Book Beginning Idea

It was a long time ago, a faint memory; even then there was fear inside me. Gone are the days of early youth, of naivety, mostly for the better, but at the same time something went missing, the vision of a perfect universe. It is a universe only a child can see. Everything was ripped away from me, just like everyone else and it is my responsibility as a human being to try to get that back.

The day was warm almost hot. I was wearing a small dusty shirt and a small pair of pants, ragged from use. I was up in the Rocky Mountains of Idaho cleaning the property. The wooden rake I had been using was cut shorter by my dad so the size of the rake and I would look rite. The wooden handle bit into my ungloved hands and slivers dug their way into my skin. I raked the ground beneath me anyway. I loved it there.

My mother was cleaning our trailer. My dad and little brother were far down below at the fire pit chopping wood. My little brother, too young to chop, but he could place the logs then hide behind my dad as he swung.  The day was getting late as I raked the side of the hill; its steep incline burned my calves as I walked. I was near the edge of a cliff not too high but high enough for my parents to constantly warn me about it. I was throwing all the brush, twigs and small logs down the cliff into a pile to later be burned. I heard coyotes in the distance and saw an owl fly over my head. I never wanted to leave. I fell down the cliff.

Years later, junior year in high school, I was back in Oregon were I had an excellent life but not quite the same as the mountains in Idaho.  My love of football began to fade. It was the only thing keeping me alive. Quit wrestling after only two months and I failed all my classes. I stared at a bottle of medication wondering how much I needed to die. End of senior year of high school, no more football, all but destroyed me, but I moved on, time passing quickly as my mind tried to keep up.

I have thought a lot about death and what the word “God” means. I was alone in this endeavor. I was thinking; thinking hard as I took a bite of toast. It tasted vague and had the consistency of grass. I thought about the mind and the universe it holds. It may even be greater than anything humans can perceive. I thought some more and feared what my subconscious was up to.
It was night deep in the wilderness of Idaho. I was back up in the Rocky Mountains. I loved it there. But I was not there. I could not smell the trees or see the rugged landscape. I was still struck by its fierce beauty but I could not get the taste of fear out of my mouth. Like garlic, the flavor was strong and I could not bear to confront it.

“Wake up” cried a voice.

I looked around. I knew nothing was talking to me, it was all in my head. And I was lost in it. The beauty of the trees the tranquility of the waters, the warmth of the sun was gone. I was now in my city. While I was eating my toast I was brought into the city of my mind, the universe as vast as the universe of reality.  I saw my city in its beauty for the last time. I then walked into the dark room with its walls as thick as mountains and as tall, a prison for only one person.

In this prison, that is in my mind, laid dormant a creature so vile, so chaotic, and so vigilant in its desire to kill me that it suggests the most unusual means to entrap it, my soul. For you see, this creature I have imprisoned in my mind, was me. He needed to be destroyed but how? I had no tool to snatch the power he has over me away from him.

I look back at the city that I have built before I enter.  It was so impressive so beautiful to my eye that I would weep at the thought that I cannot produce or find such a thing in the real world.  I walked into the prison. It was one very large room. The hallway to reach the creature was long but I had allowed the inscription of symbols of a yet undecipherable language of the mind to be placed along its walls. It seemed to control him.
Three of me now, not different from each other, but they are in another part of space and time from each other. The young man eating toast and in his mind was me, and also the creature, my other self. I would be trapped in the prison take a bite of toast and walk freely down the hall of the prison, all at the same moment, but at the same instance they happened so separately in time that it suggests eons of life happened inside that moment.

My brain is no different than any humans in its potential. As I walked down the hall deeper into the prison I was leaving my potential behind. I entered the deep chasm a drop of water fell from the top and traveled exactly one point seven miles down and hit a small lake that was inside the prison. The lake was pristine and clear only the ripples from the drip of water were seen crossing its depths. In the middle of the lake laid a slab of diamond, now glowing from the light that peered from the hallway. From it grew chains that grabbed and bound my other self. It kept him from killing me.

The path from the hall way narrowed and I traversed the long narrow bridge to get to the slab of crystal. It is the hardest substance I could use to keep my other self from crashing through it to the lake. I walked up to him in his chains. He sat there like a monk about to burn himself. It was strange looking at me with the same green eyes, broad shoulders and ragged beard. He was in fact me.
In reality I took a bite of toast oblivious to the universe that is in my mind.

“Wake up!” I screamed. My voice caused the lake to ripple. “If God wanted you dead the universe would have done it already.”

“I am awake.” Was his reply.

“Why are you trying to kill me.” I stepped close to him making the fact known that it was he stuck in the chains and not me. I can beat him I always can.

“Because you don’t deserve to be alive.”

I couldn’t argue. That is the one thought that has fueled his presence. Am I worthy of life? “I do deserve it,” I said. My right hand begun to sweat as the left hand trembled as I dried it against the denim of my pants.
You are as weak as a mortal can be,” my other self said “ and God cannot save you” His eyes were intense searching for the key to get himself out of the prison he was in.

“You know I don’t believe in that God crap or any sort of religious belief, it is just pathetic.”

“Is it pathetic to have focus in your life,” my other self tried to readjust himself but he could not. I stepped back and examined him closer.

“Yes when the person is told what to think from a young age and then never learns to think on their own.”

“We as humans need that focus.” My other self said.

“You are not human.”

“Im not, interesting, am I not you?”

I ran up to my other self and grabbed the chains around his neck and pulled. He couldn’t breadth but he was smiling. I wanted to kill him but couldn’t. I tried to destroy him before but he keeps regenerating and coming back to try to kill me. If he does the young man eating the toast would die and everything I know about existence would perish. That is why he is locked in this prison wrapped in chains he cannot escape. He must not escape or my city will be destroyed. I let go of the chains before this monstrosity died which would allow him to escape.

“What is God than if not a deity?” My other self’s voice was clinging to air.

“God is what humans don’t understand. It is the biggest, the point in which time and knowledge meet.”

“So when that day comes, will you be around to see it.” He laughed a sick laugh and stood up. I jumped back he should not, cannot do that.

“Humans have that potential it is all in here” I spread my arms “it is in the mind.” I looked at him, my other self the mirror of my reality. “We are God”

“Exactly” was his reply “Humanity is God, the individual is God. So what do you do with God like power”

“use it” I said “And learn”

“You will die” he said. Then he raised his arms and broke free from his chains. The resulting shrapnel cut through me like butter but I will not die. The blood oozed down my body and dripped onto the floor. I looked up and he was gone.

“No” I said and ran down the hallway out to my city, my universe. I looked over the buildings some small some as large as mountains they all had begun to crumble. I heard people screaming as I looked down at the streets far down below. The crumbling cities were falling and crushing them there blood and gore rinsing the street beneath them. I will kill my other self I will find away. I ran and found that the world around me began to fade. The death and fire slowly silenced. My world had begun to destroy itself. The presence of my other self had ripped away everything that I have built. Soon my universe will burn. My universe, my city disappeared into the back of my mind. I was eating toast about to write in my journal oblivious to what my mind has gone through. This is the version of me in that is in the reality of a multitude of minds. Some would say the real world, the reality, the universe that is considered true, and the place were all humans die. I was sitting at a table about to write in my journal, one of the few things I have learned that pulled me away from the universe in my mind. I may be living here in reality stuck in my early twenties but I am always a part of the universe of my mind. As my city falls I am eating toast. As I look at myself I see I am heavier set than in my mind and weaker. I began to fade back to my city as reality took over, I finished my piece of toast, I write in my journal.