one path.

There is but one path, one we all must make.

The neighborhood was all but dead. Soon, I would join them in the unmoving silence.

But for now, ironically, I am the sole thing living on this cold, ice-covered planet. I am alone, here. I was alone, before, too.

Even when I first moved in with my roommate, whom I had hoped would help me alleviate my loneliness, ignored me and remained in his own little world of technology.

I turn the corner, and still I see nothing. The trees do not sway, even under the burden of snow they now carry. The roads were clear and covered with virgin snow. I come to a stop, and let in a long-drawn breath.

“So this is it.”

This may just be the place I will do it.

I turn to go home.

I have two hours.
--

I open the door and trip over a pair of shoes that weren’t there before. I let out a heavy sigh, and slowly move to turn on the light.

He is sitting there, his bruised eyes—from staring at the screen for so long—glare at me. I spot in his hand the letter I had begun.

“And just what is this?” he demanded.

“Something,” I say simply, my voice dead and raspy.

“I think its gibberish. Just like everything you write.”

So true he was. I have failed at all things that I have written. Endless potential mired by a mindless pursuit of something that I have no talent for.

This is proof of that, isn’t it? Proof. There is significant proof of my worthlessness, and I have seen much of it.

“Yeah?” I ask quietly, leaving the room.

“Give up! You won’t make it as a writer,” he yelled.

More proof.

Alright. I will give up.

I go to my room without saying another word, nearly collapsing from a strange wincing pain in my chest. I lay on my bed.

Everyone wants me dead, and so they’ll have it. They’ll have their dream fulfilled.

It’s my dream as well. Those that are lost will be found again, just as soon as I make the fateful journey across the River Styx.

How cliché, and yet it is true.

The end will be soon.

I have one hour.

--

As soon as I recover, I slowly sit up.

This is it, the final chapter of my story. The final moments before the dawn of all things truth.

I roll off the bed, and kneel down to grab a box from underneath it. Within it is held my destiny.

I open it, and I can see even in the dim light a steel tool. I take it in hand, and handle the weapon. It is already loaded. It feels heavy, thorough and full.

It feels good to hold it. To know I have the power to end this, one way or the other.

Power. It feels good. Power over destiny, over fate. Power to say, “So what, world? So what?”

I smile, and stand. I would go to that place, that beautiful, peaceful place and do what I must there.

I put it into my pocket, and turn to leave the room. As I pass all the things in the house, I make note of them.

This might be the last I ever see them ever again.

You don’t see much when you’re burning in Hell.

As I leave the building, I whisper, “Good bye.”

I walk quickly: time is ticking away far faster than it should ever, and this last hour appears to be ever accelerating. The wind has picked up somewhat, but I pace myself against it.

When I reach that spot, near the virgin roads, I note with sadness that they have lost their purity. A plow had pushed all of the beauty away.

With a frown on my face, I pulled the weapon from my pocket. The grey steel glittered against the bulbs of the streetlamps, and I think of how I would do it.

I warm the barrel with my hand before placing it in my mouth. I think: will this do?

I place the barrel under my chin and think the same.

Finally, I place the barrel on the side of my head, and nod to myself. This is the proper way that I shall leave this place, amongst the broken innocence of the road.

As my trigger-finger twitches against the cold switch, a thought passes through my numbing mind . . .

I have no time left but eternity.

Wow 0_0 I, personally, thought that was very good ^_^