Why there's a Pomegranate in My Face

This’ll be my last entry here. Due to recent, obvious circumstances, I won’t be filling this out again, It won’t be of much use anyway. Just a buildup of mediocre observations, all leading up to what the title says. Speaking of the title, you’ve probably read and thought, “He doesn’t mean that literally, right? I do. I literally have a pomegranate rooted in my face. No, I don’t know why it got there, it just appeared after waking up from a long day. Whether science or magic, it doesn’t matter now. Removing it by cutting it out, just makes another one grow in its place. Doesn’t hurt, and I can't feel it either. So, now that I’ve clarified all that, let’s go over the question I can answer: How did we get here? Let’s tell that story.

It’s currently New Year 80 as I’m writing this. My name is Lynn, I’m 18, and I've spent my entire life in Little Sam’s Town. Little Sam is a desert area on the dark half of Earth, so no sunlight. Running far enough gives you a slight peek of sunlight, but I was never brave enough to stray away from town. I don’t know my parents, but luckily, I was raised by the elder of the town, Samuel. To me, he’s Popop. In this town, elders are treated with the highest respect, due to being very little in numbers and more importantly, survivors of “The Rewrite”, an event that brought the beginning of the New Years. They have knowledge from before then, so as a result, anything new that’s found around the town is given to them. Though unfortunately, Popop is both senile and deaf at this point so, I don’t get much information anymore. They even stopped giving new things to him directly, and just dropped them on me.

I’d get so many things it was unbelievable. A heart locket I like to wear, Cassette tapes, video cameras, this journal, but most importantly, books. LOTS of books. Most I couldn’t even finish due to there being so many pages that were wiped away or ripped out somehow, but they were good reads. Sometimes I’d use paint to draw proper endings for these unfinished tales. Other times, I’d use the dictionary and look up every interesting sounding word in a book. The point is, I had a lot of resources. All of which did nothing but spark my curiosity.

Now, here’s the start of something unfortunate. The day I got the seeds. See, when Popop got a new transfer of cool things they found, one of them was something the town desperately needed. Pomegranate seeds. Being in an area that was in a desert meant that we weren’t getting much food. Trading required people to walk long distances to bring back food here. So, when I saw this, I thought I might’ve been able to change something. I thought I could be some sort of hero, finally bringing fruit to our town. I thought I’d truly be the one to plant a tree in the desert. But how would I achieve this? My knowledge of trees only came from books, I had never actually seen one in person. And Popop was too...Popop. So, it was up to me. I got the basics down: You put or “plant” the seed into the ground, pour stuff over it, give it some food and soon it will grow. With that, I started my experiment to grow the tree. So, I walked a short way away from the entrance to town and placed the seed under sand.

The first thing I tested was water. We had a limited amount but there was a certain department where we kept it. A small building at the center of town that was heavily guarded. Well, heavily for this place. They usually evenly distribute water throughout the town, so I was technically stealing from someone’s ration. But it was for the good of the town! It was justified. Anyway, by digging a huge tunnel on the route the guards usually walk through on their break, I was able to get someone to fall in, causing a commotion to keep them distracted, which was the ideal, and from there it was a quick sneak inside and out with a container. Once out, I ran until my feet hurt. That didn’t take long, so nobody saw or heard me.

Pouring the water over the spot and noting down what I’ve done, all I had to do was get some food for it. I of course thought of our food. So, I smashed some bread from home on it and waited. And waited. Then eventually I would try something else. Spit, flour, even urine at one point, I tested near everything. I’d note it all down in this book too, as I’d sit and watch the seeds do nothing. I’d leave to do other things, but a majority of my time was just me standing over the seeds, wondering if anything would happen. I was frustrated, but I never lost my experimental thinking. Days waiting turned into weeks, weeks turned into months. 2 months to be exact, and not a single thing sprouted. My final test before I figured out the truth was my own blood. I took a knife from home and cut deep into my hand, blood trickling down on the seeds. Then, the next day, a new shipment of things was delivered to Popop.

We got a bunch, as usual, tons of books again, so that was ideal. And to my absolute delight, I found something that would help me on this journey. A book about plant life! Finally, I’ll find the missing piece! This tree isn’t so far off now! Reading it over, I had two more components to work on. Soil, so I realized the sand I had been burying it in wouldn’t work, but the 2nd one made my heart truly sink, dragging a bit of my soul with it. Sunlight. The one thing I’ve only heard of. I was in disbelief. Terrified. But only because I considered doing it. Was I really about to take that long journey to the light half? I thought about, and really contemplated my choices. Either stay here and give up after months or run possible miles away to plant the tree and save the town. Well, in the end I decided. I took the seeds into my bloodied hands, and started running. I didn’t know when I’d see the light of the sun, it didn’t matter.

I had no sense of time at that point. I didn’t know how long I was running; it could’ve been days. All I knew was that I was moving forward, my chest and legs burned, and I was hungry, oh so hungry. Hungry for success, hungry for a conclusion. And just when I thought I was on the verge of collapsing, I saw it. A glimpse of light. My legs dragged themselves forward, but unfortunately, my legs finally froze still, I could no longer move. The worst part is, as that point, I had wished it was from exhaustion. Looking with blurry vision I saw him. A man, near dying, crawling away from the very place I was going towards. He looked burned, almost mutated. The groans of pain he let out were overwhelming, they etched a permanent mark into my memories. And as I saw him struggling, a poison sunk its way into my thoughts, “Did the sun do this to him?” As soon as I questioned it, I was already running up to him, screaming questions and expecting immediate answers. “Why are you like this?” “What happened?”

The man stared at me with his vacant eyes and began to talk. “The Earth is in stasis.” and from there, he explained the truth. This earth used to spin while rotating around the sun, which gave us a sun that, to us, moved. Then suddenly, it all stopped. The Planet stopped rotating. Stopped revolving. Everything on the surface was flung for thousands of miles. The land itself changed and civilization as we once knew it long ago was at its end. That was The Rewrite. But... it wasn’t just lives and use for our old maps we had lost. We had also lost something crucial for surviving with the sun, called the Ozone Layer. Something above even clouds that protected us from the sun. Without that, the sun's rays are deadly. Poison to anything it shines on. The man passed on, shortly after. And it was after what I saw and heard in that moment, that’s when I realized that I had gone insane. Then, I did something even I didn’t predict. I started laughing.

I laughed harder than I ever had in my life. It was all pointless. Everything I had done. So, I started running. Still clutching the seeds, with tears in my eyes, faster than I ever ran towards the sun. Towards the danger. I had heard all that man said and denied it. And just when I had felt the burn of the sun on my arms, chest and face, just as I saw that mass of light, shaking in my vision from fresh tears, my legs gave way. Then everything went black. It wasn’t normal darkness though. It was like I could feel the darkness all around me, overwhelming, darkness that I swam in for such a long time. Then, out of that darkness, I heard a voice. It sounded like a weeping mother, and she was whispering something. But it was too incomprehensible for me to make out any of the words. The voice seemed to repeat the same phrases over and over, quieter every time it went over it. Then, a red light shone, from my chest completely swallowing up the darkness.

I saw quick flashes of various images. My locket beating like a normal heart, a fire that lit sand, each little particle lifted up and staying suspended in air, a starry sky where the stars danced around dramatically, so many things that I couldn’t even list them all. The final image I remember the clearest of all. It was a bloodied hand, reaching out to grab my face. Once I felt a single drop of warm blood on my face I woke up. Hand on my face. With a pomegranate rooted in it.

It took a moment to realize where I was. I had fallen and rolled into a small ditch that had blocked the sun from my view. There was no way to tell how long I was asleep, but I was alive. I certainly didn’t need the second part. I was grabbing my face, pulling out seeds, pushing and pulling on the mass of fruit that had grown it’s way on my face. I was panicked, confused, and unbelievably shocked. It took me a while to calm myself down. I tried to think of an explanation for what had happened, but I had absolutely nothing. So, after all that transpired, I got up and started running home. I was hungry. For food this time.

So, at present, I still haven’t been able to move it. I tried, but as you could already see, experiments never really work when I’m doing them. So instead of theorizing about how to remove it and coming up with false solutions, why don’t I go search for them? As of now, I’m leaving the town. Of course, there’s the obvious question of my pom face, but I think I really need this. I really need to know what this world has in store for me. So, to you reading this, if you want to get anything from this sob story, it’s to always be prepared. If you truly want to fight for the truth, life will hit you as hard as it can.