(FIC) My favorite book (is a monster)
Happy birthdayyyy taro_twist!! I wrote this story a bit ago in a state of complete exhaustion (mithen prompted it! the story, no the exhaustion...) and here it is, for youuuuu!
Title: My favorite book
Rating: G
Characters: Clark Kent
Word Count: 1000+
Summary: Clark is many things, and he's a writer at heart.
There's a book he keeps, full of names and numbers. He has changed apartments three times since he came to live to Metropolis, and each time he moves he wonders how he's managed to amass so much clutter.
He gives away many things. Old suits, old jerseys. T-shirts with cute slogans that he can't wear to work and has barely any free time to wear outside of it. Books he doesn't know where he got from that are really terrible. Bad prose, awful poems. Some experimental novels he never did get around to finishing, despite being able to read them at super speed.
Twenty seconds of his life that he refuses to waste.
He's kept that one book through all his moves, though. It's leather bound, meticulously hand written in blue ink.
He can recall each page down to the imperfections of the hand crafted paper. Any page. Every page.
Rose Morgan. May 27th.
Thomas Stewart. October 29th.
Laura Paz. June 4th. Vito Schena. May 16th.
Sometimes there are city names instead of people. Barcelona. May '59. Moscow. October '23. Rosario. Summer '66. Ontario. December '12. Canberra. Osaka. Dublin.
Metropolis. June '82.
It would be poetic if that was the last entry, he thinks. It would give an ominous feeling to the mysterious book. But the book goes on. The last entry says Sandy S., September 3rd.
He doesn't know what the names mean, what the dates are. He doesn't know who these people are or were, or why whoever kept this journal thought it would be important to record them.
He makes up stories about the book. He found it in Smallville, many years ago, during a short period in his life in which he felt comfortable with himself and the world, before he felt the tug of the mission and after he had come to terms with his powers, if not with his alien heritage.
How long had that feeling last? One year? One summer? It's difficult to tell, now. But he remembers the feeling, the warmth of knowing himself loved and accepted by his family and his closest friends, before it had been time to leave Smallville, before anyone had to think about going away to chase their destinies.
He found the book by chance in a garage sell, and became instantly intrigued by it. So many names. So many places.
He wonders, sometimes, if these are people someone met during a lifetime. Places someone visited.
But the dates make no sense, they aren't linear, they span too many years.
He wonders, sometimes, if it could be the recollection of an old man or woman, a lifetime of memories, recalled out of order, one memory sparkling the next.
He wonders if it's possible to do so much in one lifetime. To see so much, to truly experience so many places, to truly know so many people.
He doesn't know if the owner of the journal even cared about these people, about these places, but sometimes he thinks he did.
Sometimes he sees patterns in the names. Patterns in the dates, in the places. Maybe the owner was a spy. Maybe a reporter.
Maybe the owner was insane.
A writer. A collector.
Those last two he is sure of, at least. That he -he is pretty certain the owner was a guy, he can't be sure why-, that he was a writer might be a stretch, as the journal has no structure, no narrative, barely any punctuation. Just names.
Just words. Meaningless without context.
He obsessed over the book, sometimes. The writer was a collector, he thinks. A collector of people, at least. Of names. A collector of data, of memories.
The Experience Collector.
He sees himself in the book. Sees his own lists, lists made in his mind instead of written down on hand crafted paper with blue ink, the people he's saved. The people he's failed to save. The people who have touched his life. The places he's been. The friends he's made. The friends he's kept. The people he trusts. The people that trust him.
The monitor duty roll call. The make and models of his father's trucks.
His PINs. His friends' birthdays.
The times he's almost died. The times he thought he would die.
Every now and then he sits down and opens the book. He looks at the dates and tries to remember what he did on a June 17th, if he's ever met an Eva Weiss.
When all is said and done, the book is meaningless. He will never gain any insight of its content. It will always be blue ink and yellowed paper, weathered leather and a coffee stain in the back cover.
That's it.
That's all.
It's his favorite book, the one that never dries out of stories to tell him, the one that gives him space to think about himself, about other people. It's a book that reminds him of his friends, of his family. It reminds him of home.
It's also a dark book, a book of secrets and crimes. It's a book of ill omens, of failures and lost chances.
The coffee stain in the back cover is old, and perhaps he could date it. Perhaps he could date the ink and the leather, add another date to the hundreds of dates already written down. He could figure out the compounds of the paper and discover where it was made. Add another place to the endless list of places.
There are four blank pages at the end of the book. He touches the paper with awe, sometimes. So full of potential stories, greedily awaiting new experiences to collect.
He takes twisted pleasure in keeping those pages blank, denying them the fulfillment of their purpose, keeping them forever empty and ready, a spring of new stories, new theories, new thoughts.
When he puts the book away -always mystified- he feels like the book smiles at him. Ink, paper, glue and leather, a book can't smile, but it does anyway.
'I got you,' the book whispers at him. 'I got you too.'
'Tell me another story, Clark. Tell me what I am.'
And each time Clark does, the book tells him who he is right back.
Title: My favorite book
Rating: G
Characters: Clark Kent
Word Count: 1000+
Summary: Clark is many things, and he's a writer at heart.
There's a book he keeps, full of names and numbers. He has changed apartments three times since he came to live to Metropolis, and each time he moves he wonders how he's managed to amass so much clutter.
He gives away many things. Old suits, old jerseys. T-shirts with cute slogans that he can't wear to work and has barely any free time to wear outside of it. Books he doesn't know where he got from that are really terrible. Bad prose, awful poems. Some experimental novels he never did get around to finishing, despite being able to read them at super speed.
Twenty seconds of his life that he refuses to waste.
He's kept that one book through all his moves, though. It's leather bound, meticulously hand written in blue ink.
He can recall each page down to the imperfections of the hand crafted paper. Any page. Every page.
Rose Morgan. May 27th.
Thomas Stewart. October 29th.
Laura Paz. June 4th. Vito Schena. May 16th.
Sometimes there are city names instead of people. Barcelona. May '59. Moscow. October '23. Rosario. Summer '66. Ontario. December '12. Canberra. Osaka. Dublin.
Metropolis. June '82.
It would be poetic if that was the last entry, he thinks. It would give an ominous feeling to the mysterious book. But the book goes on. The last entry says Sandy S., September 3rd.
He doesn't know what the names mean, what the dates are. He doesn't know who these people are or were, or why whoever kept this journal thought it would be important to record them.
He makes up stories about the book. He found it in Smallville, many years ago, during a short period in his life in which he felt comfortable with himself and the world, before he felt the tug of the mission and after he had come to terms with his powers, if not with his alien heritage.
How long had that feeling last? One year? One summer? It's difficult to tell, now. But he remembers the feeling, the warmth of knowing himself loved and accepted by his family and his closest friends, before it had been time to leave Smallville, before anyone had to think about going away to chase their destinies.
He found the book by chance in a garage sell, and became instantly intrigued by it. So many names. So many places.
He wonders, sometimes, if these are people someone met during a lifetime. Places someone visited.
But the dates make no sense, they aren't linear, they span too many years.
He wonders, sometimes, if it could be the recollection of an old man or woman, a lifetime of memories, recalled out of order, one memory sparkling the next.
He wonders if it's possible to do so much in one lifetime. To see so much, to truly experience so many places, to truly know so many people.
He doesn't know if the owner of the journal even cared about these people, about these places, but sometimes he thinks he did.
Sometimes he sees patterns in the names. Patterns in the dates, in the places. Maybe the owner was a spy. Maybe a reporter.
Maybe the owner was insane.
A writer. A collector.
Those last two he is sure of, at least. That he -he is pretty certain the owner was a guy, he can't be sure why-, that he was a writer might be a stretch, as the journal has no structure, no narrative, barely any punctuation. Just names.
Just words. Meaningless without context.
He obsessed over the book, sometimes. The writer was a collector, he thinks. A collector of people, at least. Of names. A collector of data, of memories.
The Experience Collector.
He sees himself in the book. Sees his own lists, lists made in his mind instead of written down on hand crafted paper with blue ink, the people he's saved. The people he's failed to save. The people who have touched his life. The places he's been. The friends he's made. The friends he's kept. The people he trusts. The people that trust him.
The monitor duty roll call. The make and models of his father's trucks.
His PINs. His friends' birthdays.
The times he's almost died. The times he thought he would die.
Every now and then he sits down and opens the book. He looks at the dates and tries to remember what he did on a June 17th, if he's ever met an Eva Weiss.
When all is said and done, the book is meaningless. He will never gain any insight of its content. It will always be blue ink and yellowed paper, weathered leather and a coffee stain in the back cover.
That's it.
That's all.
It's his favorite book, the one that never dries out of stories to tell him, the one that gives him space to think about himself, about other people. It's a book that reminds him of his friends, of his family. It reminds him of home.
It's also a dark book, a book of secrets and crimes. It's a book of ill omens, of failures and lost chances.
The coffee stain in the back cover is old, and perhaps he could date it. Perhaps he could date the ink and the leather, add another date to the hundreds of dates already written down. He could figure out the compounds of the paper and discover where it was made. Add another place to the endless list of places.
There are four blank pages at the end of the book. He touches the paper with awe, sometimes. So full of potential stories, greedily awaiting new experiences to collect.
He takes twisted pleasure in keeping those pages blank, denying them the fulfillment of their purpose, keeping them forever empty and ready, a spring of new stories, new theories, new thoughts.
When he puts the book away -always mystified- he feels like the book smiles at him. Ink, paper, glue and leather, a book can't smile, but it does anyway.
'I got you,' the book whispers at him. 'I got you too.'
'Tell me another story, Clark. Tell me what I am.'
And each time Clark does, the book tells him who he is right back.