《This Book》Chapter 21: The Essay and the Letter (Kish)
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It was almost 8:45 AM when I was walking as fast as I could reasonably get away with through the college halls. I had fifteen minutes to turn in my paper before the deadline of 9:00 AM. Last night I got distracted and didn’t start my paper until 7:55 PM. I finished the entire thing at 6:27 AM thanks to the power of energy drinks (the final paper isn’t my best work by a longshot, but right now it would have to do). Because of the caffeine I wasn’t able to even take a nap. Thus it was now over twenty-four hours since I last slept.
I stumbled through the college corridors, left, left, right, right, left, until finally arriving at my classroom. My professor was just about to enter actually.
“Just in time.” I said out loud, not realizing I was doing so until it slipped out. I held out my essay.
Professor Kelly took the document. “You look rough Ms. Blackwell.”
I feigned a laugh. “Well you know me, always staying up late going to parties.”
“You know, your grades have been good.” The professor says. “But, they’d be a lot better if you took more time on them. I know its hard, but you’re a natural in this class, and I just hate to see wasted potential.
Just what I need, another lecture I think. “Yeah, I… I just didn’t know what to expect when I started. When I get back for next semester, I’m going to do much better.”
“We’ll see. Just remember, this is your life, you have to think about what you want to do with it.”
Well if that wasn’t the big question. In eighteen years I had still not figured out what I wanted to do with my life exactly. I didn’t even know why I was taking theological studies as a major, besides that its something that I just happened to already know a lot about. What exactly am I going to do with this degree though? Get a job teaching kids the same useless stuff I learned? Write a book? Get a different degree? Become the manager of a Target and have to talk down Karens every single day until I go insane?
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I am so unbelievably jealous of my brother. He didn’t have to choose what he was going to be, some random anime lady just smashed the door down and dragged his ass into secret demon wars. My interest in the paranormal may have come from that incident in the basement, but really, maybe I just hoped I’d find get whisked away to some hidden magical world, like Harry Potter or something. But no, I’m the ordinary one in the family.
Besides the fact that I’m inexplicably the only one that remembers any of this of course.
My classes flew by, an hour here, an hour there, until finally I was back in my dorm. I felt like I was on the edge of death. As I walked in Laura’s eyes widened, apparently I looked as bad as I felt.
“Hey.” She said waving.
I collapsed face first onto the bed “Hey” The pillow muffling my voice.
“I was going to ask what you planned on doing with the weekend, but I have a feeling it's going to be sleep.” She pushed something under my pillow. “This came for you, dunno who it's from.”
I grabbed the paper from under my pillow and sat up. It was an envelope, sent from an address in Virginia, sender name “Alan Smithee,” forwarded here from my Aunt’s house. I opened it and took the letter out, it was a handwritten message.
Dear Kish,
By now both you and the world have noticed my disappearance. I am a creator who has abandoned my own creation. There is good reason for all of this which I cannot disclose at the moment. I wish for us to meet, in person. Further details to come later.
– LL
For just a brief moment I forget about how damn tired I am. I just got mail from a famous missing person. Now life was throwing me something interesting for a change.
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