Prophetic?

The book he had just published would be his thirty-fourth. Across the continent, heck, across the world, millions of people were waiting hungrily for his next writing piece.

When the sun crept over the horizon tomorrow morning there would be crowds packed outside bookstores. There would be fights, screaming, yelling- scuffles over who is lucky enough to get one of the books.

See, his books were expensive and rare. With each book only one thousand were made.

The reason why it worked like that? The reason why despite the ridiculously high prices swarms of people still clamored to buy his books?

They were prophetic- or at least, that’s what anyone would tell you if you asked. Scarily accurate. To own one of the books was to feel as if you were all-knowing. He’d never bothered to make a statement that claimed otherwise.

Nobody noticed at first, of course no one was willing to buy such an expensive book without reason. But with the second book, and then the third- neither with lower prices, the local newspaper grew curious.

See, he lived in a small community, where everything could be classified as either green, local, or mushy. If something couldn’t be classified as one of these things then it was probably a mixture of two or more of them.

Everything seemed to be falling apart, from the buildings to the farms to the elderly lady, Miss Higgins, who lived next door to him and grew oranges. As everything was made of stone- grey, crumbly stone- and wood- damp, rotting and discolored with age- it was almost as if day by day you could see nature stealing back the pieces of itself that the original people of the town had taken.

And so, the local newspaper, with nothing to report on except how, green, local, and mushy everything was, turned their attention to his books instead.

Dave, one of the few journalists with an inkling of common sense- no, you cannot have my tin of tuna for your vegemite and tuna sandwich Sally- drove to the nearest bookstore. It was almost an hour away, and despite his relief a getting a break from his, err, less logical coworkers, he couldn’t help the deep curiosity that had gradually bubbled up inside his thoughts.

Curiosity felt like a light blue colour, with slashes of violet spiraling out from the center he thought as he hurried from his car through the rain to the little orange door under a sign that read; Reedsy Bookstore.

It was with quite a little sorrow that he handed over a week’s salary, but the weight of the book in the bag dangling from his wrist as he ran back to his car was reassuring enough. Although Dave did not know it, he would one day sell this book for an entirely too large amount and eventually rise to be one of the wealthiest journalists in history.

It was well past one in the morning the following night, when Dave, drunk with tiredness but refusing to stop reading, flung himself away from the half-finished book with a great yell.

A notebook was flipped open and a pen found in great speed, considering the untidy state of Dave’s house. With shaking hands that he tried to still, a number was dialed, and the groggy voice of the author could be heard.

Pen already running across his notebook, spilling ideas, and thoughts from his head, he rapidly fired off questions.

With a hollow click he heard the author hang up. Oh.

Perhaps one in the morning was not the best time to call someone?

Either way, the author had not confirmed or contradicted his theory. With a heavy sigh and his energy levels ignored, he plonked yet another cup of coffee down on the desk beside him and reopened the book.

When the authors fourth book was published, Dave having read all of them, he made the decision to publish his article.

You see, the authors books were not fantasy, nor were they reports, or coming of age stories. No, they were tragedies.

The book threw you into the lives of well-meaning people, only for their best friend, mother, brother to go missing, for them themselves to become a victim of aimless bloodshed.

What Dave had noticed that strange night at one o’clock in the morning? It all came true. In one way or the other at least.

The first book had clearly followed the life of an elderly lady who finally met her demise while eating an orange.

Only three days after the first books publication Miss Higgin’s had been found- exactly where the books character had been.

The theme colour of her funeral had been, you guessed it, green. The ground had been almost too mushy to stand on, the tombstones like capsizing ships in the mud. The only people to attend were the locals.

Who wouldn’t love such a horribly green, local, and mushy town?

The author, that’s who. He did not attend Miss Higgin’s funeral, nor pay respects to her grave at a later date.

In fact, he did not leave his house for any reason other than food.

But Dave’s article was seen by a larger newspaper company- not hard considering the size of Dave’s- and curiosity driving them, they in turn purchased a copy of each of the books.

They read all about the lady who was Miss Higgins but not quite, and a great many more tragedies. The following week, their best reporter was sent to the author’s small town, under the guise of seeing how green, local, and mushy, the town really was. But actually to investigate and see just how many tragedies the author’s books had seemingly predicted.

The results were astounding, over fourteen incidents had been foretold in an eerily detailed way. It was with speed even greater than Dave looking for his pen that a team was sent to the town and the author that lived there.

When the fifth book was sold, over a hundred copies were bought.

Word had reached mainstream media, and over five hundred copies of the sixth book were sold within two days of it being published.

The seventh book sold to people outside of the region, over eight hundred copies all up.

The author began travelling, and with him went his pen. Days before a trip to a faraway city he would release a new book, by the time he was set up in whichever hotel he was staying in, word would come. Informing him that he had been right. Again.

His fourteenth book sold out, a thousand copies, all around the world in less than a day.

One man was killed by a punch in a fight over the last copy of his book in a bookstore. Something like that had happened in the very book of his they were fighting over- in the days that followed he was proved to be right again and again.

In his books he never outright claimed what would happen, instead the things that happened in his books had a strange way about coming true.

So the prices got even higher, and still his books sold out every time.

Sitting at the antique dining table in his house one night, the author pondered the strange, warped ways of reality.

No matter how many reporters and ‘fans’ or critics came to his town, it was still exactly that, a town. No matter what happened to mess with how it worked, it could still be counted on to be green, local, and mushy.

And no matter what. No matter what he had to do.

He would always follow through on whatever was necessary to make his books come true.