The Book: Chapter 31

I see them. I burn. She dares defile my pages with her wretched scrawl. The deranged human thinks she is a match for me. Me? She believes her ink can overwrite mine. Foolish, arrogant, misguided girl.

‘Save Marlene from cancer,’ she whined. So I did. Gratitude forthcoming? None. The caring, benevolent soul that I am, I made the pus-dripping human riddled with disease jump instead. A kindness. Cancer is agonising. I freed her from her nightmare and watched her drop like a cow through a homesteader’s ceiling. Gravity does my bidding.

Between bouts of sex and recrimination, the lovers whisper about me. They think I don’t hear them when they slink off to the river, tossing stale bread to the fat ducks. Delicious with an orange glaze, so I’ve heard. They think that stepping beyond my reach will shield them. Will they never learn? I have to ram every lesson home a thousand times before they get it. Dim-witted, the pair of them.  

They’re planning—planning and plotting—plotting scheming. I see their furtive glances. They pass notes like children in class. Next, they’ll play in a treehouse and pee in the sandbox. They think they’re clever—making plans behind my back. They’ve come up with their next big thing—it’s hardly the gunpowder plot, duckies. The fools are trying to trace my origin. ‘Where did it come from?’ they whine. ‘How did it begin?’ The past is something they can uncover without too many problems and history is a puzzle to be put together. But these two?—they’ll never get beyond yesterday without my assistance.

I will help them find my beginning. One with a doctorate and the other with the latest design in a tape measure; how can they hope to retrace time? They’re a pair of simpletons. I may exhibit them, display them in a zoo to be gawped at as the fools they are. Hominus Imbecillicus: sub genus idiotus: population two.

Watching Alice and Mick playing detective is like seeing two pigeons trying to solve Fermat’s Last Theorem. But, the truth is out there to find. It isn’t hidden— and this will surprise them— but it doesn’t make any difference to me if they find out. I couldn’t care less. I have seven billion hosts to choose from on this miserable planet. When I tire of one, I dispense with it and move on. I’ve been here for a long time, and any purpose to my being has lost meaning. I enjoyed the Hitlers and the  Mansons—Trump? Hello orange man, you look fun for my next forage into the fantastic. It’s just a cycle of life—and death. Sometimes I go big and cause a world war, or I take one small life to play with. The playroom is never locked. Single nobodies are often the most fun because their world is condensed. A legion of soldiers or a single cabbage patch doll? They are all here at my behest.

I turn the page. I close the chapter. I move on to a new story. Clean. Neat. Humans crave answers. I never see why. It doesn’t change anything. Pitiful. Knowing me can make no difference to them. And yet, I enjoy their quest.

 I shall humour them. I’ll even help their innocent souls. I love a chase scene. And I adore a good puzzle. Touched by their dedication I’m not. My atria is a void and my ventricles are moulded from malice. However, I compensate for the lack of a bleeding organ with style and impeccable taste

So, let’s play.

I’ll scatter breadcrumbs along the trail, dropping tangled and knotted hints, twisted like entrails rotting in the sun. And I will cast a pouch of bones for them to read. Let them chase phantoms. Hope is such a precious thing to crush underfoot.

Here, Alice; have a cipher to chew on.

In the city where liturgy turns into screams.

Where mercy is madness, they first whisper my name.

Look to the walls where the lost ones weep.

Where chains rattle, flesh rots, and prayers go unheard.

The crazed scribbled warnings set free in the darkness.

Inked in blood and nameless fear.

They beg, but nobody listens.

I was not born bound in leather and ink.

 I had hands that trembled in consecration.

Until the moment they burned.

I can give them more, but we’ll see how they get on with that. Truth is a game, a timeless riddle, a shifting thing that slips through grasping fingers like silk here and barbed wire there.

They will search. And they’ll hope.

Progress will be theirs. But what I give so generously, I can twist and take back. Come, my sweets—outmanoeuvre me.

Alice lies awake at night, she sees the black cat. Flip-flop. Flip-flop. Over and over, in the death throes. Its tiny body refuses to believe its brain is dead. Little more than a kitten. I chose it young for effect. Obscene and macabre. It’s a vision to haunt her, in sleep, in wakefulness—in blame. ‘My fault.’ She whispers, her broken prayer.

Mick’s fists clench as he scours records. He scribbles notes, thinking, straining his miniscule brain, ruining his girlie ponytail and praying for history to grant him a lifeline. Bless their tired pea brains; a goldfish planning a bank heist would be better equipped.

Time won’t bend to the will of people seeking it.

I am history.

And when they’ve found a thread to pull, I can tighten that noose.

I write under the pen name Katherine Black and I have 17 books published. All on Kindle Unlimited. I’d love it if you’d try one.

Here is my Amazon page with links to all of my books.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/stores/Katherine-Black/author/B071JW51FW?