University of the Phoenix
an excerpt

This is an autobiography of sorts, one filled with deceptions and lies. I was told I had to write this, though I’m not sure I really want to. Some things are better left untold.

Where to begin? There is no start to the story and, for that matter, no end. I suppose some general information about the author wouldn’t hurt. The basics, you know?

How about my name. My name is—well, it doesn’t really matter now, does it? I’m just another lost cause, a face in the crowd, a forgotten soul…I’m just another iceberg for the Titanic to brush past and die. I destroy the grandeur that contains thousands of living, breathing souls.

Or perhaps I’m just being melodramatic. Aaron says I sure have a knack for it, and most times he’s right about these things. So what if I sometimes blow things out of proportion? It’s not like a grenade wasn’t dropped on what little life I had, shattering it into a thousand pieces.

But that doesn’t matter. No, of course not. My life, everything I am, was, and will be, is merely a sub-plot. Something removed, estranged from the overall view of things that means nothing but somehow changes the outcome of the novel.

I’m not a secondary or tertiary character—I’m just an extra. Erase me and the story continues on smoothly without even a trace of the piece it’s now missing.

Sometimes I feel just like Teddy—that poor dragon built of nuts and bolts and metal to serve a purpose, a purpose that really has nothing to do with him and one that he isn’t—and never will be—aware of. But he’s a robot and I’m human. He’ll never be aware because he doesn’t have the capability of understanding it all and I—I’ll never be aware because it’s too complicated…I suppose we do have more in common than I originally thought.

And so ends the rant. My name—since I know you’re all dying to know—is Jack—or Jacques. I’m not even sure anymore. I was born on August 21, 1985 in Manchester, England to Mary and Elijah Westleigh. Go ahead, look it up. Bet you won’t find anything because everything I just told you is a lie. In fact, my life is a lie.

Who am I? Your guess is as good as mine.