By Julien Laforest 

The man sat there on the wooden chair that creaked from time to time. He had not bothered to turn on the light in many years. So the man sat there on the wooden chair that creaked from time to time enveloped in darkness. All he could think to do was wonder and maybe write those thoughts down. 

And so he spent the hours of the night writing on anything and everything he could. And he continued to do so well into the morning, past the sun’s rise and the smell of coffee brewing. He remained sitting in that wooden chair that creaked from time to time writing down his thoughts as they came, and he did so for over a hundred years. Long after his wife had grown to feel neglected and left him, taking their kids with her. Long after the mailman had stopped knocking and left the latest parcel or letter on the pile of others. And long after the last of his family had died. He spit into his ink bottle, as he often did every few years when it had run out. He then filled his pen and began to write again. He wrote of gods and god butchers, of men who died for king and country, civilizations which rose and fell below our feet, lovers that could never be, and of prophecies fulfilled. 

He paused on his birthday, for no other reason than that his hands had started to ache. As he set the pen down, he gazed at the peeling walls, the stained ceiling, the splintering table, his thinning skin, and his cracked nails. All these covered in his frantic scrawls. Again he began to wonder of worlds and people he had yet to create. He wondered how a man could gaze at his own eyes. And then he was still. Finally, he rose from that wooden chair that creaked from time to time and walked to his bathroom to write on the only place he hadn’t. His mirror. As he gazed into that glass oculus, he saw a figure that he no longer recognized. A man both frail and torpid. Obsessed and lost in his own mind. Yet still, he continued to write. 

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Julien Laforest was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and moved to the United States when he was very young, about four. He soon fell in love with literature by reading the likes of Rick Riordan, Mark Twain, and J.K Rowling and continued to do so later in life by experiencing the works of H.P Lovecraft, Paulo Coelho, Franz Kafka, and many others. He proclaimed himself a writer in middle school and has been trying his best to live up to that ideal ever since.  He recently gained a love for photography. Although he claims to not fully understand all the technical components, he’s grown to respect the art a ton. He posts his pictures on his Instagram page @therealjulienlaforest. When Julien isn’t writing, you’d probably find him reading or watching anime.