High School

I just re-discovered the following text. During high school (in a process too long to relate right now) I created my own science-fiction universe, something that I'm still developing. This is a fragment of a story that I started, but never completed. I haven't worked on this since sometime in high school, so please forgive its unpolished nature.

Tour of Duty [story title] 9736 TO [corresponds to 12542 AD on the planet Terra Oceanus]

An agonizing scream tore through teh chill evening air and with a shock of recognition I realized that it had emanated from my own raw throat. As sharp daggers of obsidian probed the raw flesh of my back I was able to analyze this and other perceptions with a detached and logical calm. The exposed skin on my arms and legs: raw, torn, and bleeding from the Alterian thorns and briars, screamed its own horrible melody. The soles of my feet were also in agony, their surface jagged with white flecks of bone leering out--released by the frantic dash over hot metal and pounded into shards by the long run through gravel, briars, cacti, and stone. To this rising cacophony of sensations was added the numb pain of my head and back, stinging from whips liberally applied in attempts to wrestle information past my recalcitrant lips.

At the end of my second wind, squinting my battered eyelids against the fierce setting sun, I had found it. rather my bloody torn feet had stumbled over the edge of the precipice and had tumbled my aching body down into the void. Mercifully my mind had slipped into unconsciousness as soon as the object, THE OBJECT, had seemed to rush up,eagerly, to smash into my skull.

Alone, unmourned, unknown; I felt myself slipping gradually sliding into oblivion. Had it all been for nothing? Was this to be the end? To find that which I had spent all I had gathered in my long life to find, as that very life slipped away? To have the object of my quest within my grasp and be unable to seize it? No I would not give up! and with that thought a madness took control of me, an insane desire to grasp it, even if it was the last thing I did. The madness sank deep roots into my consciousness and after expelling all though of pain it gathered unknown reserves of strength and sent them coursing to my tired, torn, throbing muscles. With a last surge of power, and however powerful it seemed at the time it was but a shadow of my previous might, I heaved my torso upright and turned toward IT. My miraculous reserves, however, drained from my muscles and failed me. I slumped over it, limp and unconscious.


As far as I can recall I came up with the genesis of this fragment (the painful description at the start) one morning while taking my shower before school. I don't remember much else except that the character was supposed to be impossibly old and perhaps involved with some form of time travel. I might pick the story up again some day, rework it into another plot, or both. I have no idea what will happen right now.

~Matt