Turner Infania

Let's Go Treasure Hunting!
1. Auflage 2020
ISBN: 978-1-0983-4205-0
Verlag: BookBaby
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 257 Seiten

This book follows the story of a failed writer with supernatural nightmares on a journey through outer space! Along his journey, he joins a group of marauding space pirates that claim to be treasure hunters. These 'treasure hunters' bring our unassuming protagonist along on their wild escapades through the exciting expanse of seemingly infinite amounts of confusing encounters with eccentric new faces. What will become of this plain faced nobody with a sword stuck to his arm as his hunt for an interesting story continues.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Turner, Jack

Leseproben

Chapter 1- Nowhere to go but down
  Today, I decided it was about time to kill myself.   I stood atop the 32nd floor of my shitty apartment building. I nearly fell over before I even got up to the edge. Seriously, calling the brickwork of this place bad is an understatement, horrible feels like a compliment. In the end, the poor structure of the building I stood on was to my benefit since I planned to jump off of it, because of that, complaining felt pretty counterproductive. Rather than complain, I decided to reflect on how I got to this point; and I supposed I would need to start with when I woke up.   A strange occurrence in life is that many stories start with someone waking up. The start of a day is relative to the start of a story, I can only assume it to be a coincidence that mine also starts this way. I too, woke up in a cold sweat. Me sweating in my sleep, however, wasn’t strange.   Due to my slightly below average physical condition, it’s not impossible for sleeping to exhaust me, but I also get the occasional nightmare. My nightmares are what one of my therapists have called “The cherry on top of my exuberantly large cake of mental distraught.” This was his interesting way of telling me that I needed pills. If the goal of those pills was to dull my outward emotions into an indefinable and monotone pile, they worked swimmingly. I’m losing track, that’ll happen a couple of times, I apologize   The date was April 23rd, I don’t remember the year, just that it was a regular day with way too much sunlight shining through the cracks of my boring, little life. Clouds decided not to block the bright light of the big star waiting to kill us all, as they usually tended to do. Clouds are one of the better parts of nature in my personal opinion. When I opened up the curtains of my box container normally referred to as a shitty apartment, my eyes forcibly closed as they met with the morning lights and I stared into the bricks of the building next to mine.   My phone erupted in an annoying rumble against my nightstand, drawing closer to the edge. As I picked it up, I questioned why I ever chose such an obnoxious chime, it wasn’t until I saw who was calling, that I was instantly reminded, he was once my alarm clock. Robert Fields is a man I knew my whole life, not for the lack of trying mind you. When I broke away from the societal crypt of Rockwood Pennsylvania, Robbie refused to let me go without at least five ways of contacting him. He made himself my safety net, my personal rebound from when I jumped from heights too high for me to handle, like a building or maybe just a job interview. Robert made himself out to be someone to talk to, and when I answered the phone, we did just that.   “Hey man, how’s the writer life?” Robert chuckled at his own joke over the phone, knowing full well that I had given up the writing around two years prior due to a novel that had become infamous in the literary world. “Same as usual, what’ve you been up to lately?” Could I have waved my red flag any higher? I thought as we continued. “Same thing as usual I guess. Hey, we should hang out today, since I’m in town. I’ll send you the location of where I’m working.” Robert’s work took him everywhere, but rarely somewhere so heavily populated by people, he’s more accustomed to things that have started going to waste, like me. This coincidence makes his career a good explanation for our friendship.   The walk would be brisk in comparison to how much time I spent wailing in a low, exasperated grumble, I tend to refer to this as the Call to life. This Call to life, more simply referred to as a teary and extensive yawn that always gave me plenty of time to prepare for the day. I would put on a white dress shirt with my nicest pair of black pants, with more elasticity in the waistband than a majority of sweatpants; frankly, I wouldn’t be able to survive the outdoors without them. After fastening an old pair of running shoes to my feet, I took myself over to the location Robert had sent me.   We met in the middle of an empty park, trash was scattered everywhere the wind could blow it, people in bright neon vests were spending their afternoon doing community service, luckily it was no one I recognized. The fact that I still knew who Robert was had been strange enough considering how quickly I wanted to disappear from the face of the earth after promptly becoming the laughingstock of literature. I hadn’t expected to meet with Robert Fields on this sunny afternoon, so when I saw him, I felt ready to hit snooze, so I might wake up from this odd dream.   Robert sat on the edge of a water fountain, he held something, cautiously gripping it in his hands. With the sun’s bright gleam off of his neon vest, I couldn’t tell what he was holding. As I approached him, slightly shielding my eyes, Robert held out his hand, still gripping the mystery with caution in the other. “Hold on, don’t startle him…” He had stopped me from walking closer. Moments later, a pigeon flew out of his hands and onto his shoulder. I wasn’t surprised, I’d seen things similar to this happen to Robert before, so I responded simply, “You’ve still got quite the way with animals.” His charisma always attracted animals his way. He’d always have a flock of birds or a group of rodents surrounding him when we were young.   “Yeah, I’m in the city to help these rare pigeons come back from endangerment. I want to help them thrive again…” I always envied Robert’s dedication to things so simple. “So, do you just travel all around the world nowadays, saving animals?” “Yep.” He had no hesitation in his voice, he never needed to hesitate. “How about you? Any new happenings?” “I had another dream recently…” Every time I had a nightmare, Robert would be patiently waiting to hear it, no matter how far away he was, and no matter how many times he heard these nightmares, he would always be on the edge of his seat, eager to hear what happened next in my strange mind, they used to be very prevalent, in my earlier years I’d get strange dreams almost every night. As I grew up, I would only ever get them once a week, and it had been a long time since Robert had heard one of my “dreams” in person. Whenever I have these nightmares, they’re always inexplicably odd, but so are most dreams.   “I was standing at the edge of a cliff for a little while, it was peaceful before the ground disappeared beneath me, and I fell” Robert followed my brief recounting with full focus, in these times he treated me like the great storyteller I always thought I’d be. “After I fell, I kept falling for a while… When I stopped, it was quiet. There was nothing else there, so I think I died again…” “Wow… I don’t know how you can do that!” Robert would always say something to that effect after I shared my dreams with him. He never ceased to be intrigued by the vague stories my head made up while I slept, even after all these years. “You should start writing these down! I’d really like to read what happens next.” “Yeah, writing my dreams down would be great. ‘Dear diary, I had a dream, I died in it.’ The End” “There’s no way all of your dreams end there, you’re a writer, I bet you can find a connection!” He glanced between me and the bird on his shoulder. The pigeon flew off and landed over by a patch of grass. “How many of your dreams do end like that?” Robert looked at me, I couldn’t bring myself to look back. I stared down and sighed through my hands. “More than I can keep track of.” “Well, at least they never come true, that’s good right?” “Maybe they were meant to come true…” I gleaned off toward the patch of grass where the pigeon had started pecking for seeds in the ground.   I glanced up at Robert for a moment to see an upset expression, which he quickly changed. “Well then, you must be pretty lucky! Not everyone can fight against fate…” It was then that a cloud passed overhead. For those next few moments we sat, cloaked from the sun’s rays, no words were shared then. As if on cue, Robert stood in tandem with the sunshine revealing itself again and he spoke to me once more. “I get it if these dreams make you scared, I totally get it… But, next time… when you leave, could you look for me when you need someone to talk to?” I wish I had given him a response, yet when I could have, I didn’t.   Normally, when I talked to Robert, things seemed a little better.   It rarely passed my mind how bitter Robert was that I left home without even telling him. I bet if I were a little less of an ass, I would have stayed, or at least told him where I was going, or why. Thanks to all my efforts, our distance kept growing further and further, even while I sat right next to him, it felt like we were a thousand miles apart. I sat alone on that fountain until noon, I would’ve stayed longer had I not gotten hungry. I made a bowl of cereal when I got back to my pitch black apartment, staring into my silhouette in the mirror, I looked into my own dimly light eyes, partly hidden by my clean cut, yet unkempt hair, wondering where I could go to run away from all these problems that I’d given myself. Asking this gave me the response that I’d have to leave the planet to get another chance, as I realized the truth of the response in my head, I had my first decent idea in about four or five years.   I stood at the edge of my apartment...