Escapism

by Victoria GR

Version 1

A storybook is a marvellous creation. It grants you the ability to travel the world, travel through time, and travel through the mind, all in one page.

Fiction meets history, history meets myth, and myth brings the mind to contemplate the stunning paradoxes of life. Life is a funny one. It influences your every thought, hanging over your subconscious like the dark fog of Sherlock's London.

Or maybe you'd like to think of it as the brightness of Wonderland, decayed underneath the sickly surface. Not that Alice ever realised, right? She only woke up and immediately wished to return, since dreaming seems to be the only escape from our existential dread.

The human mind is a fragile thing, after all. Some people suffer, knowing that our seemingly magical lives can come to an end. I mean, how could they? Surely science could save us, right?

But begging won't sweeten the bitter truth: death is imminent. So humans shelter themselves from the pain. Delusion. That's the best method. Creating an alternate existence in order to escape from reality.

Version 2

A storybook is a marvellous creation.

Yes, that's it.

Maybe it could continue. I might contemplate with you the confounding paradoxes that we like to call our existence. The skills of escapism we're blessed with to escape our suffering minds. The intricacy of past, present, future. History, myth, and legend. All contained within the pages of a storybook.

Storybooks aren't all picturesque valleys, however. Sometimes the stories surround you like bloodhounds, biting at your ankles, longing for the taste of blood. Or maybe like the sea, suddenly too deep and blue to comprehend. And

That's when you stop feeling safe. That’s when the soft blanket suddenly sinks its fangs into your neck, betraying the promise you made, the treasure you gave it—them.

Your heart.

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Untitled

by Vivienne Y

ink

preserved

what

memory

couldn’t

keep.