The Hollow Book

A Story by LikeAWritingOne

I looked into the hollow book and it looked back at me with its eternal s**t eating grin, waiting to have its crinkled yellow papers turned by my broken, calloused hand, waiting for my eyes to rape its each and every page. We stood there for what felt like an eternity, my heart pounding in my chest and my knees buckling with the stress of it all. A drop of sweat ran off my brow and stained the leather bound cover, darkening the s****y brown to an inky black. The timer of my life was ticking, ticking, ticking and I felt that every second it ticked on was another second of wasted time and space.

I paced a dining room lit by curtain filtered sunlight, my head a mass of flaming agony full of thoughts, these terrible terrible thoughts that would not go away, would not ever go away. I pulled back the curtain to reveal the hellfire that lay beyond. The sun in its truest and purest form filled my head, but I did not scream. I walked back to the hollow book and lifted it to my chest. I opened the cover and reached in for its contents. My hands clutched the ice cold metal, reassuringly.

I was ready.

Soon the world would finally know.

I opened the door and stepped outside into the cool spring air, my body immersed in the suns toasty warmth, my head immersed in its firey wrath. I rose the .45 to the sky. Oh what a glorious day. What a beautiful, glorious day. They would know now. They would all know. It was only a matter of time. I pressed the muzzle to my temple. Deaths musk filled my nostrils. I inhaled as if on a drug.

Accept me.

Love me.

Believe me.

I pulled the trigger.

My eyes shot open and I sprung up, my body covered in a thick layer of sweat which clung to my bed sheets. I was breathing hard, but I knew what had just happened. I had always been so close, but it always ended before anything could pass. Closure was impossible it seemed. Nothing was ever resolved. That's the thing with dreams. You always open their front covers in hopes for a thrilling story, but after that first delicious page is revealed, you realize that what you have is....

A hollow book.