chapter 1, in which verything begins
that march day began like any other. the nasally insistent bbc announcer on his radio urging him into consciousness, the rising of a dull ache from where the i.v. port had been, the busy sounds of the rest of the household readying for their day. he didn't know why he set the alarm; there wasn't anywhere he had to be most days. but it seemed indolent to sleep away his mornings. he pushed out of his bed, padded the few feet to his desk, picked up the small but sturdy lockbox. spun the dial, back, forth four times. inside was a brown leatherbound journal. he lifted it out tenderly. it was a gift from an american friend, one who kept insisting that he write write write as a way to pass the time in the hospital. he'd appreciated the thought, but hadn't bothered much, being too busy retching on the
bad days, and harrassing the nurses on the good ones. when he left the hospital, after nearly four months, he'd filled less than a dozen pages. the american friend upped her diatribe then. "what the hell", she said, "are you doing with all that time? staring in the mirror, thinking 'does my butt look big in these pajamas?'" finally, more to shut her up more than anything, he began to write. first some poems, then a few rants against god, some horny scenarios involving a particulary buxom young nurse, and a few short stories. at his friend's urging, he'd posted a few on the web, at an open fiction site. this has resulted in some interesting correspondence.
he opened his journal to begin his morning routine. thirty minutes of writing, a cuppa, thirty crappy pills, then thirty more minutes. this morning, however, he didn't make it one. opening to where he had left off last night he was startled to see, in writing he did not recognize, a web address. www.verything.org.
"clara", he thought. clara was his sister, recently 13, surprisingly less pesky than most younger sisters, but not above the occasional prank. it didn't look like her writing, though he supposed she could have disguised it. it angered him to think she could have been in his journal. but wait-- it had been in the safe. and he had written in it just last night. surely he would have noticed?
perplexed, ansel turned on his computer, waited for the whirring to subside, and typed in the web address.
a black screen appeared, then slowly faded into a glowing
irridiscence. letters appeared, one by one, accompanied by typing sounds.
w e l c o m e a n s e l. w e 'v e b e e n
w a i t i n g..........
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