The Book of Torment

She turned off the lights , blew off all the candles. Holding her book so tightly in her grip, she shut the curtains, after making sure no one was there but her. The door was locked. She was alone. Placing her book on the table open on a rather peculiar page, she whispered gently as a light gradually made its way up in this dark void:

“Here I am, here I come again, 

Asking once more for what I’ve lost

To revert the clocks and undo the pain

To hand me back the person I once was”

She closed her eyes as she chanted, initially not paying much attention to the gleaming sphere in front of her, but then a voice reverberating from it startled her.

“Wished you had.

At your command,

Nothing we’ve done 

Wasn’t what you asked.”

And with that, the gleam retreated back into the pages of the magical book, as if it never was.

“You know the rules.” The voice echoed one last time, before it completely melted into nothing, diminishing in the book into the word “dream.”

None of it made sense to her. How could she possibly have known back then? That her life would turn upside down at the instant she would lay eyes on that book for the first time.

Scenes of blue and purple, black and red, lavender scented candles and a warm bathtub, daffodil petals scattered on cold white bedsheets, bittersweet instants flashed before her eyes. They were moments of her past life, she knew. The one she used to have before the day she came across this book.

It was a gift from a stranger who did not care leave a name. But it seemed very intriguing, so she couldn’t help but unwrap it. Being the reader she was, she simply could not put down such a gripping book, and the book knew what it was doing, or the person who sent it did, and it was drawing her in closer and closer, she was getting all tangled into the twists and turns and curves of the words that ravenously engulfed her consciousness. It did that so discreetly, she never even took notice until she could step back no more.

It was the very same page with the word “dream.” The only page with drawings on it and words randomly scattered around. An inscription at the bottom read: 

“You ask, and you’ll be given. 

What you seek you’ll get. 

But breaking the rules is not forgiven. Dear visitor, don’t you forget.”

She didn’t fully comprehend what the text meant, and she wished for an escape from the life she once liked but now grew tired of. She was depressed, although she didn’t seem like it. There’s no such thing as always entrusting appearances to be our telltale signs of depression. And so she wished, not thinking it will actually do much to change her world. 

But she was wrong.

Then next thing she knew, she opened her eyes to find herself lying on a sheet of ice, teleported to a city of ceaseless snow.

The book played games on her, and that she didn’t know.

In her right hand was the book, and the left one had a piece of paper that she didn’t have before. Unfolding it, she found what’s written to be “the rules” that the book spoke of on that ominous page.

“Save me” were the only words written below the title, and she couldn’t be more baffled as to whom this “me” was.

Eventually, she had to cope with her new reality, and she got a job as a librarian in the snow city of Atlas. She thought it might be of help to be close to books as that was how she got caught up in this mess to start with. She spent four months in this city, yet still, she was just as clueless as she shad been since the minute she stepped foot into this world. Every few days she would wait until all customers were gone, and she would try to coax the book into letting her go back home. But it never yielded, and impatient, she grew.

However, on the brighter side, she’s made some friends from the bakery shop nearby where she liked to stop by on difficult days. The waitress, Amy, whom she came to befriend, once told her of this famed story about a young man who mysteriously disappeared one day, never being sighted again. He would frequently visit the library she now worked in and was last seen there, and hearing that made her blood run cold, especially because he was only seen going in and never came back out.

She couldn’t stop thinking about it. What was it that made him vanish? What was it about the library? It occurred to her that there is a great possibility none of that actually happened, but her intuition thought otherwise. 

Placing the book on the nightstand, she tucked herself under the covers and effortlessly drifted into sweet slumber. The room was dark and quiet, with only the buzzing of the radiator emitting warmth. The only light peeking through was that of the night lights outside and the moon burning its cold light through. The book rested motionlessly on the nightstand, as it should, but it glowed. And a faint whisper resonated across the emptiness. 

“Anya..” It called. It called on and on, over and over again, tirelessly.

“Anya,” it persisted.

“Help me.”

Anya’s eyes shut open and she looked upon the book, sitting lifelessly as she left it. She knew she heard her name.

‘What’s going on?’ She thought.

The next day, she pieced it together a little more, remembering the voice she heard the night before.

A scary thought occurred to her! There couldn’t be any other explanation but this one glaring truth awaiting the chance to be unveiled.

She rushed to the library and locked all doors behind her, shut the windows and the curtains. It was just her and the book now. She knew the page, she had read it, and she knew the number. Her fingers flipped through the papers until her eyes landed on the number at the corner of a worn out page, 248. 

Chapter 26, The Caged Bird.

When she first read that chapter, she was dumbfounded at the odd chapter number “26” since the preceding one was chapter “62”. But now it made sense. The caged bird was moments away from being set free. She softly chanted the poetry lines lying on the damaged page, and the words lit up, the table shook, and the book radiated a brilliant light that illuminated the entire library. Anya shielded her eyes from the glow and held onto the chair beside her not to fall down. The intensity began to wane and wrong was right again. Only the light was reduced to reveal a young man. Weary and lifeless, he seemed, but his eyes told otherwise. He looked at himself then back at Anya as a smile slowly made its way to his face, and he hurried and caught her in his arms, flooding her with a thousand “thank you’s.” He couldn’t contain his happiness and had to calm down for a few moments before he disclosed how he got trapped in this book, having read it too but in different scripture and different context. 

“The book changes.” He said. “According to its holder. It’s said to be one of the final tricks Lugh, Celtic God of Mischief, tormented this world with. It randomly appears to some. But then, I didn’t know the rules were important and mistakenly violated them, and so I was stuck as a punishment. It knew exactly how to deceive me, and I fell prey to it. But now I’m free all thanks to you.” He let out a sigh. “Although I’m sorry you too got caught up in this.”

“It’s okay.” She shook her head. “I do like the place here, but I want to go home. I never thought I would.”

“Hey,” He pointed at her hand. “Your fingers...” They were glowing. 

“The rules you have complied with, it’s what I couldn’t do.”

“Hey, your fingers are glowing too!”

The moon burnt his brilliant cold light through, flashes of white and blue.

Next thing she knew, she was holding a book back in the library, only this time, it’s not the one she worked in, but the one a couple of blocks away from her actual home. She was back. She turned the book she was clutching to find it was titled “Home”. With a faint smile on her face, she headed to pay for it but accidentally bumped into someone.

She stepped back a few steps before muttering a heartfelt sorry, only to find a familiar face in front of her, smiling. In a daze, it took her a few minutes before she returned the smile back and walked past him as he followed her.

They made it back home.