A Grain of Sand
A sequel based on “Book of Sand” by Jorge Luis Borges
It was a gloomy year, and why was it so gloomy anyway? Well, he could list the things that happened, but these things did not happen to him, but others. The long-feared revolt happened, not dramatically, but slowly. First, the hated “Oppressive Party” took power in the United States. Their leader was, none other than, a person who oppressed Christians, mocking them and using his forces to kill them, and from there came the downfall of the republic. No one knew really what was going on. All the churches fled, hidden and rarely spoken of, though everyone knew the truth. Most jobs, lost, with homeless starving people. And in all of this, there was some sort of unity. Everyone believed in something. Perhaps, it was in themselves, or rather, faith in God.
Joseph Winter wasn’t the worse off out of anyone, he worked at the library. It may surprise you but through this jobless, dreadful time, people flocked into the libraries. It is much of a fact also, that many of them lived there, and Joseph was one of them. He spent his days browsing the lonely shelves for old books in need of a reader for eyes had not gazed, nor wandered over their fragile pages for quite some time. The door to the basement was locked, but Joseph, as the librarian, contained the key to open that large, heavy door. After some time of longingness, Joseph crept toward the door with the key in hand to unlock the mysteries that lay beneath, underground, and in the dark. Turning the key as he inserted it into the lock, with a mighty force exerted from his arms, he thrust the door open silently. Nobody noticed as he entered, not even the young reader sitting nearby, looked up for he was deep into “The Library of Babel” a masterpiece that Joseph had read in his youth.
Joseph became submerged in darkness. He had a flashlight in his hand, but it felt like he was drowning. He fumbled for the lightswitch and locked the door behind him, to keep out any intruders. There were narrow, winding stairs with no railing that led down to the bottom. Whatever way, he was not frightened in a single way about falling, but yet carefully made his way down. Upon reaching the bottom, there was another set of light switches. Joseph slowly flipped the fragile, exposed switches (they were missing their covers) and shortly discovered that about half of them worked. Despite his disappointment, most of the lightbulbs that received power were not burnt out, despite their age. He made his way over to the stack of periodicals. To his dismay, many were outdated and had boring, lifeless headlines like “Teenager Narrowly Missed by Crazy Driver” and “New Movie to be shown at the Seattle Cinema”. Besides, the lightbulb above the periodicals just burnt out as if it was a bad omen to read about the past.
Joseph made his way over to one of the bookshelves when a cart caught his attention. On the side was a note attached that crudely read “Unwanted Books from Argentina”. “Interesting,” he thought as he browsed the titles on the cart. Many were in Spanish and Portuguese, but one, yet one, was not the same and distinguished from the rest. Its old, beaten up spine, read “Holy Writ” and below that “Bombay”. Upon reading this, Joseph almost dropped the book and fell dead on the floor. “How can this be?”, Joseph wondered. He had always thought that the short story, “The Book of Sand”, was fictitious, until now. Now he held the same, exact book that was lost in the national library of Argentina hundreds of years ago. He studied the book, making sure that he was not seeing things. Joseph attempted to find the front, but couldn’t. He attempted to find the back but had no success. He looked for reappearing images, but never saw any of the images he had seen before. With a cold sweat, he thought about what happened to Jorge in his story. How it had ruined his life. How he lost about everything but the book itself. Joseph thought with anger and despair, “And now, upon finding this, it has made me it’s next victim.”
He took a moment to analyze his horrid situation. It was almost as if the book was attached to him until it achieved its main goal, to ruin his life. Then, the idea came. He had heard of book burnings in places like Germany. This book, if any, was more demonic than any of the books the Germans ever burnt. Why wouldn’t it work to rid this book of its attachment to the children of the world? After all, it would probably burn up into nothing. So, Joseph, without further ado, attempted to sprint up the stairs. Instead, the book contained some supernatural force that pushed back on him. He slowly made his way up the stairs, as if the one volume weighed more than fifty pounds. He made it out of the basement and made his way slowly towards the front desk. This was, in a way, more out of precaution for it was night now, he did not want to disrupt others’ sleep. He found his lighter and went outside of the library. He went to the back of the library which faced open hills. He put the book on the ground and open up its fragile pages. He took the lighter, and put its pages to flames. He didn’t smell smoke yet, but he had witnessed the flame lick across the surface of its pages.
He turned aside, prepared to run, but after he lacked hearing or smelling the burning sensation of the book, he slowly turned around. He looked and found the book missing but an odd figure filled its place. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he saw the creature’s demonic face, as it was none other than the face of the devil himself. He noticed now, that around where his heart was located on his chest began to glow. The demonic creature took notice at this also and attempted to snatch it, for it angered him that Joseph was a child of God. Upon touching it, he burned to the ground or rather shrunk to the size of a fairy. At this, Joseph noticed that his feet began to glow also. As if it was instinct, he stomped on the figure with his feet. Upon retracting his feet back to his former position, smoke started billowing out of the place where the figure was crushed. Before Joseph could take shelter, the smoke filled the sky and started swirling in an angry pattern as if it was a mega-tornado and it lifted Joseph off of the ground.
Soon everything filled the air along with the smoke storm, books from the library, pieces of brick, whole houses, and even cars. Joseph was swimming and drowning in the smoke, of which he could not smell. He was head on to running into a book and swerved his head so that he would miss it. In this, he took no notice of the fact that a car was also coming towards him and he collided with the car and became unconscious...
...Joseph was drowning, drowning in the sea, he could hardly breathe and… His eyes opened up as he awoke from this strange dream. What was even stranger, was that everything around him was silent. He stood up and observed his situation. For one, he was wearing a white robe, not the normal dress suit he wore at the library, and he was standing on an expanse of sand that was surrounded by water. Suddenly, the expanse started to shrink. It shrunk down to the point where he could only fit his two feet on the expanse. When it became clear that there was not a single grain of sand left, Joseph found his feet floating on top of the waters. This fascinated him, he could walk on water!
Joseph ran, he ran for what seemed like an eternity until almost colliding with a spherical wall that reached up towards the atmosphere. He found an oddly shaped, small, triangular door. He opened it and looked out. He found himself face to face with the billowing smoke storm again. Quickly, he shut the door, but oddly enough, he found himself again on the expanse of sand, although it didn’t shrink this time. Upon an impulse, he found himself digging in the sand. He first found a bag for carrying books, then he uncovered a sphere of glass, and finally, he found a Bible. He stood up and looked at the Bible. To his dismay, he tripped over the glass sphere and dopped the Bible into the waters. He looked into the waters in hope that he could save the Bible from sinking. Rather, very peculiarly, he saw the same world full of a billowing smoke storm in the waters, and the Bible was starting to glow as it was falling.
With a bright flash of light, the Bible burst open and covered the face of the earth with its fantastic light. He looked up from the waters and noticed that the glass sphere behind him, was missing, and in its place was an angel who carried the bag which was sitting there. The bag was now filled with books, 66 exactly. Joseph asked him to come over and explain what was happening in the depths of the water.
The angel explained, “The demonic creature, which was crushed underneath your feet, was Satan.” Joseph interrupted, “As I assumed, he seemed like a king of Demons”. The angel continued, “The book is Satan’s occult power, in his being, Satan is infinite though he has been dead from the beginning. He will die forever, this is a comparison to the book’s infinite number of pages. However, his power is finite, and he became crushed and powerless underneath the feet of the children of God (the God of which called you his child) though he has tried to steal their faith. The billowing storm is how the world will be in the end, a constant war that will last to the end. The Bible falling on the earth is the voice of God, coming to judge and raise the believers with him.”
After hearing this, Joseph looked into the waters again. Angels were flying around the earth which was restored. The angels were singing “Glory to the God of the heavens who created both the heavens and the earths, he himself restored the earth to glory beyond its former glory. The children now dwell in gladness. Woe, woe to the one who brought forth the birth of evil. He will die forever in the furnace he prepared for the children.” After this, the waters became murky and he could no longer see in them. He stood up and looked toward the angel. Joseph began to ask the angel a question, but the angel answered him as though he could read thoughts. “All is finished that was to be revealed to you, go now return to lead the union that was destroyed. All is well, far better than when you left the earth.” The angel and the expanse began to dematerialize until the last grain of sand disappeared from sight.
Joseph awoke in a strange room as the light from the sun shone on the bedroom floor. “What? The sun has been hidden behind clouds for years now, where am I?”, Joseph thought to himself. Then, everything that had happened to him, came back to his head. He sprung up from the bed and opened the door. As he slowly opened the door, he discovered a long, well-lit corridor. “This must be the White House”, He thought to himself, “But where am I?”. He made his way down the long corridor and found a maid who was dusting the lowly-hung chandeliers. Before he could ask the maid, a wealth of knowledge hit him like a speeding train, and he became re-coordinated. He made his way to his office and went about his busy way for the two terms that he served. He was the 77th president of the United States and ruled it in peace and prosperity. 8 years later, as I am writing this, he has made our country, which is a single grain of sand, the most distinguished piece of sand among the seashore, the children of the earth.