The Scrolls


You have a destiny (a fate, a direction, a prophesy), it means you can’t chose, have no control; that everything you do has already been foretold.

It means the crossroads you protested about so vehemently do not exist, because the decision was made years ago, before you were ever born, before your parents were ever born.

Before her parents (who ever they actually are…) were ever born.

You think about this, long and hard, the thoughts that would usually be so lighting quick stop and stumble and you wonder if this is what it’s like to be normal.

You realise that all you ever wanted was control of your own life - the one thing they took. So you took it back (so you thought), but really you didn’t. You didn’t at all.

The call is about nothing until, “the scrolls--” she says.

“Are fake,” you reply, because that’s the only way you can think, the only way you can keep on going.

If everything you (never) do was written down then where is the free will? What’s the point? Why do it at all?

“You’re wrong,” she says, and maybe you are but sitting in your empty cheap motel room with her as much as an enemy as she’s ever been, and your family slipping through your fingers, you’re not prepared to admit this was all for nothing.