It’s only a book.
Dan said not to start reading it at night. He offhandedly mentioned that it wasn’t so bad for him because his closet doesn’t have a door on it, and since you have no idea what that means, you can infer pretty easily that I sure as hell didn’t know what it meant. He said a lot of things which I thought were meant to fuck with my head, entice me to want to read it even more. I can see now that that’s really not the case at all.
I started reading it at night. It was already well past midnight when I read the only sentence on the first page:
“This is not for you.”
I don’t want to read this book. I can’t stop reading this book. When I’m not reading the book, I think about reading the book. I hate this book. It’s fascinating. It’s grotesque. It’s magnificent.
Today I was walking to breakfast, and suddenly found I couldn’t breathe. In an instant my throat had been completely closed by phlegm. It took 17 seconds of hacking hawking and coughing to clear my airways. Teary-eyed and hunched over, I said to myself, “My body is trying to choke me.”
Which is ridiculous. Out of every rational explanation, my first thought was that I was unwittingly trying to commit suicide. I look terrible. Everyone said so. I look paler that usual and my eyes are sunken and dull. There’s no way a book could be having this much of an effect on me. I think it’s the book.
I’ve been trying to distract myself from thinking about it. There’s an Opeth lyric repeating in my head:
“Gone through days without talking
There is a comfort in silence
So used to losing all ambition
Struggling to maintain what’s left
Once undone, there is only smoke
Burning in my eyes to blind
To cover up what really happened
Force the darkness unto me”
Over and over.
I have to keep reading. It’s only a book.
Right?
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