A Demon's Tale

Chapter Eighteen

-In Sanity-

The black book laid there in the center of the room, highlighted by the moonlight that made it through the narrow slits of the blinds. It looked like some kind of journal. I stood up from the edge of the bed I was sitting on, and with a step forward, reached down to pick it up. I opened it up somewhere in the middle. I was met with pages that seemed to have depth. There were strange glowing sigils and symbols floating around as if on top of and beyond the pages on multiple layers. It was all so blurry and it was hard for my eyes to focus and really distinguish anything sensible.

I wasn't really sure of what I was looking at, but for some reason, the mesmerizing complexity put me as if in a state of trance. I couldn't seem to look away. It was as if the book captured me, locked my eyes and attention into this strange book as if the strange signs and symbols enchanted my mind. I was completely absorbed. I stood there with the book in my hands. I turned another page, and yet, I was met with two new pages of infinite depth, with glowing rune-like symbols and other alien signs. Eventually, I had to sit down. I got back to the bed and sat down, but I could not take my eyes away from the pages.

I didn't know why, since I could not make sense of anything I was seeing, but for some strange reason, I got a sense of clarity. It was as if there was something to these strange symbols and signs that spoke to me, not to my direct conscious state, but something else, like a higher state of awareness, too high for my current low state of mind.

I could begin 'feeling' as if connections were being made as if a web-work was coming together. I could feel something becoming 'structured', 'organized'. I could begin seeing patterns, symmetrical and wholistic patterns somewhere within the complexity; a bigger perspective took shape. It was as if certain lines and shapes that seemed completely random and disorderly when looking directly at them, that when looking at them from a bigger scale, putting them into a bigger context, they somehow seemed perfectly organized and symmetrical.

I turned page after page just obsessively studying these peculiar patterns and sequences of symbols of which I couldn't really understand, but nor could look away from. Somehow it was as if I could just keep looking, deeper and deeper into the pages and beyond the pages, until eventually, it seemed like I was so deep into the page, my perspective of self was completely changed, as if the pages surrounded me, as if I was 'inside' the book. The sensation scared me, as it felt as if I had dug myself deep down into a rabbit hole, and I had no idea how far down I was. I had to look up from the book.

I lifted my eyes from the book to look around in the dark room, but to my fright, as I looked around inside the room, I was still seeing signs and symbols. As if the content of the book had now somehow leaked out into the room, there were now shapes and symbols everywhere. White glowing patterns, geometric shapes, and pentagram-looking things were as if carved into the walls, the floor, and the ceiling, but at the same time, they seemed to be floating on the surfaces, as if mere abstract ideas rather than physically there. As if the lines and borders were decided by my mind, I could only see the patterns because I chose to see them, but at the same time, they seemed fundamental, undeniable, 'real' or 'true' in some sense...

I shook my head and blinked and suddenly, all of it was gone. The dark room had returned to normal. 'What tha' heck was that?' I thought to myself. What was I seeing? What were these patterns and signs? What was this book? What did all this mean? It was so strange, yet fascinating, and there was this strange sense of 'clarity', 'comprehensibility', 'sense'... 'sanity'; a sensation I had not had for a very long time since I had entered this dark world.

I looked back into the book and the sensation returned. It felt as if these signs were trying to tell me something, offer me answers to questions I didn't even know I had, and they shone with such brightness and clarity. It bothered me that I could not make sense of the contradiction between this sensation of clarity, yet complete lack of understanding of what these symbols meant.