Write My Story (Part 2)

Issue #31 Keith’s SciFi Musings Sunday, January 7, 2024

And that’s when I noticed the book. Right beside me on the bed, as if it had been there all along. It was bound in what looked like purple leather ( I say looked like because somehow touching it wasn’t something I was prepared to do yet), with a strange embossed design on the front that looked like an angry face capturing the last enraged moments of something not quite human.

I shivered. And then it spoke…

Or at least I thought it did. I was certain I heard a voice of sorts, a raspy, guttural mumbling that seemed to be coming from inside the book. And yet the lips on the gargoyle-like face embossed on the front weren’t moving in any way that I could tell.

But the voice I heard wasn’t communicating with words. It was more like with odd and twisted sounds, perverse noises and squeaks, that had little interest in even pretending to be a recognizable language. Whatever it was I was hearing was not a language that could be identified with any nation or tribe on this Earth. Of that, I was somehow certain, even though I had rarely ventured beyond the boundaries of Chicago, and then only to Detroit to visit my father. Dad was also a writer and had managed to publish several books of fiction over the years. Strange short stories that I could never make sense out of, but he had a pretty devoted following so I guess it didn’t matter whether his only child could figure out his tales of (usually) love gone horribly wrong.

As I sat there on the side of my wreck of a bed, I wondered how my father, who had always been good with languages and sometimes could even manage to understand what was being said in conversations between people from countries he had barely even heard of, would have responded to the noises and grunts that were now swirling around inside of my head like a mud storm. As good as he was, I think he at least would have required the advantage of words.

So then what was I supposed to do with this? Where had this strange volume come from, and why had it come to me?

But then, slowly over nearly a half hour, the swirl of mangled utterings and random gibberish began to, almost painfully it seemed, assemble themselves into at least semi-recognizable language patterns. I found myself leaning forward, my ear cocked to the side, eyes squinted, straining to better understand whatever this message might be. And that’s when I noticed the mouth of the gargoyle's head begin to move. The angry eyes, which had been blank, were now clearly focused on me. The serpentine tongue wagged slowly, warily, as if contemplating a strike.

“Write my story.”