Spastic Spontaneous Stories of the Short Kind

STORY NINE - Birthday Girl by @_MeltingSnowflakes_

The wind that day was cold, snapping my hair back over my shoulders and cutting my tender cheeks like knife blades, sharp and icy to the touch. Night had fallen early, the blazing sun sinking behind the horizon half an hour earlier than expected and the moon had risen to take its place, a glowing ball pressed against the velvet sky, the same colour as the snow that littered the ground. Clumps of fluffy white lay scattered across the park, lining tree leaves and collecting on paths. It was new snow, new enough that it had not yet been reduced to slush that flooded the gutters and seeped inside shoes and socks.

It was beautiful if you liked that kind of stuff, but it was exactly the kind of thing I hated.

Walking home through rows of falling snow that clung to my clothing, my bare skin and eventually melted against it. I hated it, had hated it for a while, actually. Snow was not the kind of thing I would squeal at and run outside for, under-dressed in the freezing air. I would sigh and slam my bedroom door and, maybe if I was in a good mood, wander over to the window and watch the other children rejoicing on their front lawns. They were still allowed to be childish like that, and so was my younger sister, but I was not. I had to grow up too fast to fill in for my mother on the many occasions that she fell ill.

And maybe that was why I cringed away from the frozen rain's icy caress; because it hurt to remember the childhood that was stolen from me.

This is turning into a blog entry.

Anywho, I was walking through the snow, freezing, shaking inside my three jackets and my thick pants and leather boots, a fraying red scarf wrapped around my neck. Gloves, that was what I had forgotten, gloves. And rightly so, seeing as they turn the most simple tasks into something that could be in the Olympics - like writing with a pencil or opening a door handle.

Or flipping the pages of a book.

Before you jump at me, I wasn't expecting the book to turn up the way it did, or at all for that matter. But, still, it arrived, leather bound, its pages crisp and new. The cover was as boring as they get; dark wood with the only word printed on the cover outlined partly in gold.

YOU.

No author's name, no other pictures, not so much as a caption. Nothing. So, I did what the basic moron in a horror movie would do; picked it up and hurried inside, slamming the door swiftly against the icy gale picking up outside. I shrugged off two of my coats, pulled the scarf off over my head and kicked off my boots, leaving them by the door. The next thing I did would come naturally to most people or anybody with a wifi connection at least.

I googled it. I googled the actual Hell out of this mysterious, ill-named, no-authored, boring-as covered book. And nothing - and I mean nothing came up. Not so much as a whisper of what had turned up on my doorstep.

Cursing my small, handheld device and chucking it halfway across the living room where it landed on a one person sofa, I tucked my legs up beneath me and flipped open the book.

OCTOBER 3rd, 1990, 6:35 AM

At that, something fell out of my stomach. It felt like I'd just gone over a drop on a roller coaster. My birthdate, down to the minute. Only someone who had been there or who had read my birth certificate could have known that, and that should have been a red flag, but something... drew me in.

And, like an idiot, I kept reading.

This book, it had everything. A step by step recall of my entire life. The minute I took my first steps, the second I said my first word. My first job and the day I got it and every single word said in the interview. It had the names the bullies in High School used to call me and every single illness my mum had ever had. All of it, everything that had ever happened to me, written down in words lining every page. It had my sister's first birthday, her second, her third, and mine. The day my father had been caught cheating and a painfully detailed description of the divorce process. Everything. All of it. Down to my blog entry inside my mind, up to me picking up the book and the order I took my excess clothing off.

Down to me, sitting in my living room, reading it, eyes flicking over the pages, heart beating inside me like a drum. It had everything. Every single thing that had ever happened to me over the course of the 27 years I had been alive. And, all of a sudden, a wave of nausea spread over me. And it had that as well, me feeling ill, slamming shut the book and stuffing it behind a couch cushion. And I did exactly as it said because I felt like I'd throw up if I kept reading. I didn't take notice of where I was up to when I slammed it shut and stuffed it away.

I didn't notice that I only had three pages left. I didn't realise how close my song was to ending.

The rest of the night seemed to swim by. Me eating, staring hard at the sofa where the book was hidden. The more I thought about it, the more it made my head hurt, the harder it became to force down my food. The more my brain hurt, the sicker I felt until I gave up, curled up on the couch. I didn't expect to cry as hard as I did, but I did. I sobbed into the pillow as the TV blared behind me and, when I no longer felt that I was fatally ill, I rinsed my face and fished out the book.

That was when I realised. Three pages. Three.

I almost wanted to scream, to let out the loudest shout I could and jump into my car and speed away, but maybe that was how I died. In a traffic accident, panicking. And so I rooted myself to the seat, and started reading, from the beginning. Maybe it was wrong. If I could convince myself that it was wrong, that this was some twisted... practical joke, maybe I'd be OK. Maybe.

And so I started from the beginning. The very beginning. I read myself being born, of my parent's fear and excitement. And I kept going. I couldn't stop.

It was terrifying but exciting, but I felt ill to the core of my stomach. By the time I had caught up, it was four in the morning, but the sun had not yet risen. Nausea rocked my stomach, sweat beaded on my forehead. This was it.

OCTOBER 2ND, 3:57 PM

And I read. I read and I read, drinking in the knowledge fearfully, and flipping the page.

OCTOBER 3RD 4:03 AM

With a jolt, I realised. Today was my birthday. I was 28 now, officially, and maybe I would have celebrated if I hadn't noticed how close the book was too ending.

Adara Phynx turned 28-years-old that day, in her living room chair with a book beneath her fingers, hair tied up behind her head. She was terrified. She didn't want to die, not so soon, not so... young. She had things to do, places to go, people to meet. But she read on, hard and fast, soaking up the words printed on the page.

The book was right, it was always right. Even now, as I raced through the final pages, read the last paragraph on the second last page and flipped over. The last page. One paragraph. The last paragraph.

4:13 AM

It, I realised with a jolt, was 4:12 am. One minute. One. And I read. I read as fast as I could, drinking up the words until my eyes almost hurt.

That day, on October the 3rd, 2017, Adara Phynx found a book set neatly upon her doorstep. You, it was called. And it was a book, a fantastic book, crafted from expert sources and pressed together almost perfectly. But, though many mistake them as a blessing, they are a curse. All of them. Every last copy of this book, and as Adara skimmed the final paragraph, she realised how true it was, for she was destined to die a brutal death as soon as the final line had been read. But the paragraph was running out, and she was scared, terrified. But even as she rose from her couch, legs shaking, breaths shallow and wavering, she knew there was nothing she could do, for there was nowhere to run, for this was destiny.

No sooner had I read the final line did I hear my front door slam open. And I wanted to run, every instinct in my body screamed at me to run, but I couldn't. There was nowhere, just as the book had said, to run. And in the doorway stood a man with a large, blood tipped knife and an untamed beard wrapping across his chin. And I had never felt fear like this, but I let him come at me with the full force of the knife, let him force it through my body. And I screamed.

Maybe I was stupid for letting him slice me apart, but maybe not. I'll never know if the book, that dreaded book, could be defied. Maybe I had hope, but I don't think I did. But you might. Because if you find this book on your doorstep, you run. You check the date on the last page and if it's close, and it's always close, you run. You run as fast as you can and you get out of there, you do the opposite of everything you would normally do. That's the only chance you'll ever have. I cannot stress this enough; you must run.

Run like the monster from under your bed just came out to feed.