•  
  • Print Issues
  • Bellezine
  • About
  • Fiction
  • Poetry
  • Non-Fiction
  • Submit
  • Menu
  • Fiction
  • Poetry
  • Non-Fiction
  • Submit
  •  
  • Print Issues
  • Bellezine
  • About

The Survival Book

Hege Jakobsen Lepri Fiction

Our house was right on the shore, where the new bay has now swallowed the land. The tree in our front yard is still sticking out of the water, but the branches are grey and twisted. It looks funny, like the hair of some Grandpa just getting out of bed. Except his bed would have to be under the sea, and that wouldn’t work, would it?

To see my old house, I climb up on the big rock behind the new house. It’s slippery and steep and I could slide and get hurt for real, my dad says. I’m mostly worried about breaking my dad’s binoculars. But when I’m bored and it isn’t raining, I can’t help myself. There isn’t much to do here, except watch my dad and wait for something to happen. 

Sometimes I bring the Survival Book and my pencils and notebook. My dad is supposed to make me do schoolwork, but he never remembers. He’s got a lot on his mind, so I try to do it myself.

“If you’re not part of the solution, you may end up being dissolved in it,” I read from the book, then close it and try to write the same words. I write solution three times before I get it right. 

To continue reading, download the full story.Download
About Hege Jakobsen Lepri
Hege Jakobsen Lepri is a Norwegian-Canadian translator and writer. She returned to writing in 2011 and had her first story published in English in J Journal in 2013. She has since been published widely in Canada and the US. Her most recent work is featured in The New Quarterly, Carve Literary Magazine, Hobart, Agnes and True, Journal of Compressed Arts, Gone Lawn, Crack the Spine and elsewhere. You can find her on her on twitter @hegelincanada and on her website: www.hegeajlepri.ca

More Fiction

Nine Months after Joyce Rose, Aged 67 and Expected to Die from Cancer, Moved to the Seashore to Make One Last Attempt to Write the Good Novel

She waited for a gray-green tentacle to slither up from the water.

Fiction Ryan Borchers
The Burial

My husband says he wants to be buried by the sea, like Neruda, so when his eyes can’t see the ocean anymore, his body would still be close to it.

Fiction Mehr-Afarin Kohan
Forecast

More goddamn rain.

Fiction Nicola Schmidt
  • Follow Belletrist

    Check out our social media to get the latest updates!

    • facebook
    • twitter
    • instagram
About