I feel moody today. Like, it's hard to explain. Too complex but perhaps too simple. I kiss my cigarette; it tastes bitter, mint-flavored, mind you. But well, I don't know. Like my whisky, velvet smooth, rich in flavor. I grab it, twelve years old. Long time sitting on the barrel, I think. I drink it, cinnamon, nutmeg, or maybe toasted almonds. Almonds, how many years has it been since I have had it? Aside from that, I feel strange today.
The music is playing in the background. Instrumental. Jazzy. I love Jazz. It has a strange way of soothing your soul with thoughts and bittersweet nostalgia. Maybe I'm old. That's why. Am I old? I don't know. It's been so long since I got here, in this pub. But could an empty pub be a pub? Isn't it strange?
What makes a pub, a pub? The furniture? The architecture? The drinks? Or is it the clients, the movements, the talking, and the sentimental mood playing upon marks of mugs and expressions on many faces? It's a pub because it was designed as a pub? Or a pub is set to be one because of those who make it to be one? I don't know. Is it relevant?
In some strange way, I'm here. Maybe I'm devaluing the thing I should value. Maybe it is because of my utterance for it. When you spent most of your time in the same place, looking at the same things, without knowing the time or how long it has been. Well, maybe you start to give it utterance. Otherwise, deterrence sounds a bit extreme.
Or maybe I'm mechanical for those things. Should everything be meaningful and carry a message? I think not. Maybe I give it too much observation for these things, that it felt like I bathed myself in deep water that tasted like whisky, and that kind of drink can change a man so much that when you return to the surface, you no longer resemble the water from which you came.
Maybe I'm in a magical, wonderful place. I mean, the food never ends, the drink never ends, and neither the music nor the taste of the things. But when I looked at the mirror, I felt strange. I can't think of myself as myself any longer. It's like watching the light dancing with the shadow across your nose, mouth, and hair, and when it becomes tangible, when you stare so much in your mirror, you realize the false notes and false touches of yourself.
Am I because I'm me, or am I because of the things I do to be me? I don't know how to feel or think about it. Should I love it? Should I smile? Or should I be sad all day? Are there days or nights here? Maybe I'm crazy, or I should be crazy by now. It felt incomplete, too plastic. Like, I'm some sort of character in a novel as yet unwritten, whispering to myself it's a bad dream and that the author somehow forgot to finish what he promised to deliver.
I humor myself because of it. Think of that. The author, with his pen, wrote in the lines the characters, the places, and the story. Yet, he forgot to write me. Or, perhaps, he didn't. Maybe I'm a cosmic error. Like, some sort of being is watching me from the depths of the universe, amusing himself with my eyes searching for meaning and my mind crumbling to hell. Maybe I am funny for him, or her, or them?
Or, I'm amongst the dream of someone who never managed to wake up, or he was desperate, thriving to wake up from his own nightmare, that he never quite managed to breathe life into me. Is this some sort of punishment? Can I remember those times? Before that explosion, before the end of the world, what changed it forever? I'm always thinking about that time. I was there, with them, exploring that unknown side of the world, when it happened, and then I saw myself here.
I'm always feeling it, mumbling, muttering, trying, and not trying. But it seems I lack all reason, like I'm falling down in an abyss where my emotions are too, falling and failing to feel. It felt like infinite and yet a finite space, where my eyes are directionless and empty. Well, at least I'm not that desperate. I look at the table, near my bottle of whisky and the whimsical smoke of my cigarette. There is, perhaps, the thing that kept me sane all those times, and the only thing that stopped me from trying to close my eyes forever. Not that I will have success in that. I have, you see, tried countless ways of doing that, but like I said, it isn't possible.
The book. Or notebook. I don't know. The cover is leather, black. The details are null, like, whoever made this was so tired of doing so. Even the letters aren't flashy. You know, never judge a book by its cover, but everyone does that. If not for the images on it, then for the title, the curved letters. Alas, the name has a nice ring to it, "The Chronicle of Lost Worlds."
I remember the first time I opened it. Back then, I was too confused about the whole thing and the place I was. I mean, you would be too if you put yourself in my shoes. Then, I've found it, buried beneath piles of other things within a box. Funny, no? It felt like a trial made for the poor soul that would be the innkeeper here, to find it, to try it.
And the contents. At first, it was so confusing. I mean, what am I reading? It felt like rubbish to me. Unknown characters, an unknown world, and worst, unfinished. But tempted to understand and hopeful it would bring some sort of insight into why I'm here, I delve into it. I read, over and over again, about the boy named Asdras, his companion. The awakening, the perils of the Eruption. Yet, I found nothing. My favorite lines are so far about that man who calls himself a fool, perhaps because I'm too much of a fool of a person to believe it was about me. To think it was some sort of enigma, that I need to put together the pieces to unlock the door.
It felt so anticlimactic. And that time, when that realization dawned on me. I looked around at the floating images of the material goods in the pub. It was like a whirlwind crashing my soul, telling me things I never thought to hear. Darkness. Truly darkness. Have you ever felt it? The madness it brings to you. Words can hurt as much as they can heal you. And it wasn't until I, for some sort of chance or perhaps glitch of whatever is happening here, saw myself writing the book that the darkness stopped.
I can't understand it. Why and how? I never see the inks nor the pen. I never either brought myself to write something in that book or else. Or, am I imagining it? Sadly, no, since that day, I have somehow been conscious of this fact. That I'm writing a story. And, somehow, I can't stop myself from writing it, nor do I have control over it. I mean, it's not like I ever imagined myself writing about this kind of story or the journey of those characters.
Are they real? Are they as real as I am? Or is it fragmented like my mind? Am I the words I write, or am I myself because of the words I write? I mean, even this chapter that I'm writing isn't upon my will to write, but because some sort of cosmic will is prompting me to write. To let the world know about it. Well, maybe I'm exaggerating. I mean, who, aside from me, will read it? It would be too much if the words I'm writing were happening, like I'm some sort of narrator for the people living outside, in a distant world.
I, myself, exist only because of it? Like, it's a demand that needs someone to be the writer. I mean, a chronicle needs a chronicler. Somehow, it's stranger than before for me to think in this perspective. I mean, it sounds counterintuitive to write my thoughts and about me, the chronicler, in the interludes of this book. Perhaps I'm the one who exists only because every circle has one that does what I do.
Think about it. People tend to think about destiny. That the universe has one or two things to give, because by itself, it is designed to deliver you things as it was destined to do. Like a deliverer needs to deliver. Questions like, 'Am I fated for that, or was it fate who gave me that?' sound so nonsensical that it has its merit to be truthful. Will I ever be fated to be it? The destiny's narrator, telling the tale, says that everything is and was already destined to be right as such, without a way to change it.
Can I change it? I tried. But my hands are tied in some invisible node, like I'm a puppeteer dancing as the controller wishes to. It is as much absurd as it is funny and sad to see yourself doing that. I used to love reading and even writing back then, but not like this, not forced to do it. Well, it seems my ink is fading and that I need to turn to another page. Now that I think about it. I can't see the future or imagine what will happen.
I see. I'm not the author itself, only the ghostwriter writing what the entity demands me to write. It makes sense. Because, once in a while, I ponder with myself about their journey, how they will face the challenges that Eruption will bring, and how many of them will live in the end. I'm curious as much as I'm desperate to understand this book, and I hope that whatever is happening to me will be explained once the book ends. Because a story needs a start and an end, no? Like every story that has been written before, I just hope that the author, whoever they are, finishes it; otherwise, I'll catch myself in a spiral of meaningless despair.
~ Thoughts of the Narrator.