Top 100 Creative Writing Blogs

New England’s Antiquities Journal

As appearing in the March 2008 edition:

Submission: Dawn Elliot – 42 – Clairmont, PA

Earlier this year, I think it was mid January or so, my two sisters and I went to the antique emporium. We usually go once a month or so. My entire family lives in Clairton, PA, a small town outside of Pittsburgh so we all hang out with each other. I’m the youngest sister in a family of six. Denise and Tanya, my two older sisters, are big antiquers. I like antiques too but I love old books and have been a collector since I was about 10. I didn’t play with dolls as much as I read stories and played football with the boys. Anyway, the very moment we drove up, I saw the warehouse guys bringing in a whole bunch of books in off the truck. I was excited, which was tough for anyone really seeing as how it was 18 degrees outside. I hate our weather by the way! So, I asked one of the guys (Who was real cute, BTW–YES, I am single!) why so many books were coming in. The manager came up from behind me and said that they didn’t get auctioned off and that the mall was ‘awarded them’ through an educational grant. I didn’t really care -just wanted to see the books and get some coffee.
I bought about 12 books that day for $250 or so, some just because they were SO old and in such GOOD shape. Here’s where it gets WEIRD: I came home the other day and started looking through this book of Longfellow to try and find a street price to sell it. It had 1888 as the year published. Anyway, I was just going to put it up and let it sit there for ‘looks’ unless it sold on Ebay but it was so thick. I found that a little odd. As I looked through the book, the light from my ceiling showed what I thought were little word indentions on the 2nd page to the end. THESE WERE NOT INDENTIONS. I was like a crazed schoolgirl. There was a physical letter – a double sided letter within the binding of the actual book. However, the only way to see if I was right would be to rip the book apart. $59 down the drain, right? Don’t think so. This has been one of the most remarkable things that I’ve ever seen or been involved with. This took place two days ago – I have stared at this letter for hours upon hours just wondering. I decided to post it here in the hopes of finding the other letters. Here it is– the letter – will post pictures when i get my new scanner. This has got to be a gimmick, I know, but it is so damn odd to read. I don’t even understand it. Check it out. Here it is word for word:
—————————————
May 1888 – B.L. writes:

I write this entry in a dark and private room behind a thick desk using a gold pen that does not belong to me. My notebook is bent and wrinkled with torn edges from the thick binding rubber band that has held it together since my awakening within those murderous walls. A strange man, bald and grossly overweight lies in the hallway dead just beyond the door’s entrance. This very well could be his pen. My breathing has come under control; my heartbeat has found a calm way now. Though I am largely disoriented, I will simply begin to pen my thoughts, for what reason, I’m not entirely sure. All written words, my words, that have been tirelessly spread across these once empty pages read so differently now, and thus I am asking whoever finds this and reads along to disregard all other entries prior to this day: Thursday, May 31st, 1888. Let there be no misunderstanding – I am not insane. I write this under the accepted standard definition of what constitutes a sound mind. Though I disagree with the definition of ’sound’ as well as the current psychological parameters applied to it, guidelines by which most institutions blindly follow with religous fervor, I will adhere to them for this day and thus, my mind is to be regarded as sound.

I have been held against my will by men of no conscience in a place or a time that I can’t define. I say to myself that I have ‘awoke from sleep’ but that would be inaccurate. I do know for a fact that I have witnessed firsthand, lastly at sun up on this very day, the devastating destruction that can fall upon a man who elects to use whatever internal fortitude that could be mustered to resist these captors and their hideous, torturous probing machines, devices which pierce the very inner workings of our human minds. These people of captivity, many of whom I now call friend, are living life as nothing more than simple test subjects and exotic play toys for scientists gone mad. My friends have endured such wretched punishment, much moreso than even the most monstrous and dispicable of child rapists. My friends have persevered for some time, fighting against their limits end, clinging to their life’s last breath, holding on to a hope that promised long life, though each would ultimately succumb to the final ringing of the bell. Many were unable to withstand the herding from room to room, the table to table prodding of blunt, bloody instruments time and again. I was there with them on the edge facing the impending doom of my own life…for the second time in a lifetime. I watched, crying like a child as they yelled their way into eternity. I was there…until today. These demon men drilled into our skulls and redesigned us. I’m telling you that I was dead before today – DEAD!

How do atrocities such as this happen? Has my soul lost its place of reservation amongst the cities of gold? Why has my God forsaken so many? Surely, our violent screams were loud enough to disturb any angel that housed even the slightest of conscience…and yet, the dead remain back there on the floor, still and quiet and our begging produced nary a blink from the devils that stood over us cutting into our skulls. My sadness knows no bounds for these people, my friends. Their lives, as well as my own, were recorded as ended in normal fashion many a century ago but an indescribable resurrection has enveloped both our mind and soul thus trapping us in a some twisted sort of dimensional container for future generations to enjoy a giant belly laugh. They have laughed at us as entertainment. But now I stand in the corner of a cold room in a building so tall, the structure makes no sense; I am in a time that I don’t believe can exist.

I have questioned my sanity, yes. But my awareness becomes more acute with each passing minute. I apologize for not having the words nor the vocabulary to describe what I am seeing or have seen. It is a hideous, hideous world in which I find myself. The people appear hollow and do not speak. The sky is gray and there are no birds to speak of. I feel the clutches of my own desperation and I believe it will eventually overwhelm me.

I’m being pursued and chased by the most evil of people. However, thanks be to the Lord that ‘chased’ is the operative word. They have not found me. They do not have me, yet. I am outside their scope and running as the wind blows with no pattern to speak of. I am simply running for my life. I do not know for how long I can withstand this though. I can not yell, I can not confide in another, and I can not become known to anyone for any period. My skin glows differently than the people outside of these walls. I can not mingle amongst them. They all wear one piece tunics of some type. I am finding this all to be so very odd. However, I reflect on my youth. HE was as strange a person as there was or could be. Perhaps the people who walk aimlessly through the evening are not as bad as the devils in that room. And they can not be as bad as him, the one I’ve known.

Forgive my rambling – Now, I will be blunt, quick and to the point for I do not know if this escape will pass or linger for an any extended duration. With all truthfulness, I am not precisely sure where I am but I know that I have indeed escaped the confines of where I was. The building that held me, held others like me. Perhaps a mental ward, of some sort. Dazed people were everywhere, a lifeless drudge of humans with faces of mucus and saliva falling from their faces. I do not know how I became awake but I did. There was a door and I found my way through it during the night.

As of now, I seem to be just outside the perimeter of an enormous town. Metal and smoke are in every direction. Few people walk the street and none do so alone. The air tastes like a wet cigar, and not a fine, store-bought one, mind you. The smell of mildew and rot is in the air, as it was in the building that housed me. I am confused by what my eyes are seeing: square cubes of light and words, small viles of liquid just down the corridor that easily numbers into the thousands. I have only experienced these conditions for a single day and I am utterly perplexed. Everything is simply beyond me. My set of senses returned yesterday, the day that would’ve been Wednesday, May 30th, 1888.

Today, however, trumps all; it has been unlike anything I’ve known in my short thirty-two years on this earth. I can not relay that sentiment with any more simplicity than as I just have. I’m a religous man by nature, trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ to guide and protect me through out my life, one which He hath bestowed upon me so many gracious and wonderous things. I am honest man and have made every effort at an honest living, despite myself, and thus this written request should be considered exactly as it is.

What is written on these pages before you is true. I ask for a momentary suspension in general belief. I do this now hopeful that you find me in time. Somewhere.

Yesterday, according to the traditional Gregorian calendar of the anno Domini era, officially adopted by the British empire in the year 1752, normal perception by a modern day human being would attest to the fact that yesterday was without question, Wednesday, May 30th, 1888 . It was simply Wednesday to a normal man. I tell you I am petrified by even the littlest movement of this very pen. I hurriedly write these words to best of my ability with as much haste as my fingers will allow. I tell you now that the yesterday I remember, Wednesday, May 30th, 1888 was nothing of the sort but rather Wednesday, June 23rd, 2088. I have no understanding of this other than my instincts.

If nothing I write here is to be believed then I am dead and dust and worth no mention. Throw this journal out with the nearest trash and buy a pint and tell a fantastic story of a crazed man. However, if any of my words fall within the truth then know that I may stand moments away from being recaptured and returned to hell itself; my second escape would be as far-fetched a notion as well, sadly to say, the suggestion to which I’ve been writing here.

But, if I’m correct and the year is indeed 2088, then the love of my life, the young girl whom I once kissed so delicately in the early mornings, has either been dead and buried for over 150 years or she is here, somewhere in this time under the same impression as I. She was caught with both of us, he and I, in his doomsday-type, electricity web that killed us all. If I am alive, and that is quite the ‘if’ then she may be alive, as well. If I am truly writing this, there’s hope.

Her name is Kathryn Listori and it is imperative that she be located. She’s the only one who can help for she is the only one who could know his location. I must deduce that if I am actually here then my lovely Kathryn may be here, as well. If I was housed in the building of slaughter, so, too, would she be. Sadly, if she’s here in this time, then in all likelihood, he’s here, too.

Make no mistake of who this man is or of my contempt for his being alive. He is my sworn enemy to the death, an event I was somewhat certain had occurred some century and half earlier. However, he is the only one who can save us all now. Find her and she’ll find him. Then, after learning that I’m too alive, just as he is alive, he will let nothing on earth stop him from getting to me. Ironically, his touch, that of a failed experiment by his father’s hand, one which now produces a framework for lightning itself, is my only chance to maintain my mind from the leeches who have preyed on my intellect for an undistinguishable period of time. My hope rests in the magentic hands of my own hatred – him.

I beg that they have not yet already detroyed her delicate mind. She is so much like a flower, undisturbed in every way. I ask to the Lord that Kathryn be found well and in good spirits, and though I do not believe this will become truth, I pray for enough health for her to locate his whereabouts. I have devised a theory regarding everything previously written on these pages but am unable to provide sufficient proof or enough attributable knowledge to support my hypothesis, which is what it is – an educated guess. I can’t convince you, the reader of my words, to act on anything. If I’m correct in my guess, even if only in the smallest of parts, then these vile people, whoever they are, have come to understand that no contraption of which they’ve conceived can harm him; no effect can fall over him. He most likely walks the streets of this time, undisturbed by any one single thing. He’s repulsive and arrogant and I do wish a hateful death upon him and his soul, though admittedly, I fear him and dare not utter his name perchance he may hear me even in this time. Lord forgive my vengefulness.

Most likely, my captors, the ones who search for me, fixated on my return, are in fear of him already, searching for a way to combat him. In the smallest compartment of my mind, I do laugh on his behalf against these maggots who hide behind the veil of playfulness and gamesmenship. This is a foundational element of my theory: we are a game from the past; fodder for the future, if you must know. I laugh at them infinitely more than I will ever laugh with him. If the three of us are reunited then some amount of amusement will come our way. For me, though, it will be short-lived. But at the very least, I will see their faces when they see his and they ralize their doom is iminent. Their mistake was and is unable to be corrected for they knew not what soul they had brought back in him. History will not reveal who this man is. But I tell you as sure as this pen touches this paper, he was.

He, like a virus, has certainly infected them as everything that he has ever touched would profess. He took all I had from me. He infected her against me.

If ultimately re-captured, with no hope of seeing my precious Kate again, I would gladly give of myself to destroy him as my swan song to the universe.

If Satan himself still exists in this wretched future timeland, which I suppose he does, then he still controls the reigns of that boy’s mind. But I hope he finds me, he the only hope any of us have, though I pray the Lord damns him to hell in the process.

Footsteps on the street…I will return. B.L.