It was a windy and humid day, when I came home. I felt the hairs on my neck brick against my collar.
I didn't know why, but I felt nervous all day, I felt uneasy. Like something bad was going to happen.
I clenched my fist tight on the handle of my door, and opened it, ready for what ever was on the other side.
Nothing.
I wasn't attacked.
I wasn't ambushed.
I breathed a sigh of relief. I was being paranoid for nothing.
I took a step in my home and—
psshhh...
I felt something hit against my feet and slide on the floor.
I looked down.
A small book laid upside down on the ground, silent and harmless. It's back cover was completely bkack, and showed no other detail.
I raised my eyebrows curiously as I bent down to pick it up, and found that it was hard-covered.
I flipped it around, and saw that the front was also completely black.
Actually, no, wait...
There were some words on the cover, written in a thin, golden cursive:
'The Autobiography of
Julian Astrid'
Autobiography? I thought.
What was this book doing here?
There was no pillar box on my door, so no one could have slipped it in. Besides, the book was far too thick for a book of this size to be slotted in, it was at least five hundred pages in total.
But I don't remember ever owning a book like this, and I would know too, since I had done a complete item check on everything I owned recently.
You see, I had recently moved into a new estate about a little over a month ago, and I had finally sorted out everything last week.
My memory isn't too great, but I would remember if I owned a book like this.
So the only other option was...
Someone had broken in.
I immediately looked around my house, searching high and low for any sign of a person entering my house illegally. Maybe a stolen item, or at least an open window.
But there was nothing.
There was no sign or indication of an intruder. No stolen item. No open window. Nothing.
So that brought me back to the start.
I couldn't have called the police, because I have no evidence. What would I tell them?
'Mister Police Officer, I think someone broke into my house, but I don't have any distinguishing evidence besides a book that may or may not be mine that was left in front of my door.'
Yeah, that would totally work.
And besides, I can't call the police, they might catch on to me...
So for now, I had to sleep knowing that my house could have been broken into.
Great. Just great.
--
I laid on my bed, staring at the ceiling blankly.
I did a roof-to-floor check for any intruders again, and again, I found nothing.
Maybe I was just being paranoid again. Maybe I did own that book and I just forgot that o did.
But that raises the question: How did it even get to where it was in the first place?
Did I put it in my bag and if fell out when I was leaving? But then I would have remembered that I owned that book, wouldn't I?
I sighed. Thinking about it just gives me a headache.
My eyes eventually fell onto the book that I had left on the counter next to my bed.
That book seemed to draw me to closer to it for some reason, like it was hypnotizing me to do what it wants by simply existing.
My hands rubbed together in a restless attempt to ignore my temptation.
But I just HAD to read it.
Eventually, I turned my nightlights on and reached towards the black-cover book sitting on my counter.
I began to read.
'I was born on 19 September 1968, in London, England. I was born to a loving father named 'Steven Astrid', age twenty-seven, and caring mother named 'Riley Astrid', age twenty-three...'
I read and read the thick book well into the night. Flipping a few pages every minute. Blinking only when I needed to.
I read about this person's life through his own eyes and memories, written by his own hand.
His life was... honestly pretty bland. It seemed pretty ordinary, and nothing interesting really happened. But I kept on reading, for some reason.
But as I continued reading about his life, I slowly began to realize how detailed he was when he described all the events in his life.
At every sports event he attended, he could describe every single position the players stood at, their names, ages, he could remember the way they kicked the ball, or how fast they could run to the other side of the court.
At every single birthday party he went to, he could remember all the kids who also attended it, the age the birthday child was turning that year, how many balloons there were, the type of cake that was cut.
It seemed like whoever who wrote this had infinite memory and a wide range of vocabulary.
I worked as a teacher specializing in the language arts, and even I don't recognize some of the words he uses.
I began to wonder if was even an autobiography at all, or if this was even a real person.
But I still persisted on. I read as if my life depended on it.
I was at the part where this person was turning twenty very soon.
'I rammed into the stranger with my car at ninety kilometers an hour.'
...Huh?
'I got out of my vehicle with a sledgehammer and stalked towards my fallen victim, a malicious smile on my face.'
W-What?
'I raised the sledgehammer high above my head, and slammed it down onto the stranger's temple. It cracked open quite easily. I could see his brains splatter on my shoe.'
What is this?
'I laughed my heart out, and raised my sledgehammer again. I repeated the process in rhythmic repetition, again and again, until my hands ached with pain, the lactic acid plaguing my forearm with great intensity. By then, the head of my poor victim was nothing more than a squashed up watermelon. His brains, a horrendous smoothie of blood and gore. I disposed of my murder weapon, and drove off into the night.'
I blinked, stunned.
Those words came out of nowhere.
A paragraph before, he was out with his old high school friends, talking and catching up on old times. Another paragraph before that one, he was helping his uncle at his garage, which was where he got that sledgehammer from.
This scene that was portrayed. It came out with no foreshadowing, no reference. Imagine it like a conversation with a friend where he asked you if you wanted to go fishing, then the both of you go on a trip to the Sahara Desert. It made no sense.
It just came out from nowhere.
I felt uncomfortable, I wanted to stop...
But I kept on reading.
Sudden outbreaks like this happened again, multiple times in the book.
One when he was twenty-five years old, where he pushed one of his best friends off the edge of a deserted cliff that they had hiked onto themselves.
Another when he was thirty-two, he strangled his ninety-four year old grandmother that he was supposed to be taking care of for the day, to near death, then stuffed her unconscious body into her own oven and turned it on. Her house completely burnt down and erased all evidence. All suspicions were removed when he testified that he was in the toilet for a slight moment, and by then it was too late.
There were more murders that occurred every few years.
These murders happen at unusual yet convenient timings, as if he was an experienced serial killer that could tell when it was the right time to do someone in.
And yet, there was no foreshadowing, this psychotic behavior was never referenced at any point of time other than these murders, I wouldn't have even GUESSED that he was this kind of person.
It all seemed too...
Familiar.
I couldn't stop reading.
I flipped another page.
By now, he was in his mid-forties, around the same age as me. He had just moved to a new apartment about a month ago and he had—
I stopped.
I finally stopped.
I couldn't believe the words before me.
'It was a cold, stormy evening, my shoes dragged on the concrete floor as I made my way towards my apartment. I felt chills run down my spine, and my fingers trembled with anxiety. I didn't have a clue why I had such restlessness buried in my being, but I knew that it couldn't be good. I opened the door to my small apartment, my feet ready to sprint away in the unlikely case that I was attacked by an assassin for the crimes of my past. But fortunately for me, that wasn't the scenario. Though, I spotted a rather thick, leather-bounded bounded book that sat on the ground. It had sparked a strange feeling within me, I had to pick this mysterious book up. I looked for a disturbance in the cover other than the blackness that covered it. And I found a rather interesting title written in a neat and golden cursive that my mother would have enjoyed:
'The Autobiography of
Walter Normandy'
But how had this curious...'
My heart pounded.
This was the exact scenario that I experienced earlier today, it was just taking place in different areas.
What was going on?
I continued reading.
Everything that happened afterwards was the same for me.
He searched all over his apartment for an intruder. Twice. He felt the same urge as me to pick up the book and read. He was surprised at how identical the life of this new stranger, 'Walter Normandy', was to himself.
It was the same as me.
Beads of sweat dribbled down my face.
I had to finish until the end. Tonight.
I read faster than I ever had before. Not even wasting a single second to blink. I read flipped through the pages, five, ten, twenty pages a minute, analyzing every word and phrases, even if I couldn't understand any of it.
The morning after his read the book he found. The police came and arrested him. He was charged with mass murder and was sentenced life in prison. The next three hundred pages just detailed his days in prison, and was mostly boring and bland.
But I still read every single word.
And it continued to be boring until...
The last page of the book.
'I feasted my eyes upon the black, leather-bound book. Never in my life would I have ever thought that I would see this bundle pages ever again, but here it was, right before my eyes. I placed a hand upon the book and flipped it open.'
And that's where the book ends.
No, really. That's where it ends.
There was no page after, there was no word after that last word 'open'.
I blinked for the first time in who knows how long.
My eyes stung like hell.
I looked at my alarm clock beside me: 7.03 AM.
I had read until morning.
I clenched my racing heart. I didn't know what I feel.
I was so tired, so exhausted, I don't know what to do n—
BANG!!!BANG!!!
"This is the police! Open up Louis Benel!!"
The banging continued.
I staggered from my seat, it fell to the ground with a thump.
My door also broke open with a thump.
What?
My blood was frozen solid as I heard the thundering of feet climb up my stairwell towards my room.
The police were here to arrest me.
For all my crimes.