The Search for Abraham Portman - Book the First [ON HOLD]

~Prologue~

False sorrow displayed on faces all around, staged tears running down their face. 'There wasn't even a struggle,' they said, when they assumed that I couldn't hear them, 'He just... Vanished.'

Just like that, someone who was my only friend, helped me make memories, was now a memory himself.

'Abraham Ezra Portman was a great man, he shall be missed.'

'I feel so sorry for their family.'

'A strange man, he was. Always locked up in that little home of his, never really talked to him.'

I internally shook myself to snap myself out of it. They pretended they cared, that they missed him, but they didn't know what he was like, and it seems like they never did. He isn't dead; they're just assuming he is... There's still a chance.

Even minute, almost invisible, it's still a chance.

Here they were now, holding a funeral for him. 'He isn't dead!' I almost screamed out. I could hear my parents whispering about me in the next room. They thought I had gone insane due to my grandfather's 'death'...

He wasn't really dead, though. I could just... Feel it.

'Calm down, Jake. We miss him too!'

Lies. Lies, all of them.

'You were always close to him. He'll be looking after you from above, he's at peace.'

You're only pretending you care. You don't want anybody to think that your son has gone as 'senile' as his 'dead' grandpa.

I thought back to the time I had accused him of lying to me, when he'd told me about his days during the war.

'Those fairy tales you're telling me, they're all lies!'

Now I knew how he'd felt. Nobody had believed him, like they don't believe me now.

I thought back to the days we'd look through maps together, planning heroic feats. He'd tell me stories from his paradise, a home he'd felt grateful for. A home that had kept him safe from monsters, out for blood.

I remembered how excited I had been, at the mere thought of being as great a hero my grandfather was, but I wasn't him.

He was his own person, someone who'd fought wars at such a young age. He'd fought monsters in crisp uniforms with guns.

I wasn't him.

Reality was much, much more cruel, and reality was where I was.

I remembered the easily fabricated pictures he'd shown of his friends, back then. Easily fake-able photographs.

After some time, I guess I just couldn't believe anymore.

The price of believing was just too high.

I was just an ordinary school-kid.

I'm not one to fight monsters. Never is, never was.

That was when I stopped looking for adventures. I stopped looking for a happy ending.

I stopped believing.