She's back at it again, doing the same ritual, chanting the same chant, singing the same song, dancing the same dance, with the same tied up hair adorned with ribbons and dried black roses, wearing the same reddish black dress that twirls like a shadow in the darkness repeating the same loop over and over and over again, it's...
I wish she remembered chaos doesn't respond to order, but what can one expect from a mind that only remembers a song that was last sang in an extinct language eons ago? What can one expect from a mind gone and rotten away by chaos?
The curiosity in mankind is admirable, so is our spite in the face of death and the gods, how we keep returning to places of our deaths to push further, to learn and to make an impact on our humble world, it's admirable, it's heroic... it's heroic as long as I'm not the one dealing with it and its consequences. Unfortunately, when I decided to enter that haunted library, I was not wise enough to just admire bravery from afar.
This is Hadi. Hadi Rooshan. You've probably seen my name on the missing person posters for all I know. I don't know who or what will read this but... if you are, you are most likely as stuck as me in here. And maybe you'll get lucky enough to find a way out, maybe it will let you out, or maybe not, I don't.. know, but if you do, when you do, tell my mother that her Hadi's sorry, and that he loves her.
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Let me introduce myself first. I was a disobedient, odd and impulsive child, with parents who didn't bother to correct my behaviour early on, which led to me turning into a reckless, angry, emotion-driven teen whom spent more time in detention and police stations than home. One of my biggest fantasies was entering this library and reading the surviving collection of the strange books the owner was famous for. One moronish day the age of 16, while drinking a shitty and cheap energy drink I had stolen from a poor soul's shop, I finally made my decision to put my fear aside and enter the place and steal the books, if any of them had remained. I thought it was unfair that they were being locked away when they could've been given away to anothr library, but I didn't know any better. I simply didn't know. I really didn't. God, then I got stuck here.
When I was a young lad, around seven or eight years of age, this huge palace burned down. It didn't spread to any other buildings, and its flames only gave up to the water after the haunting screams of its owner died. It simply came to took the owner away with itself. The investigation led to nowhere, and the case was finally closed with the belief that whatever happend was just a freak accident. Not that anyone who lived there and knew the owner believed the police, of course.
Rumours of angry gods and punishment began to rise as people who considered themselves distant families of the owner, seemingly struck by loss and grief, rebuilt the library. They never really opened the place again, they made it be a tomb for the soul of the kindest yet strangest man ever known in the town.
I do not remember the building before the fire very well, but it was a grand marble palace, and to my childlike brain, it looked like a huge castle of an old, wise king. Even though was estimated to be one of the oldest buildings in our town, the outsides were clean free from any cracks or imperfections, the owner was always seen cleaning the walls every week, mending its cracks and scars and paint as if the building was his own child. Perhaps, in a way, it was.
But, the insides of the place spoke of a different story, unlike the grandness and the royal, almost threatening looks of its facade, the inside of the library was warm and cozy, not like a house, but a home you belonged in. most of the area was lit up by warm, white colored candles, but reading lights were provided for those who needed it. You could always smell the warm, fresh breads from the nearby bakery with the faint scent of sweet smelling inscense that crept from the owner's office. The library was a home for many, but never me, no, I was too young to go there.
Speaking of the owner, he was a kind yet mysterious man with a fatherly aura. the townsfolk called him grandpa, he treated everyone like his own blood and flesh, gentle and soft spoken, yet not lenient. Everyone knew be wasn't someone one could manipulate, hurt or trick easily. He loved all sorts of books, from short stories for kids to long novels splitted into tens of volumes, but he cherished rare and odd ones more, specifically, ones about the Old Ones... or whatever was their name. He was a collector of such books, going to extreme lengths to get his hands on anything newly written or discovered. The library and its books were open for all, but these books were something he only shared with the quietness of his office and the lights of his candles.
Then, the man and his library were devoured by fire in one night, and now grandpa the librarian was nothing but a distant memory.
When the family rebuilt the palace, they kept everything the same but made the front door out of glass, so people could peek inside whenever the sun was high enough to let light in. The shelves were new, polished and unburnt, but the books weren't. They had only put up the books they found and recovered inside the remnants. Some books were luckily rented away when the fire had happen, and so were returned safely, some had miraculously survived the fire unscathed, and some were only lonely pieces of burnt paper gently taped on the shelves to keep their memory alive.
Now, the library and its books had turned into a mystery and a regret for the younger me. The library died before I had mastered the act of reading, and people only speaking of its goodness and how much I had missed out on only fueled my rage and sadness more. The library being on my street was of no help either.
I remember when I had entered this...hell. i was loitering around the library, sticking to the shadows waiting for the streets to empty. I don't know how many hours I had sat there, but I believe I managed to enter the place around two to three AM. The quiet and the dark were never something I feared, but now.. I did, or perhaps the feeling of being watched was what crept terror into my stomach. and I wish I had listened to my fear, my father. He always said fear is what keeps one alive, saying my lack of a fear wasn't bravery, but foolishness. Back then I didn't believe him. I should have. I should have.
Inside of the library was huge and vast, larger than it looked on the outside. I though it was a trick of my brain, but the shelves went on and on. The books, or what remained of them, seemingly never ended. It felt like as if I could not reach the staircase that seemed to be right infront of me. I had been walking for minutes before I gave up, so I turned to run back outside, back to the lovely streets brightened by old flickering lamps and moonlight hidden by the clouds, but even though the glassy doors were in my sight, I could not.. reach them either. I had walked deep inside for around four minutes, but I was running back at full speed for five minutes.
I gave up again, leaning onto a shelf to catch my breath, still thinking I could find my way out, perhaps I hadn't registered what mud I was in yet. Then it grow inside me. Fear, I mean. Fear finally took a hold of me, I put, no, threw the book on the shelf and ran back, screaming for help, but it felt like my voice didn't reach anywhere. It echoed, it felt like it echoed, I felt the vibrations of it but it never came back to me. In my frantic, out-of-mind behaviour I knocked over one of the shelves, and felt the ground beneath me shake. At that moment, I thought it was just the shelf. The sound snapped me out of my animalistic behaviour. I stared at the shelf, at the scattered pages and then at the gape inside the aisle born from a missing shelf. I could not see the walls in the darkness, but I I stepped outside the main aisle of the library, the nightmare continued. I couldn't reach any wall again, but after walking for a good minute or so, i found an object on the ground.
When the shining sun finally decides to lay herself to sleep, come the Fae riding on the cold waves that were once warmed by the rays of the now sleeping sun, letting their fragile invincible bodies reach the marvelous shores of the earthal dreamland, and there they let themselves to rot and become one with the fabric of the dreams, and remains of their bodies only a sweet-smelling foam, which is then devoured by sea again, birthing another fae who shall awaken with the rising sun, and die that same night.
Please, dear gods, whoever that is reading this, please listen to me and do not call upon him. Do not make the same mistakes that I did. Do not believe that you are unique enough come out whole. Do not think satisfaction will bring the dead cat back, satisfaction will not bring you back.
There is little reason for flesh and dirt and blood to ever need His presence and even if there is cause that calls for him, you are to call upon a messenger, an envoy or another god, but not him, not him, not him, not directly, lest you wish to feel the pain of a thousand broken bones, to feel your blood heave upon your veins, and to feel every cell that moves through your body.
Man was not to explore the skies above, yet he did. Man was not to explore the depths below, yet he did. Then man thought he can do anything, thought he can rise to face the gods and come back down unscathed. But man was never supposed to see the face of a god, let alone one his own earthly, unworthy gods bow down to. Man was not to seek the Crawling Chaos, yet we foolishly did, mistaking the terrified silence of our gods with their allowance, thinking that the treatable pain they gave us meant we can mend all wounds.
Please heed my warnings, save yourself and kill your curiosity, for there is no price worth paying for His tainted presence, and there is no stitch that will close the wounds He will tear into our world.
