Love Followed Me Like a Shadow

          Depression followed me like a shadow.

          I couldn't figure it out, no matter how hard I tried.

          There was this Book—a big, fat, leatherbound book—that haunted me.

          It rested on the coffee table in my living room. It'd been there ever since I'd moved into my apartment, and somehow I could never bring myself to get rid of it.

          The Book had words in it. It was filled with them...dozens of books within the Book and chapters upon chapters.

          I had never cared to try to read the words in that leatherbound Book, but the issue was: I couldn't have if I wanted to.

          The words were there, carefully inscribed into every yellowed page, but I could not see them.

          Throughout the years, any time I dared open that blasted Book, the pages were...blank.

          And somehow, I felt blank, too.

          There were words; so why could I not see them?

          The blank sheets of gold-lined pages would stare at me with perilous foreboding as if they were pointing fingers at me for something I did wrong.

          I hated that Book.

          I hated it.

***

          Not too long ago, I heard some strange words on a radio station: if you do not believe, you are going to Hell.

          That word 'Hell' had lodged itself into my breast.

          It shouldn't have mattered.

          I didn't care.

         But that word triggered me.

         Something inside me bristled from it.

          It had to do something with that Book. That terrible, awful, disgusting old Book that I loathed but couldn't bear to be rid of.

          So why did it bother me so much?

***

          Every day, I would walk to work, a black hoodie pulled over my face and my hands buried deep into my pockets. I wasn't much of a talker, so I'd travel by my fellow citizens in somber silence. They'd laugh and cackle until their lungs seemingly burst, enjoying their time in the dirty shops and trashed alleyways. To them, this was home.

          But ever since I had started thinking about that Book, this place had begun to feel wrong to me. Eerie; broken. Different.

          I began to question if this place was home.

          Sometimes on my walks, I would pass these odd people whose faces seemed to glow. I saw their mouths moving, but I couldn't comprehend what they were saying.

          It was as if I were deaf to them.

          Just as I couldn't see the words in that fat Book, I couldn't hear the words coming from these people's lips. But whatever they were speaking—it made my skin crawl and my spine tingle.