The break away

Somewhere in this big world a quiet town was drowning in a cold darkness. It was typical
for that region and that time of the year for winter to be more like a coma rather than a
season. Everything seemed paralyzed. Like in one of those miniature urban models where
the streets will never feel footsteps and the houses wont know what is like to witness
human dramas.
The night was heightening this eerie, lifeless feeling. Lately not one flake of snow fell over
the city, so the whole place was stripped to its gray skeleton. Stone buildings and asphalt
made up an almost monochromatic scenery. A town that resembled a tomb. Beyond its
sad appearance it lacked that familiar joy that most small communities have. Its
inhabitants were a reflection of their environment gloom and colorless. And they were
more than justified to be so. Except for working in the steel mill there werent many other
professional options. The best scenario was to get an administrative desk job and waste
more than half of your life writing reports, filling forms and stamping approvals. Having
the name of that township on your birth certificate meant an early sentence to death by
boredom. Being from place was like having a disease. If hopelessness would ever be
classified as a malady, then all the people living around could be diagnosed with it.
Congenital and chronic.
Considering all the above said, it should be obvious that it wasnt the kind of town where
a young writer could easily find inspiration. On the contrary, it was a cognitive hell. And
thats exactly how the only aspiring novelist on a 75 kilometer radius felt like. Each
morning was the beginning of 16 hour-long torment. Wake up, wash, eat, work online,
eat, write, watch TV, eat, read, sleep. Thats how a day in his life looked like, every day.
Nonetheless he reckoned that he was actually luckier than most of his peers. The fact that
he could write well helped him get a work-from-home kind of job. It wasnt paid much
but for him was enough and it was definitely better than working for the steelworks
corporation. He was writing content for a travelling company, mainly descriptions for
exotic locations and fake reviews for their all-inclusive deals.

Even so, it was a boring and depressive way to live a life. Especially when you have to
imagine tropical sceneries with coconut trees and crystal clear oceans whilst outside your
window theres a living cemetery. Sometimes he wouldnt leave his tiny flat for days in a
row. He just didnt have enough reasons to do so. Most of his childhood friends left town
and the ones who remained were too stupid to do the same. He got stuck there because
he made a mistake and got a big loan from the bank to buy the apartment he was living
in. Actually his parents made the loan and he had to help them with the monthly rates.
They thought it was a good idea. Buy a place to live in, find a girl to marry, make some
kids, retire and die. Thats how they imagined a life well lived so why should their son do
any different?
He was still thinking to go somewhere else but it was a bit complicated. First of all, he had
to find a better job so that he could afford renting a place and pay for the rest of his living
expenses while sending money back home for the credit. He tried that a few times and
failed. Life has its own ways and it can make a man lose his will. Sometimes you need to
learn to be happy with what you have. And he was trying very hard to do that. The only
thing that allowed him to forget about his mundane existence was writing. He felt that
through writing you can avoid the uncontrollable cruelty of reality. Because that was what
he hated the most about reality the fact that you cannot fully control it. Yes, we all make
choices and we all take decisions that influence our lives, but the truth is a lot more painful.
What we can control in our lives is most of the times unimportant. You can decide the
color of the shoes you want to buy but you cannot decide when or how you will die.
Actually you can, but that means suicide.
The idea is that we are all stuck in an existence that doesnt care so much about us. We
can choose only irrelevant details of our lives. Maybe you and your significant other can
agree on when to have a baby but you cant control the possibility of your child being
born with a severe cranial malformation. You cant pick what type of cancer your loved
one is going to die from. These are the kind of shits that can happen to anyone and no
one cant do anything about it. We can only try to manage the disasters that hit us and
diminish their damages. Unfortunately, there is no avoidance. Once goddess Fortuna
comes up with a crazy way to fuck up your life, nothing can stop her.
Throughout his life this young writer became very aware of that. Maybe too aware. When
you realize how little control you actually have over your life, it becomes painfully hard
to find a meaning. And that can lead even the strongest man on a path of everlasting
anguish. Quite a few times he witnessed the merciless vicissitudes of destiny. First time it
happened while he was still too young to comprehend the irreversible nature of death.
An uncle from his mothers side got accidentally killed in the steel mill. A large cast-iron
piece fell and squashed his helmet, then his head. All the other workers within a 5-meter
distance got splashed with a gooey mix of brains, blood and skull fragments. When his

parents brought him to the funeral and he asked why are they putting a wooden box in a
deep hole, they told him his uncle was going on a long vacation to the center of the earth.
Like every innocent child, his curiosity was inquisitive and humorous. The next few days
after the burial he kept questioning his father when he will get a leave from work so that
they can all go visit their headless uncle. As years passed, he began to understand the
purpose of those occasional trips to that mysterious train station in the middle of a field
scattered with crosses where people embarked for their journey to the center of the
planet. Uncles, aunts, grandparents, distant cousins, family friends, neighbors, teachers,
sometimes even colleagues from schoolthere was always someone to die. When the
loam is hungry, it will be fed. For a child, once death becomes perceived as a certainty,
life loses its divine mirage.
So it shouldnt be such a big surprise that he developed an obsession regarding this allencompassing existential trauma. The more he thought about it, the more it hurt. His
quotidian reality was a failure. Being able to realize that was a form of agony in itself.
Thats why he sought a way to evade, at least temporary, his inevitable and unknown fate.
Eventually he found his escape in books. Reading was the key for opening every door of
imagination. He could open a book, enter the authors mind and relive his ideas. A process
that was like a thought transplant. Every new page meant an exploration into the depths
of someone elses dreams. Each novel was a universe of its own encased between two
covers. Stories were like candy for the brain. In a short period of time he became addicted
to it. Reading became a daily habit for it was soothing his existential frustrations.
Thousands and thousands of words arranged in rows like armies ready to invade his mind.
Far away realms made out of legions of black characters printed on white paper. That was
his cure for the disease named life.
However, just like any other junkie, he began to wish for more. What other people were
imagining was definitely better than what God imagined for him, nonetheless it was
something that couldnt be controlled too much. You can only interpret and view a
storyline through the unique lenses of your imagination, a movie with a single spectator.
The biggest downside is that you always need to follow whoever wrote it. An author is
simultaneously scriptwriter, producer, director and actor, while youre merely a make-up
artist. For example, when a novelist describes the appearance of a character, he gives his
readers a rough sketch, an idea of how that individual should look. No matter how many
details he offers, its impossible for another person to picture the same image as the
writer. Otherwise we would be talking about painting, not literature. So when you read
and imagine a story youre just doing small touch-ups according to a larger blueprint that
was designed by someone else. And he didnt want to be just a make-up artist. He craved
for full creative freedom.

For him writing was the ultimate getaway. Deep inside his heart he knew there is no other
thing in this world that could allow a man the power to build universes out of thin air. It
sounds crazy, but it makes sense. Because no matter who you are or how much influence
and money you have, you simply cannot do whatever you want. You might be the
president of USA but you cant have your own worm-hole travelling spaceship with a crew
assembled from 284 distant galaxies. Not yet. Or have Cleopatra do a lap dance for you.
If you are born after 30 BC, no one can do that. Unless time travel becomes possible. Only
fiction allows you to go anytime, everywhere, with anyone.
Naturally, the next step was to begin his own endeavors in the uncharted territories of
his imagination. And just like reading, he got hooked on it. The first attempts were
deplorable, no more than sequencing words in almost nonsensical order. A monkey drunk
on rotten fruits could have done a better job if given a laptop and enough time. He sucked
and he knew it. Genuine writers have a natural instinct in what regards their own work.
They can feel when words fail them, when paragraphs turn out to be unfortunate
conglomerates of ideas. So he kept practicing, refining his style, gaining more and more
experience in the art of crafting metaphors. Soon after he reached a degree of
sophistication that was definitely above the average.
Realizing he had an innate talent for literary composition was probably the greatest
revelation of his life. It was then when he understood how different from the others he
really is. Unlike his peers who sought every method devised by humans to deviate their
attention from lifes misery, he chose to drill into his mind and bring stories from the
depths of his imagination. When he wrote he was sneaking actuality, like when he was a
boy and snuck out from his grandparents house while they were taking an afternoon nap.
They were forcing him to sleep after lunch and he hated it. He wanted to go outside and
play with the other kids so he learned how to break away from the things he couldnt
decide for. In many ways writing was a continuation of those early self-taught lessons.
And that night he felt like sneaking out again. This time he didnt want to go outside; there
was absolutely nothing to do there. Since he woke up he had this idea for a plot.
Something involving ancient religious artefacts and a medieval Orthodox monastery
located somewhere in the Carpathian Mountains. After he ate supper, consisting of cheap
Vietnamese instant noodles, he was getting in the mood to write. He already started two
novels but got bored of them rather quickly. So in the last couple of months he had been
focusing more on short stories. He thought its a good way to improve his writing skills.
He promised to himself that he would write 500 words every day, a number based on
Hemingways routine. Most of the times the count stopped around 120 words.
Nevertheless that fateful night was not like any other. He opened his thick notebook,
turning page after page in search for that desired blank, virgin sheet of paper. Once found,
he stared at that white page for a couple of minutes, allowing the narrative to imbue his

synapses. First step was to scribble some ideas, name characters and decide their roles
in the plot. He always began by sketching his stories, handwriting the main ideas. It felt
more natural, holding a fountain pen while tracing words on wooden pulp. Compared to
the impersonal act of typing on a qwerty keyboard, handwriting was a completely
different experience. Thoughts dripping from your head into veins veins, your hand
muscles become possessed by the words they need to write and somehow letters flow
through each fingers into the pen. Droplets of ink that used to be invisible thoughts turn
into stories. If you think about it, theres something magic about this process. Thats why
he always preferred to mark his first ideas in black ink. It made him feel closer to all those
great writers before him: Dostoyevsky, Balzac, Ovid, Shakespeare, Plato and so many
others. Some of the best ideas humanity has ever conceived were born in a similar way
a hand that wrote them.
He filled the first page and began to rethink some details; crossed a few words, added
new ones. He had a good feeling about this story. The whole narrative thread was waiting
to be disentangled from his cognitive labyrinths. Never before he felt so overwhelmed by
such a sudden inspiration. Ideas were splattering all over his brain. If he had a brain scan
in those moments, it would probably have looked like fireworks on New Years Eve.
Usually, while writing he would easily get distracted. It wasnt like he didnt know what to
write about, because in most cases he had the whole story drafted in his head from
beginning till end. It was his mind falling into distraction instead of keeping the storyline.
This time however everything was going unexpectedly well. One idea followed by another
and another, page after page blackened in a brief period of time. He was not even
realizing how fast he was writing. His mind was chasing the plot the same way a starved
wolf chases its prey. It was the only thing he could think about and absolutely nothing
else mattered in those moments. His daily worries were melting away like a cone of icecream on a hot summer day. Physical reality faded as his imagination began to assemble
his ideas. Everything was extremely visual, so many vivid details popped in his head, it
was unbelievable. He could see dark forests surrounding old stone walls covered in thick
moss. Mist was slowly scattering among the structures of an isolated monastery
resembling a fortress. Four long, one storied buildings formed a square. All sides were
seamlessly connected, creating an impenetrable inner court. There was only one gate,
heavy and low, located on the southern wing. In the center was the largest building, an
oval church shaped after Noahs Arch. It was something that he had never seen before.
The outside of the edifice was covered in biblical images as if it was tattooed. The
paintings were so intense and so colorful, it was almost scary how his imagination could
reveal such intricacies. They were depicting stories from the gospels, a weird kind of
religious comic strips. There were damned souls drowning in a river of blood, angels
slaying demons, armies of saints looking towards the top of the wall where Jesus sat on

his divine throne. A universe of its own contained within this gigantic artwork, a creation
meant to impress and frighten illiterate souls that would otherwise be unable to
understand those tiny signs printed on that huge book with silver covers the monks
worshiped so much.
As his mind drew each and every detail with unhuman precision he began to experience
a weird sensation, something between nausea and ecstasy. Cold shivers ran through his
spine with the speed of light as if he was electrocuted by his own imagination. There was
something strange going on. He felt like one of those vitamin tablets you dissolve in water,
fizzing and breaking apart. His skin was prickling, perception was getting murky while his
imaginings were expanding and contracting like a beating heart. Distant echoes of
religious chanting were reaching him, louder and louder. A bell toll reverberated in his
head, hitting him like a freight train. The room was spinning, making him loose his sense
of equilibrium. He tried to keep his eyesight focused on a fixed point but it was impossible,
everything was transforming. He couldnt move his body anymore; it was too heavy, his
members felt paralyzed by their own weight. Just his eyes were able to rotate in their
sockets. He looked at his writing hand and couldnt believe what he saw. His fingers were
melted half-way through, dripping like hot wax onto the page. A small silver spill was
forming beneath his hand, slowly growing as the palm vanished with every fallen droplet.
Surreal is a word that cant cover the extent of shock and confusion our novelist was
experiencing. Fortunately, except for a feeling of numbness there wasnt any pain
involved. As he watched terrified how his body was morphing into a shiny pool of
unknown mercury-resembling liquid, he began to notice something moving inside. The
page was gradually filled entirely with this cloying substance, whirling within the margins
of the notebook. Not a single drop effused over paper. When his elbow began to dribble,
the liquefied side began to calm down. Only plummeting blobs of his own being would
disturb the surface, creating concentrically expanding rings. Between two splashes there
was enough time for the goo to set, allowing its originator to observe what was going on
inside. It was weird because it was like staring into the surface of a lake with muddy water.
There was something beneath that notepad that stretched beyond physical reality. He
couldnt distinguish what was happening in those mysterious depths and it scared him
even more. His brain refused to process the impossibility his optic nerves were
transmitting. He assessed the probability of having one of those vivid dreams, refusing to
accept his own dissolution.
As much as he tried to oppose this bizarre phenomenon he could sense energy currents
engulfing him. Its a bit exaggerated to use this verb to sense because his body was
practically losing its somatic properties. The page was sucking him in. One by one, each
part of his body got drained into that A4 rectangle. Probably the weirdest sensation was
when his eyeballs began to gush out of his skull while maintaining their sensorial capacity.

He could see countless bits of tangled images as his eyes splattered the paper. When the
rest dissolved it was all drawn inside. Then nothing, the lights went out. His consciousness
was floating in a thick, warm blackness. Was he dead? If he was dead how come he could
still ask himself such a question? Cogito ergo sum he thought. As long as he had ideas, he
existed. So death was not option. But what happened? The truth is no one can answer
that.
He tried to remember all the stages that led to this peculiar situation. He kept considering
the scenario of having a very realistic dream. But once he started to recollect details of
his story, the blackness instantly vanished and violently light hit his retina. Whilst his eyes
were adjusting to the brightness he began to distinguish triangular shapes in the
background. After a while he could see that he was in a forest amidst tall mountains. It
didnt make any sense, his town was located in the lowlands. The nearest mountains were
hundreds of kilometers away.
Strangely enough, the scenery looked a lot like the one he imagined. He then realized he
had hands, fingers, legs, shoulders; his whole body was again in solid shape. It was such a
pleasant discovery, he almost burst into tears. He took a few steps just to make sure
everything is alright. Seemed that his body was functioning without problems, but his
mind was still boggled by the whole experience. To try and explain what happened using
logic was an illogic act in itself. The unexplainable nature of recent events was too much
for him. His hands started shaking while his lungs couldnt find enough air. Despair took
hold of him, he was having a panic attack. He lied down on the wet, cold grass, closed his
eyes and hoped to wake up. That was his only desire and he was willing to beg all the gods
ever worshipped by humans to make it come true. The paradox is that instead of waking
he actually fell asleep in the woods. After a couple of hours a distant sound of dingdongs
got him up again. Deja-vu. Without too much thinking he started running towards the
source, dashing through the wilderness, desperate too see if it was possible. The echoes
were coming from a valley down below. In his hurry he tripped and fell over broken
branches, bruising his hands and legs. Blood came out and the pain was definitely real,
which made everything less of a dream.
When he approached the edge of the forest the metal reverberations had already
stopped, but his mind intuited what his eyes were about to see. Once his sigh was cleared
from all those secular trees the monastery became visible. Exactly how he pictured it;
every detail was there in front of him. It was then when he understood what had
happened. The break-away was complete. He evaded reality and became his story.