Far Horizons: Tales of Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Horror. Issue #22 January 2016 | Page 36
me, I didn’t recognise it at first. The symptoms were
similar to what I’d seen, but it didn’t make me weak.
It didn’t make me bedridden.
Letters started pouring from under my quill
when it was finally over. I realised what I had been
spared. I knew if I died there and then, too much
would be left unsaid. I wrote as I had never written
before. I was afraid it would turn on me again.
Turn on me it has. None too soon. Unlike the
first time, it’s left me powerless, unable to lift my
hand and jot down a line that comes to my mind.
To exist has become a torment. To keep the
knowledge inside and to be unable to share it is the
cruellest torture known to me.
Dust settles down on my pages, and I watch it
swirl around, my eyelids so heavy I can barely keep
them open. My mind keeps returning to the illness.
Why haven’t I been spared? Why weren’t many
before me? I draw in a shaky breath and feel that it is
my last one. I listen to dust rustling against the pages
of books…
to it every single day. But then, two weeks after I met
them, they suddenly started dying.
Visible signs showed cancer or heart attack
or other health problems but people don’t die of that
unexpectedly, especially not if they are as young
as the people I’m talking about were. Two weeks
is an approximation, and yet after a while I started
foreshadowing those deaths, waiting for them to
happen. Nobody connected the natural causes to me,
but I knew what was really going on. I just didn’t
know what to do about it.
Through day and night I went, pondering
the reasons behind those deaths until I met a strange
man. He lifted his hat to greet me, and I saw he has
a hole in his skull. There was a small canary sitting
in it. He told me to look at the stone statues standing
in the yard. They had always stood there, but he told
me to look closer. And as I stared at them, I realised
they were never there. The man told me to walk with
him and took me to the city garden. There were skulls
sitting on the fence planks that had always been there.
He told me to look closer, and as I did they were never
there.
The pages of books held the records of deaths
I felt myself responsible for. The man told me to take
those books and burn them and see what happened.
True stories are always told by those who
sound the craziest. When I close my eyes and look
back I laugh at how I shuddered while experiencing
all these events.
Life is inexplicable sometimes and you have
to puzzle it out and marvel at what you are offered to
go through. You wonder if there isn’t some powerful
being that sets the chessboard and makes you the
pawn that is destined to become a queen or be killed
trying.
Turned out, everything that happened wasn’t
in vain. I’d always liked meeting new people. It was
a slow process of starting to read yet another book
that wasn’t finished and new pages were being added
As I prepared to go and get those books the
man left. He said I had no need for him anymore. He
said I was capable of finding my way. He disappeared,
and I realised I was about to step into an abyss.
Getting those books was no easy task.
They held them in a place where no one was
allowed to go. I needed to get there during the night
and get past the guard into a highly secured room.
“Burn them as soon as possible,” I kept telling
myself as a mantra. “Burn them before somebody
comes and stops you.” I took out the lighter and
grabbed the first book. Those deaths were too surreal
to be true. I wanted to know what really happened. I
watched the fire lick at the pages and swallow them
whole as if they had been meant to be destroyed...
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