The Other Side of Nowhere by JN Chaney Read Free Book Online Page B

last—after all this time of false and lonely solace, Johnny had awakened into grace.
    The Door was once again before him, its archway strong and wide. Johnny knew it held his answers—that beyond the oak there was a truth so valuable that to touch it would mean sheer and absolute elation—a joy as pronounced as life itself. He did not know how he knew this, but nonetheless, he could feel its truth encapsulating him. All he had to do was reach out and take it.
    He took another step. The Void shook. The sky’s once tranquil demeanor became an outburst as the clouds rose fast, and lightning and thunder broke out against the silent hills of barren earth. The sand returned the shocks of light with their own objective bolts until everything around the Door raged in protest against this new, defiant soul. 
    Johnny continued pressing on towards his goal. The Door was just before him, and for the first time it did not feel so out of reach. For the first time since he had been there, within the confines of this place, he believed that he could do it—open the Door. He needed only to reach out—reach out and press his fingers to its wood, to its celestial bark of divine malevolence. 
    His fingers rose. He did not know what would happen once he touched it—once the Door was open—but the truth was embedded in him like a shard of glass: that the answer he so desperately sought to know, that he so earnestly longed to understand, would be realized, and he would be free of all of it.
    He touched it.
    MARVELOUS AND WONDERFUL IT CAME!
    Images, thoughts, patterns, answers, questions, emotions, years, decades, centuries, millennia, gods, mortals, death, life, and the Universe, itself, collided into one simple piece of majestic delight known throughout Existence as Man, and for a single and infinite moment of reality, Johnny Abram was Creation.
    He was Jeremy Jones from South Dakota, raised at 4300 Bently Dr. 12301, father of seven, brother, cousin, uncle, and grandfather, born September 16 th 1943 at 1:33 A.M., dead on November 25 th 2005 at 3:13 P.M. from pulmonary failure.
    He was Lu Mei Gou of the Han Dynasty, brought up in a noble home, a devout follower of the old faith, a mother of fourteen, grandmother to forty-one, and great-grandmother to eighty-four servants of the Empire. 
    He was Sirius A, the brightest Star in all of Earth’s sky, made entirely of plasma, carbon and oxygen, fusing hydrogen for nearly all its life, born approximately 13.7 billion years before man could read or write.
    He was the rock. He was the tree. He was the wind. He was all the empty space between. He was everything that ever was, and all that came to be. He was a single molecule. He was everything.
    Forever he was, and then not at all, for suddenly it all came down, back inside that feeble shell, and just as quickly as it had happened, he was mortal and small and with a mind so finite that he could scarcely comprehend the light within the Door. 
    He stood atop the threshold of it, within the archway, the blinding light of The Other Place before him. 
    Suddenly, he was overwhelmed with joy, bursts of laughter and happy tears of love enveloping his smiling cheeks. He reached out toward The Place—toward the Light of Eternity—toward whatever it was that had caused him to feel this way—
    And he heard a voice.
    Johnny. Johnny, wake up.
    That voice. It was so distantly familiar, like the dream of mortality, like being born, and it called to him. That voice. It rang throughout his body like a rope around his waist, tugging his mind towards it.
    Johnny. Johnny, wake up.
    He took a step back. That voice. It was like a song within his mind, a symphony of words, and it called to him. Oh, how it called to him.
    Johnny. Johnny, wake up.
    Another step back, and he stood once more before the goliath Door inside the everlasting desert.
    Johnny. Johnny, wake up.
    He was floating now, backwards, like a hooked fish. And before long he was back inside the desert