My life is that of an outsider. Even I can detect such a fact. I have rarely fitted in to any society or group. I opposed the norms of this society, Korea. With its strict age hierarchy that stems from Korean’s unique honorifics of the language, Korea is one of the most highly stratified society in the world. Cut half by world’s superpowers during the Cold War, Korea is forced to employ compulsory military service for every male. And my family is one of the most severe of the sufferers of such system. My grandfather, forced to fight the Korean War when he was only 14, lived a miserable life. He was from the North, near Pyeong-Yang, the North Korean capital. He moved to South and that’s how I ended up being a South Korean.
He, without any known family because he escaped alone to the South during the war, could do only one thing during the war: fight in the war. But he was not the military type guy. Far from it. Shy, modest, and scholarly, he was clearly a to-be professor, shining under the roof of the science. But the time had not allowed him such an honor. He grabbed the gun. Became the bullet-getter for the UN forces, because Koreans were dominated by foreign forces. Carried 3 bullets in his body. When the war ended, he hoped to put an end to the horrible job he had as a soldier. But he could not. The war wrecked everything the poor little country barely had. No infrastructure was left standing. People were wounded, both physically and psychologically. No family was in contact with him. He knew nobody. Nobody knew him. He was alone, utterly. With every burned land still occupied by corrupted traitors who aided the Japanese during the Japanese occupation of Korea, with no human connection, and without any industry surviving, Korea—or just cut-half South Korea—was a miserable piece of land. Nobody saw any hope. On that land, my grandfather was alone. Isolated. Only choice he had—his destiny—was to become a soldier. Defending against the “Reds,” as the North Koreans were jeeringly called, he served 19 years in military. He hated it. But he had to do it. Even though he knew he could get welfare service when he met 20-year service, he quit when the very first precious opportunity came along. His body suffered lead poisoning from the bullets, his lungs were petrified by the drug to stop tuberculosis, his mind stabbed by the trauma of the war. If he were just a normal person. Had he been, he would have been a lot happier. But he wasn’t. He was Caesar the farm boy. A wasted talent. His country betrayed him, when it took away his hope of continuing education by waging a war. No, the world betrayed him. Communists forced the war. Americans fought back. Korea was just a play ground for a struggle that was far from its interest. The only one to suffer was Korea, however. Korea just like my grandfather. Knowing no one, my grandfather loved his family so strongly when he got one. He married a woman from the South, a woman of tenacious determination. She didn’t even attend elementary school. She was the last child of a family with 13 children. Her family was impoverished. Her family dispersed when the war broke out. She was left alone just like my grandfather. When they found each other, they embraced. They married. March 27th, 1959. My grandmother was determined to rise as the powerful. She did everything she could to enrich her family. She sold Mandu. She worked in newspaper printing press. She worked in banks. She helped in construction site. My grandfather worked just like her. Doing such harsh work at least 17 hours a day, every day of the year for 10 years, my grandparents never slept over 4 hours. Sometimes their body gave out, but they persevered. Doing all that, they gave births to 3 children, Uncle Pil-Sung, my father, and Aunt Mi-Jung.
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WARNING: This is a work of fiction. This does not reflect the author’s opinion or decision.
initial draft 11/28/2015 I think I’ll have to find some asylum from the world around me. I should be happy. I’d better be. But the thing is, I am not. I’m clearly not happy. Far from it. I’m not happy. I’m depressed. GOD! STOP THIS! I thought writing things down will help me sort things out. Well, I think it kind of does? I don’t know. I don’t like forcing myself to be happy. I want to do something to be happy. Well, if I’m going to die some day and just puff off as what I think is the most likely outcome of death, then why do I bother delaying the puffing off a little compared to the eternity that’s facing the world? I don’t find any reason. STOP!!! I guess I’ll stop here today. Or forever. This is definitely not helping me. Only getting worse. Well, I think I’m kind of into this idea of writing things down a bit. Let’s start with some positive. Oh, that sounds like I will start getting into some negative things. God I can’t help but being negative. DON’T USE THE WORD!!! I make the rules right now! First, I will not use the word “negative.” Second, I will not erase what I wrote down. I think that second one is a little peculiar. But I think that’s good, because I like to write down the line of thought. It shows how I used to think when I look back on this time from the future. Yes, I was always happy in my memories. I don’t know if it’s just me but my memories are very faint, almost invisible and subtle. But they are still there. One day with snow. With my brother I used to play with Lego. It was such a fun thing. Hilarious. I was the best builder of Legos ever. I never seemed to be able to hear anything when I was playing with the blocks. Another day I watched cartoons with my brother as usual. Digimon Frontier it was. That’s when I found my want of female. I don’t mean it in a way that’s usual. I wanted to be a girl. I’ve been wanting to be a girl. Maybe that’s the reason I’m so depressed. Come on, Jake. Gotta be positive. Anyway, I want to be a girl. Yes, my parents are very liberal in Asian standards (because we are Asians). But that’s in Asian standards. I don’t think they will tolerate transgender son. Transgender daughter? I don’t know. Whatever the pronoun would be, I don’t think they will enjoy it. Absolutely not. But I think I want to be a girl. Ever since I saw that cartoon where a character transformed into a cute butterfly-like heroine, I’ve been wanting to be a girl. I knew that, but it didn’t occur to me that I could really be a girl until now. I guess it’s the culture that prevented me from thinking that. Korean culture is still very traditional. Which means that transgenders are not to be tolerated. Even the most liberal society in the world, America doesn’t seem to welcome transgenders. The connotation the word “gay” carries substantiates the point. I’m not gay. I just simply want to be a girl. Even I, who seeks to refuse to be assimilated into the American hatred of being gay, want to be excluded from gays. I’m such a hypocrite. I advocate gay marriage and should be gay but I refuse to be one. Point is this: I believe that my depression stemmed from the fact that I want to be a transgender and my family won’t approve it. I don’t know. Is this the situation in which you have to choose your family or doing what you want, in this case transgender operation? Even if I do manage to escape my family, I would I get the money for the operation? I jump out of my bed and look out the foggy window. I touch it and it is cool against my complicated hands. Outside is my neighborhood, resting peacefully as if no one is unhappy. Only the cold winter wind howls against the window and nobody’s watching me. Why am I so utterly alone? Was I this lonely even a few years back when I was in Korea? I don’t really know. I guess I was. My theory is that I was just the same all throughout, but only now do I care more. I sucks. I really does. Suddenly I feel a great urge for an action. A very drastic one. It is clearly the time with nobody watching me. No one cares. Who cares if one less being breathes on the enormous Earth? It’ll make no difference. I grab the notebook next to my phone on my bed-side table and write my last words. Funny how I want to have last words. It is psychology that someone who ends his own life wants to leave some message behind. I do the same, just as the millions had done. Mother, don’t worry. I will be in the happy place. You know it, don’t you. Heaven is happy for sure. I will wait for you there. I just wanted to be a girl, if you want to know why. I just couldn’t escape the culture, the cultural bindings. I know it is human nature to have culture that binds and prohibits, but why should it? I guess all will fall apart once culture stops discriminating. Of course, that is in Korean. Who writes their last words in their second language? Mother tongue speaks to your heart, whereas the second language speaks to your brain. My last words are spoken to my mother’s heart. Hopefully that won’t hurt her too much. It is my selfishness to write it in the language that speaks to my heart, because now I don’t want to die. But I do want to die. I feel it useless and wasteful. My room is devoid of anything weapon-like. Actually, it’s almost devoid of anything except my bed and the table. Well, a determined person can do whatever he wants. I unplug everything for the symbol of leaving everything behind in its most clean state. Now I’m ready. I will go painfully, but I will go anyway. I open my window and its netted layer. I climb up to the roof, clinging to the painfully cold and hard metal part under the roof. When I finally make it I almost go back into my room. So cold, so depressed, so exhausted was I. But I can’t go back. I know it. I close my eyes for the last time. And then off I go toward the underworld. … There is something familiar to this sight of darkness. Somewhat quaint is its blackness. In the womb, we all used to find comfort in the complete lack of light surrounding us. I feel that this darkness that’s surrounding me right now is one of the kind. Comforting darkness, perhaps this is what death means. I keep drifting toward unconsciousness and I don’t have the strength to fight it. So here I go toward the oblivion again. After hours, days, or maybe months, I’m back to consciousness. Here I am in a space so white that I don’t seem to catch much image from it. Every direction I have my eyes on, there’s not much spectacle. There is only eternal emptiness. Soothing darkness has evolved into menacing lightness. Once upon a time, there was a boy. He hath not had his name. Nor did he own a surname. His innate state of orphanage blessed him with his own autonomy. Being what he was, the boy named himself, looking at a tombstone which read Oliver Stratford. An age very primitive, no men bothered to record his vulgar but aristocratic name. Oliver did not acknowledge his ignorance but he sensed a need to educate himself. Thus he did so.
An assiduous worker and learner, Stratford worked every where he could. He studied on any matter of subject, even epidemiology. The history allowed him to study upon an illuminating school, which equipped the brilliant soul so it could thrive. The nurturer was named Sir William Jacobson, the professor of the Oxford College of London. Every day was a wholly 24 hours long, according to the sun clocks. Oliver was often exhausted, unable to continue on his harsh, crude occupation, though he persevered vehemently. The asserter of frugality also, Oliver also learned parsimony through the hard way, often. The epitome of the vulgar as in the society of ancient Romans, the boy was moving from rags to riches, a miraculous story, lucidly. He was born to a girl of age 14, which is not a very fortunate situation for an ambitious young boy. Inability of the mother to nourish the damned soul was the reason why the girl abandoned him with a pictographic note on his cradle. It vividly depicted her intent: a baby with wings and a pen in his hand. Thus, the rise of the ambitious was foreshadowed. Although the darkness of the ink with which the mother wrote the paper seemed to forebode an ominous omen. Inside the cozy but lonely cradle laid Oliver, though he was unnamed yet. But the birth was not something that predisposes the life of men. It is the ambition and passion, and most important, the genius of the men. This wisdom is very true of Oliver Stratford, for he had nothing but cradle and a little scratched paper note upon him. The ink is only a demarcation of boundaries, not so much of a proportion compared to the vastness of the though scratched paper. The prosaic story of cradle being left on a street side has inevitably to be repeated here, however, for Oliver’s story is a masterpiece born out of a mundanity of the vulgar world. This world, although very crude and cruel in occasions, clearly has a way to manifest the existence of a moving hand that somehow produces the world’s most peculiar but mind-penetrating stories such as that of Oliver. The one who happened to obtain the blessed but damned baby appeared on the event street at midnight. The last dozen ringing of the church bell nicely humming through the drunkards of the misty London street, the one was a gentleman who was mentioned already, would-be Sir, William Jacobson. He, too, was a mere vulgar at the time. However, he was a special kind among the vulgar. He was one of the brilliant kinds. Thundering brain fascinated many of his coworkers at London Shoemakers, one of whom named him, “Shakespeare,” for his eloquent, articulate sentence. He was an innately eloquent man, somehow. Words seemed to flow like falls from his defiantly fast moving mouth of his. He was the son of Joseph Jacobson, the great business man who bequeathed his son nothing but a permanent position at the shoemaking company of London. The son initially acquiesced to his father’s eccentric legacy. However, his very blood refused the job. So he was now a Streetman, begging for his dreams and ambitions. The wonder of how a mere beggar found the baby and happened to nurture the poor creature is an amazing kind, however dwarfed by the immense scale of Oliver’s success. It was clearly noteworthy, indeed. The enigmatic legend goes something synonymous with this: The then-beggar was wondering down the very street on which the brilliance was laid. To the eyes of the meandering soul, the cradle was like an asylum from the winter wind. However small the cradle was, it seemed like a huge blanket to the shivering man. A delight. A bliss. That was what it was. Picking it up almost without noticing himself, William felt the weight of a dignified human being breathing inside, not a very beneficent omen for William at the time. Just a blanket was what he pursued. However, no matter what he had pursued, the claim of the blanket was one of the most critical events in the human history, one can state. The connection, a very significant one, had been made, one between Oliver and William. This historical encounter would assert its own deserving fame soon enough. William was a big bowl. Though he was poverty-stricken and penniless. He certainly was in a hapless circumstances for he was broke, jobless, and filially estranged. On the antipodes dwelled most of his family, which was shattered by an accident. The accident had killed the rich parents of William, which had resulted in his impoverishment. The covetous rivals and colleagues of the parents had embezzled Bill’s just share. Disgruntled and cynical of human nature due to the unfortunate series of social catastrophes, William was apparently disappointed though he was a big man. Thrice such events, he was still resilient, at least psychologically. His soul robust, his body competent, and his eyes piercing, William looked a genius by the time he encountered the white cradle. As soon as the responsibility was liable to him by his picking up the white cradle, William’s profound genius of nurturing a child manifested itself. Even though he was never married, he proved an extraordinary care-taker and man-developer. The combination of Oliver’s inborn genius and William’s once-latent talent of human development was unprecedentedly harmonious. Jacobson exposed Oliver to unbelievably diverse area of study as well as life experiences. By the age of 4, Oliver had read the hardest test in English, learned the hardest language group in the world, and refuted the idea of the most famous Christian orator of the time. This salient achievements proved Oliver a prodigy. As the era of industrialization unfolded itself, Oliver’s incredible adaptability advanced human technology and comprehension of the world around humanity profoundly. His genius also spawned a great mystery: had he drafted the Relativity Theory, which is officially proclaimed nearly a century after him? Nobody is able even to speculate, although it is almost certain that he had at least a jest of understanding the concept of relativity by the age of 21 without any Quantum Physics information or area of study available. He simply envisioned a development of such science with almost no information or meager if any. The 5th Wave adaptation of 25002 Del Monte St., Laguna Hills, CA 92653
This story is probably for personal entertainment for the writer and his family members. Well, days are normal. Usually. Even on the day of 9/11, people lived normally. Almost nothing unimaginable. Yeah, terrorism. But we can comprehend what that is. Just a mere plane crashing into one of the tallest skyscrapers in the world. Bursting flames. A conflagration of people running to volunteer for the army or the police force. To my standards, for my standards as of now, that is totally normal. I was in Mrs. Girardi’s hideous AP Calculus class when the first wave hit us. We half-expected such significant yet insignificant attack since the Mothership showed up about a week ago. We’ve known their existence for months, because we spotted the mothership heading to us through a Mars satellite. There were a lot of—probably tons of—speculations on why they are coming to us. Are they saying hello? Then why didn’t they send us a radio wave signaling their message—which will be billions of times faster than visiting us physically which is what they are doing right now. Are they invading us? Then why didn’t they just bomb us with their thousands of millenia ahead bombs? What I believe to be true is that they are here to colonize or inhabit the Earth themselves. They need the planet. That’s why they have to clean up—clear up human populations—before they can be the masters of this planet. With okay looks and not-too-bad a social ability and outstanding academics, I am a pretty peculiar student at the school. Usually as quiet as a moth, I linger around people and my “friend” groups rather than talk with them. Well, I thought I could respond logically and rationally, with cold-heart, to the alien invasion. I’ve read some alien books and seen some movies so I know how banal aliens invade the earth. They send some weird-looking, disgust-provoking drones or some squid-like machines to totally appall us. And then humans say, “What’s ya doin’? Ya want some hot human weapons?” And they gather around shooting the aliens down. Whoa! That’s so unique of an alien story, you know. But these aliens—the actual ones—appear to be quite intelligent, unlike those prosaic aliens. They had strategy to clean their new home of intelligent obstacles. Step one: turn of their technology. How did they do it? They simply shocked all the machines with super strong Electromagnetic Pulse, as if that is the simplest thing in the world. That was a big hit. But that so much when compared to the 2nd and the 3rd waves. The 2nd was an avalanche of tsunamis. Unprecedented. Yet, still manageable with the human instinct of herding with others. I mean, not the Others, but the others—other humans. As a result, all humans camped very close to each other, packed into clusters of beehive-ish environment. You know, we should’ve known what would come next. All the history has been plagued by this. You know—the plague. A Red one. The Red Plague came just as a school of grasshoppers so voracious that it ate all humans except a very tiny fraction of human population. Actually, it left only the lucky 1%, who had immune to the disease. Looking back, I feel like it was an obvious step. But back then it clearly wasn’t. Hindsight bias is its name. When you look back, you know what’ll happen and you wonder what the heck are these people doing? Are they stupid? But you are accusing the wrong people. They didn’t know. They were utterly perplexed and lost in their souls. Some ended their own lives. Some gathered into churches as asylum from the heathen world. Some called God is within us. His judgment has come or some gibberish. As a devout atheist, or something like that, I did not believe that God can do this stuff even if he did exist. It was clearly too harsh. Another Noah’s Arc? No. Maybe the Others are the gods. Day’s been gloomy. Bright skies. Bright misery. Dark skies. Darkening future. I was in groups in a school lock-down when the mild First Wave hit us. Well, we lost almost all of our technology—at least temporarily. But it’s okay. Some 500,000 died. Airplane crashes. Mine collapses. Hospital ER deaths. Even this now-seemingly-mild wave was unprecedented. Humanity has never lost so much of its knowledge and strength in such a short time before. And I am a human. So I, with my classmates, slipped back to the 14th century. Under the imposing Hawk picture with a caption: “Home of the Hawks,” I almost felt excitement about this whole lock-down thing. Even if you are a nerd like me, you feel freed when you get out of the boredom of a teacher like Girardi. She really sucks, you know. Surrounding all around me as a blanket are groups of teenagers, who I should call my acquaintances. I really don’t know anyone at school very well. Now, you are going you are a loner. Well, I guess I am. I am not the offering-the-hand-first type guy, nor had I been at the school for a long time. It was only 3 years and 4 months when the mothership appeared in the sky. Yasin, who is my closest friend, sits next to me, not feeling like talking. Simon of unstoppable talkativeness has stopped talking. I muster my dying energy to say something. “Guys, what do you guys think of this aliens?” Judging from Yasin’s bored look with a hint of annoyance signals that I’ve said something wrong. “Well, they are bad niggas,” says Yasin, who likes to refer to all people as niggas. “Justin, come on,” Simon adds. But those words don’t make sense to me as usual. Simon’s habit it is. To say come on at any time. “Well,” I try to say something, but my mind has been vacuumed by the incomprehensible idea of the Others. I still can’t believe myself. That they exist. How could they? But things happen. Sudden cacophony awakens me from the confused black hole of daydreaming. People are shouting something—to someone who has just walked in. The principal. He came to our school just this year, and has not earned our trust or popularity as did the last one who looked just like Homer Simpson. Mr. Hinds is the unpopular principal’s name. He, with tight face, declares through the noise of the scared crowd, “We believe that there has been an attack on our technologies by the visitors. And we assure you that everything’s gonna be okay.” Well, that’ll nice. If things are gonna be okay. “But we need you guys to quiet down and please stay quiet until your parents arrive to pick you up. It’ll take a while for them, but they will eventually—for you guys.” So I guess we say good-bye to our friends. Forever? I’m pretty sure they are going to kill us all. Why else would they shut the technology off? Cool, dry air is upon me, matching my mood of blue desertion. The semi-darkness of the gym somehow succeed to comfort me. It’s weird, because I hate darkness. A part of me believes by not seeing things you can somehow escape the situation. It’s very childish thought, I know, but I really want to believe in it. People tend to believe what they want to believe. Long after the Era of “All Men Are Equal” comes the Era of Re-enslavement of the People by the Few. Democratic capitalism, which dominated the world as long as the United States was robust, diminished as the strongest country in the world perished with the combination of global economic crisis, wars, terrors, and global warming.
Recognizing the philosophical and fundamental flaw in the American system in which all men are equal, the elite come up with a plan very similar to that of the Romans. They declares the enslavement of the stupid, using the Comprehensive Review of Intelligence in Technology, Information, Communication, Arts, and Language (short, CRITICAL test), the elite enslave those who score 120 or lower (which constitutes about 60% of the population). A game similar to the Hunger Games arises. The people are enslaved. The elite is very few. 1% of the total population controls 99.9% of the wealth. the rest, about 39% of the total population, live an impoverished but much better than slaves lives. Slaves, with the smartest keep getting removed from them, are expected to be more stupid and slow as the ages come. If this keeps going, the elite will be keep being smarter whereas the lower class will fall as the slowest of all. The slaves come up with ingenious solutions such as cheating the test to keep the brightest of them. Hannah is one of the cheated and she ascends to save the slaves from eternal enslavement. The Act of Federal Courts of 2032 was extremely controversial. Some feared excessive abuse of the freeness of suing anyone on anything. Some thought it was the most liberal bill ever proposed. The Act provided all citizens the right to sue anyone for anything, and, as a step to social equality, provide the pour with high subsidies for lawyer utilization and other support. It clearly upheld the main value of the Constitution of the United States, though. “All men are created equal,” stated the influential document. The Act, despite strong opposition, passed the Congress in March 23th, 2033. It also petitioned the Congress the right to gather more tax in support for the new government subsidies. Property tax was raised up to 40% for average taxpayer. Other taxes were also raised. As soon as the law started to be enforced, the law suits across America skyrocketed. 455 per capita in 2032 to 13,789 per capita in 2033. It so quickly devastated the government money that the Congress was forced to declare default on all of world’s bank before it passed any responsive measure. The Federal economy was instantly doomed, just like that. The critical default stroke other countries, too. It stroke other countries with constitutions just like America’s. A number of countries had followed the movement in US and when the default came in 2034, almost all countries have been suffering similar crisis. Just to make everyone equal, as if the world was dominated by the failed communism, the whole world became impoverished. Everyone was poor, desperate, and depressed. Well, ultimate egalitarian society had come, some people jeered. Then, arose an idea comparable to the Marxism or the idea of Capitalism by Adam Smith. Elitism. It came from the history. From the Romans. It strived for achieving the equilibrium the Romans had achieved. Exploiting slave labor. Building huge elite empire. The idea quickly gathered the brightest of all. They had been doubting the plausibility of the communistic declaration of “all men are equal” for a long time. With the Court crisis pervading, such cynics secretly gathered to create a progressive group of the Elitism. The secret organization aiming at creating the United States of Elite, the Illuminati, was formed in 2035. Its members varied from movie stars to the smartest person in the world. It accepted those who passed their own IQ and EQ tests and other comprehensive tests that later converged into the CRITICAL tests. With its strength and appeal increasing, it finally openly declared itself as a nation. Fake-promising elite-status for all, it gather so many people that the traditional US collapsed by the end of 2040. A new Era has dawned. After securing its powers and territories, the United States of Elite of America (USEA) embarked on its actualization of its idea. It forcibly enslaved the people who were stupid. The smartest were able to control the mechanized weapons whereas the stupid had only guns. Machines won. The rule of the elite and machines was declared in December 19, 2050. And the Game of Spectacle began in 2051. A poor and 3rd class people, who are slaves, plan to unite and rebel once a hero comes from the upper classes. Hannah, who belongs to a 1st class (the elite) family, was genetically engineered to be perfect just like any other 1st class children, building up on the superior genes she already has. But once she was 10, she was sent to the 3rd class confederate to promote the rebellion of the 3rd class. She is trained as a weapon, a mover, and a leader. This page is where my stories of my own creation are put. Many--if not all--of the works are unfinished, because of my lack of perseverance, interest, or the failure of the work's storyline.
The reason why I publish these works is to preserve them and to show others who might be interested in them. Stories page created 12/26/2015 *some works were written as long as 1 years ago from the point of the creation of the Stories page. The original work for this improvised story was done in 10/8/2015 at school during the author’s Psychology 1A class.
The work was continued and improvised up to 934th word after school on the same said day. This work is the first 3rd person perspective story written by the author. A Man in Bed A man is in his bed, drowsing noisily. The room is still dimly lit in the darkness of the night, a precarious candle light. From far away, the man’s room seems small, possibly just a firefly in a vast forest. Suddenly a crackling sound strikes. The delicate light of the man’s embarks on its weak tumbling. Closer, the room seems it’s on the verge of collapsing with all the sahking. The man, for now, is still in his dream, perhaps believing this shaking is an exciting feature in his oblivion. An ominous epiphany hits the man eventually, though. The man’s eyes are wide with sudden alert. The man, whose T-shirt reads: “T-Rex,” quickly gets up, panicking. Now, his room is a part of shaking house, though the man seems to be alone. “Earthquake!!!” The man shouts, trying to alarm his neighbors. The man runs down the breaking and squeaking staircase, barely managing to escape the house, which collapses as soon as he is outside. Although the man has (or had) a mortgage on the house, he does not even look back at the mess that was just generated a few seconds ago. He is hyperventilating. His harsh breaths reflects the grumbling of the ground, which has not seized completely yet. Terrified and stunned, the man collapses as did the house. Upon the cracked and scarred asphalt lies the man, panting, struggling to breathe through this ugly chaos. The catastrophe has hit him and his neighbors just now, although none of them can believe what has just happened. A few of his neighbors run by him, not even bothering to glimpse at the lying man, who can quite possibly be an injured man in this occasion. The man, now a little sober and less upset, gets up and looks around. Smoke is coming from everywhere and there seems to be some fire around him. Those wood houses have made a conflagration a distance away. The night is still dark, but the flames and their light now illuminate the otherwise perfect darkness. The night is now lit by the earthquake. The world has become a lighter place, because of the earthquake. The man stand there for a minute and starts to walk. He walks toward some place where the sweetness of nightly sleep persists despite of the catastrophe. Then he realizes there is no such place, at least near him. The piercing wind that has epitomized the winter of Washington is now noticed by the man. “Damn this is a cold night.” His coarse voice from the night’s interrupted sleep delivers what seems a little out of context. This substantiates that the man is in the stage of rejection. He has not resigned to believe the very existence of the earthquake. The man shivers, utterly alone. The neighbors have dispersed and are nowhere to be seen. The man finds an ex-house with a small fire and sits near it on a torn apart bench. But the bench betrays instantly and breaks with the man bumping on the rugged, dilapidated ground. “Ouch! Damn it. This sucks,” says the tumultuous voice. However, the voice is only shaking from the coldness of the winter night, not from the terror that might have evoked by the earthquake. After sitting there for a while, probably an hour, the man rises. His steps light unlike before, the man marches back to the vestige of his old house. A mountain of mess, his house’s site is clearly an amalgamation of construction materials such as concrete, wood, rocks, etc. But the man seems in search of something. Something that is very important. After a few hours of searching and scavenging, the man finally finds what he has pursued: a box. He swiftly snaps open the box, revealing the contents of it. Guns, emergency kit, clothes, canned food, water bottles, and a bow set. The man has clearly envisioned a catastrophe like this. The man’s face, though obscured by the curtain of night, moved almost explicitly in a way to make a smile, a crooked one. The man grabs the gun and puts on his bow set on his shoulder. Then he declares to himself, “The world of mine has come! Now it’s the age of power, a physical power. I’ve got all I need and I’ve done all the trainings I needed.” With a context that has clearly moved up his socio-economic and political statues, the man is clearly in the advantaged class in this world, where anarchy will certainly rule. Fully armed, the man is very robust in his figure. Tall, muscular, but not so much as to seem slow. His quick movement of his body reveals his physical capability. Murmuring some unrecognizable words to himself, the man leaves the sit of his old home. Now he will lead an itinerary life of a nomad, which is a covetous status, compared to what others have. The man puts on the rest of his equipment as he walks. He unraveled a box and puts on a metal necklace that reads: Norman Firie. The necklace reflects light from the fire around him, flashing the pathway to him. Norman is moving to a place he has decided to come in this particular occasion. He is sure he can find a shelter there while others waste their precious energy in this critical moment of survival. Norman laughs at the people in his mind, finding the vulnerability of the people amusing. |
Jin Woo WonI am an amateur writer. English is not my first language, but I like writing in English from time to time. Archives
May 2016
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