Another day to live. Another day wasted.
Maybe I'll die tomorrow. Maybe not.
But such is fate, isn't it? Twisted and cruel like a game that never ends until the battery runs out.
I was lying in my bed, looking up at the ceiling with an empty gaze. The only sound that can be heard is the sound of a French television show that I forgot to turn off.
I turn my head towards the coffee table, the hot coffee that I had brewed 2 hours earlier has begun to lose its warmth. Beside the coffee mug, sat a familiar book — yes, there it is. The blasphemous gospel. The very book that defy what I once believed.
Years of research, I felt like it was all utterly a joke. How small of a knowledge I have compared to the vast infinity. Even if everything were to be in my grasp, I will return empty handed.
On top of the book is a feather, not just any feather, it's a quill — the Mnemosyne's Quill, which I find of no use. One shudders to imagine how damned this path is. This is the price the bloody bastards pay.
I got up from the bed and reached for the gospel. As my hand was about to touch it, the pages glowed dimly, waving left and right— it's hungry, dying of thirst, and it wants blood. Once you feed it, the book doesn't see you as its master, but as its slave, its.. feeder.
"Damned book. I would die just to see you burn to ash."
I grab the book, and flips through the pages, notes that I intentionally left inside of it were gone. Again. It seems that this book feeds not only on the human blood, but also knowledge.
"What are you? Why can't I understand you? Why am I like this?"
I've tried everything I can since I became the not-so-proud owner of this book. I tried to set it on fire, tearing its pages apart, and buried it in the dirt. Yet.. all are futile, when I wake up, it returns by my side — closer than a lover, patient like a corpse waiting to be filled again.
Suddenly, there's a knock on the door.
Knock. Knock.
I set the gospel down on the table and went to open the door. As I opened it, I saw a familiar silhouette, and I had no doubt who it might be.
I was right, when I opened the door to see a man in a long white robe. The robe reached the ground as the man stood still while facing me.
"Old man."
I said provocatively, but the man isn't bothered in the slightest by my provocation. Instead, I look in his eyes, his gaze landing on something inside my small apartment. The book, of course it's the book.
"Frienzi Escoffier, it seems that you have yet to rid yourself of the scripture. I wonder how long has it been."
He said with a low deep tone. He then walk right past me, directly intruding on my apartment. But instead of resisting, I closed the door and followed closely behind him.
The man stopped in front of the table where the gospel is resting. He outstretched his right hand to the book, but not quite touching, as a faint glow of golden energy radiates from it — as if purifying the book.
After some time, the glow faded away, the old man put away his hand at his side. He shakes his head.
"You're in a stroke of bad luck. The spirit inside this gospel.. it's not a common one. It's one which has been used by people before you. I'm surprised you haven't ended yourself."
I didn't quite understand what the old man was saying, but whatever it meant, I know that even if I hide across another multiverse, the book will continue to haunt me.
The old man shrugged, and looked me in the eyes.
"Frienzi, I pity you. Really I do. You're bound to the spirit within this book, but it's not your fault. There's a certain price we pay for words, this is one of the many woes."
The old man starts pacing around the room, but his gaze never leaves mine. He picks up the book and places it in my hand.
"It recognizes you as its source of nutrients. And now it's only bound to you. So shall you be."
The old man started retreating from my apartment, and didn't even bother to glance back at me. He then left the apartment and closed the door, leaving me stranded here with this anomaly in my hand.
I look down at the book and start flipping the pages, the contents within it are still foreign to me, and I never get close to deciphering the contents.
As I flipped the pages, a strange thing happened: there's empty pages at the back of the book.
"This.. it's not possible.. this wasn't here before.. how can it.. be..?"
I grabbed a pen on the table and tried to write on it. Miraculously, the words I wrote were absorbed by the pages, leaving no trace of the pen's ink. It intrigued me, after years of research, something finally happened.
But why now?
The question lingers in my mind, but I pay no attention to it, as I was busy with the new discovery.
"Of all time, this is when I finally made a progress, yet I got no leads."
I tap my on my chin, thinking of a way that would work. Just as I was lost in thought, my eyes landed on a particular object — the quill. The same quill I found next to the Gospel when I first took it in from the auction.
"Of course! Now everything is in place."
I have never thought it would be any use, but now.. this is the only option I have.
I grabbed the quill and dipped the tip with a black ink. Then, I started to write on the page, but I was dumbfounded when the ink also vanished.
What has possibly gone wrong this time?
A series of questions with no clear answers, I need an answer, and I need one now. I started pacing around my apartment, thinking of a rational way to make this work.
In a moment of frustration, I decided to take drastic measures — poking my fingertip with the quill, drawing a small amount of blood on its tip. I then set the book down on the table. This is it.. either I return with something, or I never return at all.
I then started writing the first full sentences inside the gospel — 'Video, Scribo, Muto'.
The blood ink stays intact on the pages, as the words glow with a bright red.
"Hah.." I put a hand on my forehead.
"Ha.. ahaha.. Ahahah! I Did It!!"
I let out a maniacal laugh like a madman. The truth is — maybe I am a madman, years of isolation and self critique, I've been drowning inside the piles of research papers.
Now.. I finally float somewhere in the vast ocean. Finally belong somewhere.
—Penning a new chapter...