Eek! So many reviews....lol. I love it. Thank you to everyone for reviewing! And once again, I apologize for my spelling mistakes. Guess I was excited because of all these reviews! 22 reviews for 8 chapters is one of the best things that has ever happened to me. I can promise all the readers that: 1) Middle Earth is coming soon. 2) My spelling and grammar will improve (and I apologize once again). And 3) I cannot promise she will get together with an elf (I was rooting for her and Tobias, but you know) or if there will be any romance at all but hey, I'm still not done and anything's possible. Thank you all again!
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Chapter 9: Believing is Seeing
My father always kept his library locked, and there were only several times when I had ever been inside. Unfortunately the memories were fading quickly. I couldn't figure out what was real, and what my very small imagination had cooked up for me to believe.
When I opened the door I was met with a draft of cold air, sending a deep chill down my spine. It was as if someone had left the window open during the winter and the winter had just never ended. So I'm not very good with analogies but the library was freezing. It felt like death itself as I walked inside. My feet made some strange creaking noises as I moved forward, looking around.
Nearly everything was caked with dust. There was not a single spot in the room where a thick layer of snow like powder covered. Books and papers had sat there for an eternity almost, building up cobwebs and attracting moths and spiders. I hate spiders. I literally scream whenever I see one, even if it's miles away. I looked to my left. There was a cobweb covered iron staircase, moving upwards in a circle. Above me was a loft, where the bookshelves (rotting with time, or so it smelled) stood high above the whole room. I moved towards the left wall, where my father's desk was. He had books and papers everywhere. Journals were rotting in a pile in the corner, along with several old sketchbooks. I could smell decay and had to cough from mountains of dust that were flying towards the ceiling as my socked feet shuffled across the unused floor.
Everything was made out of mahogany. My father had the room custom built just after Porscha was born. That was one of the only times I ever set foot in here. My father liked the solitude of it. He liked being away from the world, probably so he could sit on the red velvet couch in the right corner and do nothing but read and draw. My mother hated these times when he would shut himself up. It would be just after he'd finished reading to us that he'd go. Porscha and I would hear the door click, and then the hushed voice and knocking of my mother, trying to coax him out by promising everything from Belgium chocolates to something about her in that black lingerie she got for her wedding. Not that my sister and I understood that then.
I walked over to the desk, pulling a book from under the pile of cobwebs and dust. I blew off the powder, finally seeing its faded cover with the word Journal engraved into the front. Curiosity prickled my brain. He's dead, I thought. He's dead and I'm sure he will not mind if I read his Journal.
I pulled the cover open, the pages frail within. It seemed weak as I held it, almost as if it could fall apart at any second. I flipped through it a bit, looking for the final entry. And there it was, halfway through, and halfway finished too. It looked like my father had simply got up and left without it.
"Well, it's almost time to go. I'm taking nothing with me although I would like to." Hang on, I thought. Where the hell is he going? I flipped back a few pages. Then, suddenly, there was the sound of something hitting the floor. I groaned and knelt down, looking at what had fallen. Small piles of paper had developed on the floor. But I knew these piles of paper. I'd seen them before. And that's when I realized these were my map pieces. Well, speaking in better terms, they were my father's but they were exactly like mine.
I set the diary next to me. Wait, I thought, my mind going back into detective mode. Dad has the map pieces. In his last entry he was writing about going somewhere. And here they are damn it! I picked up the pieces slowly. No, I thought. No he wouldn't have done that. Damn it he would not have left me and my sisters for MIDDLE EARTH! NOT FOR SOME MADE UP FANTASY FICTIONAL WORLD THAT WAS MADE BY A DRUNKEN OLD SEXIST GIT DAMN HIM!
Before I knew it, I was ripping the pieces. "Damn you!" I screamed. "Damn you to hell! You made me believe that you were dead for WHAT?! A walk in a FUCKING FICTIONAL WORLD! YOU BASTARD!" I was screaming and screaming, and crying, ripping up the map pieces so easily. I was throwing the pieces over the floor. "DAMN YOU!"
The phone rang at that moment. I grabbed my keys next to me and wiped my nose. My head was throbbing again. Damn you. I thought. Damn all you Tolkien fanatics who willed this place into reality. Damn you for taking away my father!
"Hello?" I said calmly into the phone.
"Hey." Great, it's Tobias. Better hang up you hallucinogenic bastard before I bite your head off. Instead, I swallowed my anger and answered him like a friend.
"What's up?" I asked, forgetting the message I had left on his machine only half and hour ago. He waited. "Oh, yeah. The message. Look um….this map. It goes over England and because you believe in Tolkien you have a one way ticket in. I'll write the article okay?"
"Hey….hey….wait. What's wrong?" Oh no, my acting skills wore off. I leaned into the wall trying to sort out my thoughts. I sighed.
"Look, I'm just….I'm really tired and I would really just love to go to bed okay? I….I…" I keeled over into the hallway, balling again. Tobias fell silent on the other line. "I just found out my father's not dead okay. I just found out he ran off to Middle Earth like a chicken with his head cut off. I just found out he abandoned my family for the Damn BOOK!" Tobias said nothing. "Why? Why would you do that to someone? Why would you do that to your own family?!" Tobias said nothing. "Why are you going to do it?"
"Look Delaney." His voice wasn't soft. His voice was cold. His voice was as if I'd just killed him over and over. "I don't think you really love your father."
"How dare you!" I screamed. "I loved my father!"
"Loved him. Past tense Lane. Any writer knows that. You loved him Delaney. Face it. You love your father like you love those books. Just some decoration for you." He hung up.
My heart skipped a beat, and I still held the phone to my ear. I just sat there in my hallway, in complete and utter shock. Decoration? A decoration for me? Like I enjoyed my father's death and disappearance? And how about my mother's lying? MY FATHER WAS A BASTARD! My father didn't deserve to have a family.
I dropped the phone to the floor and stormed back into the library. I grabbed the Journal off the floor and flipped through the pages. "Where were you going?" I asked myself. "Where the hell were you going?" I sped read all the pages, and then I found it.
"So to my family, when they find this, I'm going to Lothlorien. I know I was always Elrond, but I need to do this. For me." I ran back to the kitchen, looking at the map. Lothlorien. Great, right on the coast. I grabbed my car keys, his diary, and my coat.
Time to settle the score…with my own father.
Okay…..next chapter….perhaps some sense will be talked into the heroin. Otherwise she might do something crazy.