Journal 3 Pages Novels & Stories

The worn leather cover looks even more weathered beneath the flashlight's glow. Jenna Maroney. I run my thumb across the faded lettering. And before I can think better of it, I open the journal to a random page. The first entry is dated over twenty years ago, and I still find that difficult to believe. The pages crack softly as I turn them. The first thing that surprises me about the page I've opened is how normal it all is. I don't know what I expected. Ancient warnings, perhaps. Secrets. Mysteries.

“I didn’t realize the third floor was your territory. Should I be paying rent?” The corner of his mouth lifted. “You can stay.” He stepped closer, slipping the journals onto the edge of her table and she caught the title of one of them, The Victorian Review. What? That was the issue that carried her viral essay on its contents page. “What are you working on?” he asked. “The first batch of essays,” she replied. “I’m trying not to crush anyone’s soul while still telling them the truth.” He chuckled. “That’s the hard part of the job."

Ace replied. "Exactly, Alpha." Ed glanced at Ace and then focused on the journal. He read the title on the cover, then looked at the series on the back. "De La Vionna's Journal! Give me series 3 and 4!" he continued, scrolling through the people holding the journals. "I have them," said one of the elders. Ed examined the other two journals, looking for images that resembled the symbols. Then he folded the four pages and pressed them together. Ed had to hold them together because the thickness of the journal made it shift if he let go.

She responded only to assure me she'd be happy to help with my work or offer a breather, but like Tabitha, I simply closed the window on it. I'd not been lying, either. My workload was still copious. The journals fromNight were still piled high. It was one of those labor of love gradings, where the rubric was pretty fuzzy and the grade was largely a completion score for making sincere effort. Still, breaking the book into five sections meant five journal entries, times one page each, times eighty-four students, which all told made for four hundred and twenty pages of handwritten text to skim and comment on. I tried to make sure each of them got at least a comment or two. It had been almost t

She thought about the paper and the garden and the sage planted that morning and the conversation with Professor Mensah about the symposium and the twenty years of her mother’s framework arriving at completion. She thought about forty-one pages submitted to a journal. And eleven pages filed in a court in eighty-three minutes. Two different kinds of argument. Both built from the same quality of thinking. Both moving toward the same thing. Accountability. The formal, documented, permanent acknowledgment that what was done required a response proportionate to its damage.

Within the first three journals, the writer – that human – the owner of those journals, maintains to regularly write down, regardless of how hard their situation was, they remain happy, satisfied and follow all the rules for their safety. Weirdly, as the pages are written shorter and shorter from one whole to half with his erratic and undistinguishable scribbles than how it was before. Stating how his parents are starting to act strange every night, looking far at the mountain tops during full moon and when an animal starts to howl loudly. Whispering like someone could hear them from the outside and how their eyes are sharp like hunters. Ultimately, numerous sheets are left blank and ‘Almost

It’s heavier than I expect. When I open it, my heart nearly stops. Inside are scraps of paper, folded notes, and a journal with a worn black cover. The sight of it alone brings tears to my eyes. Jaden’s handwriting covers the pages, messy, uneven, sometimes smudged as if from tears. I press my palm against the book, my throat tightening. I whisper into the stillness, “Oh, Jaden…” I sit on the edge of his bed and open the journal. The words hit me like waves. Some pages are filled with anger, sharp strokes of the pen carving out his frustration.

I wondered why he hadn't made them so the properties would transfer to my mother in case he died. I shrugged. That was another thing I'd never know for he wasn't here to tell me. I sighed to myself, holding back a sob as I placed the file back in the box and picked up the leather bound journal. I picked it up, opening it to the first page. It had a date written at the top, dating back to five months back. It did not look like a personal journal, more like a work related one. It appears that he was studying the response of a test subject to a chemical. Maybe an animal?

The next magic trick was going to be a little more difficult, I needed to fill more pages of the journal with useless information that would hopefully convince Gregory to give up on this pursuit. I closed my eyes and tried to concentrate on how I wanted the pages to appear, what I wanted the pages to say. My plan was to make it so that it would appear that, the author was removed from the seven, so that there was nothing more for them to write about. “Found them!” Gregory announced happily and he started walking back towards the table.

CHAPTER 30 Camryn's POV The original Camryn’s journals were spread across my desk like evidence at a crime scene. I’d been at it for two hours, squinting at her cramped Lenorian handwriting by lamplight, trying to piece together fragments that still didn’t make sense. My neck hurt. My eyes burned. And I was no closer to understanding why someone had executed her than I’d been when I started. “Come on,” I muttered, flipping to another page. “Give me something new.”