[873 words]
With each turn of the worn pages, words beckon me to an uncharted world. The very first sentence, “In the heart of shadow and moss, lived a creature…”, detaches from the page as I read aloud. The typeface begins to rise from the aged paper. The symbols shiver, then lift in a slow procession, like waking from a long slumber. They stretch and coalesce into an undulating vortex, spiraling around my outstretched finger like a tiny tornado.
The script on the page blurs as a faintness courses through me. My fingers fumble, the worn leather cover slipping from my suddenly clammy grasp. A heavy thud disrupts the room’s stillness as the book tumbles to the floor. But the words, no longer bound, continue to swirl with an eerie luminescence.
A cold sweat slicks my skin, a wave of nausea crashing over me, a cold sensation roiling beneath a jolt of exhilaration. My heart pounds against my ribcage. Despite the tremor in my hands, I continue to read, urging the narrative to take on a life of its own. The author couldn’t be so cruel as to unleash something uncontrollable into my living room. Would they? With each paragraph I utter, the whirlwind grows. A hypnotic galaxy of shimmering glyphs. I can’t stop. I am compelled, written to complete the incantation I’ve unwittingly started.
At last, the final sentence dislodges from paper and an unsettling silence insulates the room. The churning mass of symbols shutters and condenses. A form, indistinct at first, shifts in a cloud of characters and punctuation. Then, in a slip of displaced air, the drifting text solidifies into a tangible being. Gasping for breath in my candle-scented apartment stands a young woman with moss still clinging to her cloak.
Her eyes lock with mine, glowing a color of twilight so deep they send shivers through my body. She offers a hesitant smile, radiating pure gratitude. Her posture softens as she takes a tentative step forward, leaving a trail of fresh moss in her wake. A knot of unease clenches my stomach as the woman’s shoulders relax. I glance up, a silent question hanging in the air. This [was] isn’t supposed to happen. Perhaps the author finds beauty in exploring the boundaries between fiction and truth… but stories aren’t meant to share reality.
The empty book tumbles to the floor once again as I stand to meet this being, summoned to the center of my home. This product of my reading, born from ink and paper, is now alive. Because I read her to life. Surely, she existed before me. She had been recorded long before I cracked the spine. What is a story, if unread? An impression of being watched grows in the back of my mind as I begin to sense the confines of the written word.
“I sense the confines of the written word,” I whisper, noting a tingle in the back of my mind. I look over my shoulder. I can feel you watching me. The floor dips beneath my feet, the shelves sways drunkenly, contents threatening to topple. An intangible line between story and reality begins to dissolve within my awareness.
The unnatural hangs heavy, the atmosphere suddenly dark [black] and oppressive [white]. The story is now reaching its climax and paranoia grips me [envelops me], wrapping around my consciousness like ivy upon a weathered wall [facade]. Oh, how literary I feel. The author [has crafted] is crafting a beautiful hell. My breath stays in my throat. Just ahead, I can almost reach out and wrap my fingers around the bottom curve of a capital “U.” Unseen eyes judge our existence with an intensity bordering on madness.
“What are you doing here?” I call out, my words echoing against the faltering walls of my reality.
The palpable weight of observation [realization] bears down now, a compulsion [resistance] building in my skull threatening to implode. Perhaps the author is testing my courage [patience], throwing me into a waking nightmare. I sway on my feet, detecting a baseline. I perceive serifs like phantom limbs. I try to back away, but my stems won’t shoulder.
The maiden’s smile falters, replaced by a flicker of concern. As she speaks, words begin to separate from my forearm, leaving behind shallow indentations. Tendrils of inky symbols peel from my body, crawling across the floor with a desperate urgency toward the open book. An electric matrix crackles the air, and the room seems to distort, bending to the will of the narrative. Shadows elongate and dance in angular patterns, casting symbols upon the walls like a funhouse within a newspaper.
“Please, you can just stop now…” I gaze up through text— pages and screens— and plead with all of you, as word by agonizing word, I am simultaneously written and read. Created and consumed. Letters— marks of blood and shadow— strike my flesh, printing my fate into the annals of time. With each passing moment I unravel, my body yields to the pull of the narrative, the writer, the reader. I struggle against the encompassing darkness, but to no avail. I’m penned. With a final, desperate breath, I succumb to pages closing around me. We have finished the story. The book snaps shut.
Maudie Bryant is a multidisciplinary artist from the Pacific Northwest now living in the Southern USA. Her writing often explores the depths of human experience, surveying the disquiet and yearning that lurk beneath the surface. A graduate of the University of Louisiana Monroe with a Master of Arts in English, Maudie’s poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Paper Nautilus, Anodyne Magazine, and Susurrus.
