Rip Out Your Favorite Pages

Once upon a time there was a story. The beginning of the story was beautiful; perfection. It was so wonderful that you knew there was no way it could turn out as well again in the end, after the trials that happen in the middle of every good story. The first few chapters were intangible weights on the hearts of the readers. The story only grew heavier, page after page.



It got so bad that many couldn’t bear to read another word. They gave up; closed their copies. Some people threw the books off bridges or the tops of buildings. Some burned them, or soaked them with chemicals that ate them up completely, leaving nothing behind but a stench and a vague stain on the ground. Some sliced them up with razor blades; some exploded them with gunpowder so that the ashes rained down, burning the heads of everyone nearby.



Some people wanted to extend it, hoping that by creating more story it would get better. But it didn’t work that way, trying to tack on your own ending. So it seemed that it was too long for some and too short for others, with those contented in between who were accused of apathy.



Still, it was a long story; it took between sixty and ninety years to read from start to finish even though everyone read it every single day.



Some people were good at reading it, their eyes trickling between the letters and down the pages; they move through with relative ease. But for others it was an awful chore, requiring constant effort that seemed only to result in headaches as they dragged themselves over the rough terrain of words, grasping for holds in the cracks and crevasses of the alphabet. Even those who enjoyed reading occasionally suffered migraines from the constant straining.



And there was no break, no stopping to rest, because whether or not you were there to turn the pages, turn they did, and too bad if you missed a few because they couldn’t be turned the other way again. Then you were floundering in the newly confusing plot, transported from the familiar to the completely unknown in a single second.



People talked about the book all the time. In fact, it’s all they ever talked about. Even when they didn’t think they were talking about it, they were. All their talk was of high hopes for the ending, and fear about what the next chapter might hold. Sometimes they wrote stories about the story, and songs and made pictures, grasping for creative synonyms and metaphors. Some were vague, and some were obvious, but really they were all the same: just so many records of people doing everything they could to understand. To simplify.



But no matter how they tried, no one could really understand. They finished and closed it with a million unanswered questions.



Once upon a time there was a story, and it didn’t really have any resolution or anything. It just began, existed, and ended.



Tell me, what do you think the title was?

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