Fiction: The Veil

For some reason, after I read a certain amount of fiction, I tend to want to write some of my own. My own crappy fragment follows. Ignore at will. This might be a decent idea for a story but it needs about 100x more volume than I'm probably willing to give it.

The veil between reality and dreams had been breeched. These visions, these phantasms could only be the raved imaginings of the deranged. It had happened again, right on the city sidewalk and brought about by the simplest thing. But this single, simple action had taken a piece of his soul. To see the torment, no, not to see it. To LIVE the life he had lived in that split second. It was as if a lifetime had crowded into that second and pushed aside everything that had come before, everything that he WAS before. In the blink of an eye, the crisp Milwaukee day had turned into a blurred surreal vision. He felt the stiff pride of graduation day, doting parents looking on as their only daughter had finally reached her high school graduation day and looked out on a bright and magnificent future. This life not his own raced past him, her college days, the death of her father, her most exquisite agony and most potent ecstasy had all left their mark on this simple object. He saw those marks and he read them. Quite against his will he drank of the cup of her existence.

His life was punctuated by such instances. Often it would come upon him quite unawares, in the simplest everyday action. Touching a doorknob he would suddenly be swept under by the image of a stranger and find himself intimately familiar with every detail of his life. Each of us, as we pass through this world leaves behind a piece of ourselves, a vapor trail if you will, that marks our track through life. Even the least sensitive among us can see the morbid, bloated tracks left as ghosts by those in their final hours or in periods of great emotional stress, but Paul, Paul could see the entire tangled web of life as it unfolded behind you. His talent was both a curse and a blessing as the whole of humanity unfolded before him but it was beyond his control to turn the page or choose when to read. His was a gift unasked for and largely unwanted.

Backlog Count: 327 Books
Finished: Misquoting Jesus, the Men who Changed the Bible and Why
Finished: Hester by Margaret Oliphant