Reading Other Topics

This is what I've written so far. I don't know if anyone actually reads this crap, and I tend to rather enjoy writing when inspired. If you read this and you like it, I encourage you to say so, and I'll write some more.

"Death is inevitable," he concluded. "We are all going to die."

Staring at the ceiling and laying on his bed at night was his favorite and solitary thinking spot. His life as he knew it: school, family, and grades, was a necessary destraction from what he considered to be his true passion. He couldn't put a name to the face so to speak, but he couldn't understand why no one else wanted to talk about it.

"Why do we die?" he asked his mother the day before.

"Die? We die because God takes us to heaven when it is our time," his mother said, maintaining eye contact only briefly before glancing down and stuffing a mouthful of baked chicken into her mouth.

"If God gave us life, why does he take life?" little Johnny inquired again, with crooked eyebrows and bright eyes that all children have when seeking knowledge.

The mother, hesitating to finish the last of her mouthful, finally swallowed and maintaining eyes down, said, "Only God knows why, Johnny. Finish your peas."

Johnny thought hard on this, and after a moment, glanced back up and asked, "If God knows everything, then he knows how everybody will die. If God knows how somebody will die, then why does he let people die in bad ways?"

"That's just the way things are, Johnny. Finish your peas. They're getting cold," the mother said calmly.

"Why does he allow for tornadoes and tsunamis and earthquakes, Mommy? God must not love some people." Johnny said twirling his fork in his peas, causing them to disperse all over the plate.

The mother narrows her eyes and focuses on Johnny. "That's enough! God loves everybody! What God does is his business!" the mother yells at Johnny with a hand slamming on the table while emphasizing the words "God loves everybody." The mother looks back downwards towards her plate avoiding eye contact. "I won't have such talk in our house."

The father, who rarely talks of anything during dinner except for how work had gone, feeling he ought to contribute, turns to Johnny and said, "Your mother's right. That'll be enough of that gibberish, Johnny."

Normally, Johnny would have remained quiet and dinner would have gone more smoothly (as smoothly as dinner can be when nobody talks), but every once in a while has the audacity to have his questions answered. Each time, his answers are met with short answers and even shorter fuses. "That's just the way things are, Johnny" was a phrase he began to become accustomed to.

Everyday, Johnny had to walk to school, because his parents both needed to work and both cars were required. Fortunately, the school was only a couple miles walk through the city. The sidewalks were narrow, leaving more room for the major 4-lane roads. A particular point of morbid curiosity along the way was a metal grate in the sidewalk. It spanned the entire width of the sidewalk and was long enough for Johnny that he couldn't get across without putting a foot on it. There were many such metal grates, but this one inparticular bent downwards. The sides of the grate would have normally perfectly fit the hole, but since it was bent downwards, it typically only spanned the length of the hole and one of the ledges that the grate used to stay up. When one walked stepped foot on it, the entire grate would rattle. Needless to say, putting foot on it was rather unnerving and most adults who knew better would simply step over it.

Johnny was both frightened and drawn to it: frightened, because he would have to cross it which might give at any moment, and drawn to it, because of the very same reason. Sometimes when he would approach it, he would get on his hands and knees and look over the abyss. The pitch darkness revealed nothing, which in Johnny's eyes, was more terrifying than if he had seen the bottom very far below. Sometimes he would throw rocks and listen for when they hit. Often it would take three seconds before he heard a light splash of water. But on occasion, even with an ear to the metal grate, he heard no splash, no drip, no noise whatsoever. It only enhanced his fears. In all likelyhood, it did hit as all the rest and was simply not audible enough . He admitted himself that possibility, but there was also the equal possibility that the rock did not hit at all.

To Johnny, there was the world of adults as he thought of it. It consisted of everything he could explain or was explained to him by an adult. It was the same voice which reminded him there was no such thing as ghosts, aliens, monsters, and boogeymen (particularly when he was a few years younger). Santa Claus, too, was a reluctant addition to this world. He wanted it to be true so badly, but what his parents had explained to him and the logic he deduced to make sense of it later put it in the world of adults. And like the rest, he realized that a rock dropped in a hole should make a noise no matter how long it should take. The bottom *WAS* there. There is no such thing as a bottomless pit.

However, there was also the world of fantasy. There, he had all the unexplained, illogical, and often frightening concepts. They were anything that finished the sentence, "I know they're not real, but..." typically followed by some sort of so-called proof contrary to the world of adults. Death was one of these. He was old enough to understand that everybody dies, and that what comes after death is a mystery. However, only recently he had just made the connection that adults themselves did not know what followed death, or that anything else in his world of fantasy for that matter could not be explained by adults. It was a truly terrifying thought. Death is not make believe. It is not an invention of a child. It will for his entire life be in the world of fantasy until the very day that he'll die. The pitch-black hole he stared into reminded him of this concept. The hole, too, seemed endless and dark like the infinite void that awaited him after life.

The fact that this metal grate seemed ready to let the next passerby into its darkest depths too, seemed much like death's embrace, picking those who should die and those who shouldn't guided by some twisted unseen hand. In Johnny's mind, it was fatalistic. He had almost convinced himself that sooner or later the abyss would welcome him, and that death would come in such a manner. Much like a child hiding under the sheets in bed, would protect from unseen ghosts and monsters Johnny rationalized that if he would be safe from such a fate as long as he had been weary of it. The day he placed his foot on the grate without a second's thought was the day he would fall through. It gave him enough courage everyday to trek the dangerous abyss with the lightest foot he could manage over the grate. With each time, the grate would rattle, and Johnny would leap with as much agility as he could muster to the opposite side.

His best friend, Roger, at school was raised by strict presbyterian mentality, and as such, he often shared what he learned to Johnny. Roger was a grade higher than Johnny, which meant they didn't share classes. However, they had always sat together at lunchtime.

"My parents told me what predestination means," Roger said biting into cafeteria bread.

"What does it mean?" Johnny asked, eyes widening.

"It means God knows everything that happens to you even before it happens," Roger says smiling. "..And you know what *that* means, don't you?"

Johnny shook his head.

"It means we don't have any control over ourselves! If God knows that tomorrow I will rob a bank, then there is nothing I can do to keep myself from doing that," Roger said looming over the inevitable conclusion of the conversation.

Jonny thought a second about this over a bite of ham and cheese sandwich and said, "Then if what you say is true, what I do is what was destined to happen because I did it."

Roger nodded saying, "Exactly."

"I don't agree." Johnny said after a few seconds.

"If I die of a heart attack eating bacon, I'll be a happy man." -My father