I'm sorry I have not been good about posting. I have so much work to do. This is an English assignment I completed. Sorry it's really long, I hope you have the patience to read it. My friend said it was good, so...yeah. I hope you like it. Oh, and by the way, it is FICTION! I promise. Yeah, when I first read it to my friend she asked, "Sara, should I be worried about you...?" The character is a fictional girl. Not me. Oh, um...one other thing...sorry I haven't been posting more from my other story. Maybe I'll write about it some other time, it depends on my mood. Sometimes I think the inspiration for a story is dead, then I keep on working on it. So, I don't know. Anyways, I hope you enjoy!

The Burden
By Sarasface

Dear Journal,

I cannot bear this any longer. I feel as though I am slowly going insane—I know I am. I can feel it, cackling with its sharp teeth, tearing at the edges of my consciousness in my waking hours and floating hazily through my dreams. I am not the girl I once was. It hurts to remember those sweet, light, free days and know that it will never be that way again. It physically hurts my body and hurts inside too. And I am to bear this Burden for the rest of my life, however long that may be. “Start a journal” he advised me, and he was right. I should have done it sooner, back when I still held onto some fraction of the person I could have been. “It helps you to keep your thoughts in order, writing everything down. You’ll find that the paper is the only one who understands you,” he said. And now he is dead, and there is no one else who knows, who can help me. I am so alone. It’s odd, how one year ago today I was just an ordinary sixteen-year-old girl—I cannot talk about that girl I was, it hurts and she is very dead anyways. One year ago today, I met him. He told me he had found the right person at last, one capable, sufficient for this task. I was so flattered and honored, but now I know he was wrong. I cannot do this, but do this I must, and so somehow I will. If it is not done, if there is no one to hold the Burden securely inside of them, if it is not binding together the Debris, then…cataclysm, chaos, maelstrom! The whole world and all around it, all that is, ends. It never was. One year ago today, I agreed to hear his words, to bear the Burden, because I was so honored when he said I and I alone would be able to do it. But it is no honor. It is giving up life, happiness, friendship, love and hope so that others may have these things. And no one will ever even thank you, because no one will know. It is a curse, one that a person can only bear selflessly until one discovers the Next Carrier of the Burden. It is pain until death. The Burden is something so simple, a secret, just a gathering of words meant for only one person. Literally, it is the secret that holds together the Debris that forms the Everything. All space and time is made of Debris. Without it, there is Nothing and has always been Nothing. The power that holds the Debris together comes from knowledge—from awareness of the Burden, that is to say, if one person knows. And not just anyone can know. It has to be someone worthy. And the current Carrier of the Burden—me—determines the next Carrier. It must be someone who is strong enough, smart, intuitive, thoroughly capable. Once the secret is told, the old Carrier dies immediately, leaving the new Carrier to bear the Burden alone—truly alone in this universe, for no one else understands. If I were to die before I found the Next Carrier, the world would rip itself to Nothing and all living beings inside would also become Nothing, and there are times I wonder if this would not be such a bad thing. But I must not think such thoughts. I must be brave and carry on even if I think that surely I cannot do it for even another minute. So you see, the Carrier must be just the right type of person, must possess certain qualities. I shudder to think that my little sister, Aisha, almost became the Carrier. But he decided, rightly, that she lacked my maturity, and told me instead, whispered it into my ear while she watched. It turned her bitter, that did, turned my precious sister against me when I needed her the most. She does not understand, she wishes to know, wants it so badly, wants to be “good enough” to know. But I would never weigh my dear Aisha down with the Burden. Not when she’s so full of life and beauty. And to do so would doom the world, because I know that she is not strong enough. It is truly the most awful and lonely job. Every minute of every day is devoted to searching for the Next Carrier. Thinking, whose future will be deleted? Whose life will be ruined? Whose perception of everything will be shattered, by me, by the Burden? I cannot stand it. My breath comes hot and red, my back creeps and my mind spins with it! Sanity never had a chance. Not in this world, and not with me. The angel I call Sanity was shot down, ripped to bloody pieces in a storm of feathers right in front of my very eyes, her pretty features marred with bodily gore, pierced with the gleaming arrows called Truth and Lies. Sanity bled out on the ground and this demon called Burden lives inside me. Pinches my brain and twists my stomach to shiny purple goo, burning out my throat, melting my tongue like hot wax left near the fire. It’s too much and all wrong. Secrets, revolting or delicious, were meant to be shared. This one will expand inside of me and explode. Aisha, you are bitter that he chose me and not you, don’t you understand I am bitter about the same thing! Don’t you think I wished a thousand times he had told you and left me in peace? Oh, but I shouldn’t wish that. She could never do it and I could never stand to see her hurting! But I just don’t want it. I hate the Burden with all of my being. It lives inside of me, runs sour in my blood, pulses and beats in my ears so that I long to rip myself apart with my claws and scream “Get out!” howl it to the wind, but I cannot, for we have fused together. It is one with and part of me now, and it cannot be erased or killed. It pushes at my tongue, I must tell, I cannot tell I must tell I cannot tell! Ah! It comes clearly to me now what I must do, a way I can share the weight of the Burden and still keep it safe inside of me, a way I can tell and not tell! I leave my journal to the world. If anyone has been reading this and you think you could be the Next Carrier, or your curiosity cannot be stopped and you simply must have the truth—bearing in mind all that I have said, knowing that it is a terrible curse, that everything you ever thought you had or would have will lay in ruins at your feet, then go! Read on! I leave you this choice. Put down this book, never to open or touch it again, and you remain intact, sweet mortal human in the arms of beautiful bloody angel Sanity. Or, keep reading, lift the Burden from my being, my body and soul, sating your thirst for knowledge and killing the person you used to be. Set me, finally, free, free of it! Then let me crumble peacefully into death, for once you read this, I have effectively told you, passed on the Burden and become a useless broken semihuman who knows the truth but lacks the angel Sanity. Once you read it, the words will fade from the page, so that only one person may truly know the Burden. And I, having informed you thoroughly, will have slid from this world into whatever it is that awaits me. Peace, perhaps, a long, long sleep in dear, dead Sanity’s strong, warm arms. This is what I hope and long for. If you happen to read this and the secret does not reveal itself to you, then you are quite lucky. Some poor soul has saved you from your foolish decision to keep reading this curse of a book, your decision to be the one Carrier of the Burden. Someone else knows now, and you probably never will, you lucky bastard! You will never understand how fortunate you really are. You’ll never appreciate it for what it is, never even get to thank them, will probably never want to. Humans, we hunger for knowledge, even that which will hurt us so badly. This I have learned from Aisha’s behavior toward me this past year. If you read this and the Burden is not there, then I am long gone from this world, and this is all that is left of me. You are reading the words of a dead girl, even though as I write these the real me is already quite dead, and this is the only way left that I can speak to you and explain…and if the Burden is, in fact, there—has not been snatched, stolen from you by some other poor curious soul—then I am still alive, trapped, frantically waiting, slowly going insane in this world that coldly rejects me for becoming one with the demon. Still here…still waiting…day after day of this hell, year after year, one agonizing plodding step after another…clawing at my insides in vain, burning and ready to erupt, to explode, packed with immeasurable force and pain…if this is so, then it is you who will kill me, and I welcome it. Release me…let me drift…pour my essence back into blissfully floating Nothing and Debris, forever sleeping, my dreams free, light, and fully my own once more, my pain silenced, reunited with dead Sanity once again. If this is you—if you are willing to do this—then, reader, I thank you. I have tried, in fairness, to stop you, and failed—so let us just hope that you are truly capable of this impossible, endless task. I tried to stop you, and now I thank you. For your foolish decision to continue reading my journal, I thank you with all of my heart, soul, and mind, my dear reader. Are you really still my reader, then? Still reading? Do you really want it? Is your burning curiosity still holding you to these pages and desperately scribbled words? Well then, my poor reader, I shall keep you waiting in anticipation no longer. Now I will finally reveal to you the Burden. The secret is