The Unremarkable Book

My eyes were swollen, my bones ached, and I felt an unfamiliar turn in my gut.

I had not slept for three days, and it was starting to take a toll on my body. I looked around, embarrassed someone would notice, if they would pull me into strings and throw me out of this beautiful lonely place.

The books always made me feel better. I noticed the grey gloomy walls of this library seem to camouflage themselves according to my mood. 

Raking my fingers along with the covers of neatly arranged books, I walked from one shelf to another, stumbling over myself, like a madman. Was it Zeno who, when he stumbled in a bookstore after losing his ship and all his materials sunken into the sea, embarked upon a journey in philosophy?

Well, I suppose I am very much like him.

For when I reached the end of the last bookshelf, my hands rested upon an unremarkable book, and would I know if that book would save my life, I could never have guessed.

Though it did. And I will tell you how.

First, to understand how this book would have saved a poor, disheveled man's life, you must understand his problems. His inability to sleep, his choking fear of darkness, and all the misery that reached within. Have you averted your eyes yet, out of exasperation? 

I had a fear, a most embarrassing fear of the night. The darkness, the emptiness that had neither the sun nor laughter.

The book I held before I was plain and small. Deceiving in its humble appearance, it read ' Secrets of Mortality.' 

" Secrets of mortality", I puffed in annoyance, what an inflated title for such an unremarkable book.

Its back cover held no description of its contents, except,

some illegible scribblings of some dates and notes, possibly written by a bookkeeper.

I flipped the pages, there were 150 in total. Was it a romance novel, a thriller, or simply worthless scribblings like earlier?

Holding the petite book in my hands, I walked over to the solemn spot of reading at the corner of the library.

As I read the first page, it held a few excessive boasts about itself, like earlier. My eyes scanned through as my patience wore thin.

As I forced through the few pages, a most peculiar tale was written.

Tale 1: The Silent Sleep

Contrasted by its predecessors, the font was small, the words striking, and simple. I was piqued by its title. Somehow, I half expected a horror story.

Yet, it was not.

It was a tale of a man who could not sleep. 

The tale adopts the viewpoint of the man, his rapid panic attacks as he closed his eyes every night. His utterly hopeless situation was so similar to mine. 

I read on to learn how the man overcame his agony.

Although the tale ended there, it offered no solace, simply describing the poor man’s numerous thoughts and his paranoia.

This unremarkable tale was of mine, I thought.

Tale 2: The Siren

It was a traveler who captained his last boat, on a pilgrimage to journey off the ends of the earth. On the journey to the end, he developed a fixating fascination toward a fish, a creature he was convinced, was a mermaid. 

A siren, he muttered, tis’ both he was cursed and was consumed by, 

She had the fairest hair, the sweetest voice, the most sensual figure swimming underneath his boat, below visions of tranquil water, just beyond his touch.

Maybe he was just a man, after all, who recorded his mad tale, who grew lonely and mad, tasting the only salt and watching only emptiness day after day, night after night, that he forgo all his losses upon an infatuation, a futile temptation like lust. 

I admit it was a tempting story, a story that flared into a dark and intense passion. The seduction tale and the ease of his lips muttering prayers, describing the smoothness of the waves which danced and crashed against him, the winds fiery upon his flesh, and the devastating desperation of a mortal man to own the beautiful, immortal siren.

His fascination with the ethereal, exotic creature of the sea, was his only companion in the big, lonely boat that was heading towards the ends of the earth.

Oh, how I wished I was there with him, maybe I could share his thoughts upon the dark creature. I thought of sharing his warmth and tears, as we laid on the boat, holding hands, and staring upon the sea of dark clouds above us, the dark clouds that terrified me so.

I knew the fear would dissipate, the terror would be gone, if I had him to hold, him to lock fingers with, maybe his smile and love would be the stars that shone in my eyes. Stars bright enough to illuminate the great fear of the darkness within me.

Tale 3: Lighter than Air

The third tale was of a boy. 

He described the picturesque landscape of his home in great detail. 

He emphasized and painted the mountains and hills of green, its height that reached as far above as the sky and depth as far below to the ocean floor.

All he wanted, he confessed were wings of a bird, so he could be lighter than air and fly beyond the tall mountains and hills that enamored him so.

His family was blind to the potential and the dreams of this highly intelligent kid.

Everything they cared was for their son to be wise like them,

to grow beyond the playful illusions of an imaginative child, 

 a wise young man, a worthy heir to inherit their family home and holdings.

Soon, the boy grew tired and complacent. He soon forgot of the hills and the mountains. The will to be free and alive among the fantasy he once created. 

It was now gone and buried within him.

Tale 4: A Beautiful Mind

Strings of consciousness overlap one another in this tale. 

Nebulous memories predominate clear recollections of both awful and sweet moments.

The world is a scary place, especially if you have no one to trust. When your own mind and memories seem unreliable. You find yourself constantly shifting between states of mania and fear.

This story captures a beautiful mind of a person, that came with certain undoing in her mind as it began revealing itself in her childhood.

It was a girl who struggled with panic attacks, and schizophrenia.

She saw terrible forms etched upon walls of her cozy bedroom, with bright eyes and deformed smiles.

They frequently laughed for hours, ceaselessly while visiting her at nightfall.

They crept into her dreams, little wretched things, donning capes of bright characters, yet always revealing their creepy counterparts at the end of every nightmare.

Come dawn, they left her, disappearing at the sight of sunshine and laughter.

Her fears grew every night and left her, came morning.

She received treatments for her nightmares, and those dark beings never came to visit her anymore.

The fear was the only proof they were ever there.

Fear that struck her heart like arrows, every time night came.

The tale ends there.

I closed the book and placed it below my heavy head.

I couldn’t bear to read anymore.

My vision was circling and the words on the next pages were floating around like a game of scrabble. 

I focused my eyes but to no avail.

As I laid my head above the unremarkable book, 

My eyes shut slowly, and my thoughts floated elsewhere, to a land of green hills.

……....

……....

……....

“ Excuse me, Sir.”

“ Huh ?”

I awake dozy, only to find a woman staring back at me.

“Yes?”

“ Sir, the library is closing.”

“ Oh,.. okay..”

I struggled to rise and looking down, I find the book there.

“ If you would place this book on the bookshelf for me, thanks.”

I checked out the library and walked back home.

It was late evening when I reached home.

I laid on my bed, and as I began to fall into slumber, a familiar terror struck my heart.

I woke up, sweating and in a state of panic.

I walked back to my desk, and as I sat there like a corpse, my hands brushed upon a book. The unremarkable book was right there, under my shaky hands.

“How did it came here?”

Had I brought it back without realizing it?

I opened the book once again and began reading from where I had dozed off.

That night, I read the book, and in the last tale, a most surprising confession came to me, written in a tone of melancholy and unease.

A confession that this was an empty book, chanted and charmed by its author, 

to be filled with the desperate ideas of its reader.

Is it my book, these unremarkable tales? , I wondered.

As I flipped over to the end, a smirking portrait of a neat-looking man was staring at me. 

An appearance that so much resembled my own.

"I’ll keep you forever", I whispered gently to the book as if it was an old friend.

I realized it was a reliable memory of my own, written in tales materialized to keep me company.

I held it tight and as the darkness and emptiness and silence surrounded me, 

I embraced the plain, simple book close to my heart and slept peacefully like I never had for a long time. 

That night, no fear, no arrows, and no panic struck my heart.

Somehow, this unremarkable book had offered me comfort and solace like no other.