The Never-Ending Notebook: Book of Books

The Dud

A/N: Hey! This is my next installment in the Never-Ending Notebook. It is one of the longest by far! I have loved the process of writing these small starter chapters and couldn't stop, especially this one. Share your thoughts and I hope you enjoy! :)

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"The Invention of Zero"

What like was it, this abundant world

where nothing was not—no neat ring

shackling us to absence, no way not

to count or be counted—where everything

filled without this empty nest of a number

perched in the mind, everything swerved

it's wide white oblivion, and could we,

given the state of our knowledge, live with the lack of it

unable to quantify certain populations

in the wild, the exhaustion of our reserves,

the number, and intensity of cries in the night?

-Andrew Philip

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"Zero! Zero! That weirdo should never look in a mirror! Zero! Zero! Fly far away like a sparrow! Zero! Zero! Kill that bird with an arrow! Zero! Zero!"

The sound of childish laughter awoke my consciousness. I stare up at the ceiling and felt the cold stone beneath me. Yet another morning that I wake with the echoes of pain. It seems to only be quieter because my ears are at their limit from their incessant yells of vicious words.

Their words constantly smack me breaking down, slowly, the crumbling walls I have carefully built. Their taunts became nursery rhymes to sing to children as the sun falls and the stars rise.

Brushing my hands across my ripped denim jeans. I raised my hand. My hand was like any other hand, at first glance. However, I knew where to look for the signs of hard work. While my sisters could have long polished nails, mine was cut short and ragged.

While my brothers' hands were strong and muscular from special training, mine was beaten and bruised from long-lasting scars. Each finger held a russet complexion with veins that were as apparent as the hatred they had for me.

The useless child. The powerless child. The one who amounts to nothing.

I rose to sit on my bed. My plain white bed. No satin for me. No Arabian quilts to festoon. No beautiful, resplendent colors lay upon my bed to aid my dreams of the stars.

I used to sleep on stacked hay and palettes until they threw a deceased servant's bed out. I smuggled it into my room one afternoon. That afternoon was on the turning of fall. The wind was sharp. My future as bright as the freshly rained mud. I dragged it on the left-hand side, the mud streaks still there but hidden by being pressed against the outer wall.

Skirting my eyes around my room I glance at my most precious treasure, books. Most of the books were from my tutoring days. Most of my books can be believed to be boring and wasteless but, for me, they carry the knowledge of thousands of worlds, adventures from far away, and passages away from time.