The Omniscrolls

I always believed that kindness and compassion were essential to helping one another grow. It was how I made friends so easily, no matter where I went; and it was how I made a lifelong friend in Stefania, a girl who joined our class in Sixth Grade. Many of our classmates, including a couple of my friends, picked on her because of the way she dressed, but I stood beside her and asked them to leave her be. Stefania’s backstory was a tragic one: her mother had passed away from cancer just a week before, and her father had abandoned them when she was just two. She had moved in with her grandparents, but being old, they had little energy to see to her needs. I invited her over to my place frequently since the first day we met and taught her everything my parents had taught me. All it took was a little push and Stefania made more friends in the months that followed. We soon became best friends, often hanging out after school at our favourite cafe to spend hours discussing our dreams and othe...

Mom told me that our family was cursed, and that I needed to find a way to break it if I wanted to be free. My grandfather had been an infamous swindler, and Mom and Dad had both been enablers of his notorious work before I was born. However, Grandpa had once attempted to con the wrong person, or at least whom he thought was a regular person. That individual turned out to be a trickster god in human disguise, and they cursed Grandpa and all his descendants to fail whatever venture they undertake until they learned how to break the curse. Misfortune soon befell out families, as my aunt fell back in her field as a doctor and my uncle lost his popularity as an artist. Mom and Dad, who had been reliant on Grandpa for part of their “income” at the time, struggled to make ends meet from that point forward. No one ever heard from the trickster god since that day, and there were no clues or knowledge anyone in the family could find that would help break the curse, no matter how hard they searc...

Growing up, there was a stark difference between my siblings and me, as they were always getting into trouble at both home and school while I was praised by almost everyone as an angel. This drew a rift between us as we grew older, and we never made up even after we graduated from school and entered university. As we grew older, our bonds never really recovered; and eventually, one by one, all of us passed away without having talked to one another. It was something I regretted after death, for once I rose to heaven, I was the only one from my family there. Not even my parents or grandparents were in heaven; I was surprised. According to heaven, they were all in hell… I asked them why everyone was down there, and they said that my parents and grandparents were no better than my siblings when they were young; they were troublemakers and never prayed, so they never belonged in heaven. I couldn’t believe how strict their policies were. I asked heaven if they could make an exception to at l...

Mom always used to tell me stories of how the sea between our homeland and our neighbouring invaders was haunted by vengeful souls that could not rest. No one ever dared to set sail at night, for that was the time everyone believed the souls would rise to sink ships and drag any living being to the unseen depths. Even our invaders believed it and only sent in their legions during the day. If the legends were true, like Mom and so many others believed, I wished there was a way to raise the spirits from the abyss and set them loose on our enemies, for this was not a war—it was a genocide. They sought to destroy us entirely, and we had not the numbers or resources to hold them off for long. It would only be a matter of time before the worst came to pass… No help came from many of our powerful neighbours; only those who faced similar situations like us backed us in our fight for survival. But even they were running low on resources and had their own battles to fight; it was a situation tha...