Black and White – Chapter 3: Discovery.
Author's notes: Part three of the series.
Contains rules, magic, schizophrenia, and elements of fear. As with my other stories, don't be afraid to show me some love. Exercise this with the usual rate-comment protocol. You know the drill. I send you all my thanks. Oh, there's no yiff yet, but there will surely be some in the future.
Black and White - Chapter 3: Discovery.
What the law does not restrict, it permits.
We decided it was good to have a core set of rules. It applied to the book. Adhesive was used to keep it on the hard cover of the book, just in front of the first page, just so it would be kept in place, as the ink of my fountain pen refused to remain in the notebook. Magic reacts to the ordinary. Vice-versa. It's one of those things that you have to compromise with. Moving on to the rules.
Rule one: Secrets will never be told.
Rule two: There is no turning back.
Rule three: Evan and Douglas write together.
I held in my hand the book full of secrets Douglas and I had worked on. Rule one implies the confidentiality of what was said. No secret should ever be disclosed to third parties. Rule two tells us we only have one chance to hear and remember the secrets we are told. Should we ever forget, we are never to look at what was written by the book. And as for rule three, we both own the book. Some days, it would be with me. Some nights, it would be with Douglas. But it is very clear. When we're adding something to it, we must write together.
Cairn Robles was the first one we sat with together. A Doberman. One tough guy. Could snap the stocky Douglas into two, if he wanted.
"I'd killed my twin sister when I was four. We were drowning each other when the sea had sucked her away. She never was found, and I never learned how to swim."
Others were really shallow, like Berne Slade's confession: "I'm a shopaholic; I would forge my mom's signature to charge her credit card." Berne was a mouse who always had the right things to wear at any given time.
Some disgusted us. James confessed he added the reaping of his mornings to the protein shakes he sold at the local fruit juice bar because it made him feel sexy. He's another Husky, and at the very least, Doug would say James looked delicious.
The rest, bizarre. Weird, to put it simply. Rico Ricochet, a dreamy senior coyote (and perhaps the batch's heartthrob), shared that he was a virgin, and still slept with his teddy bear (whom, he added, was the main subject of his sexual foray). And oh, he also shared that he had a wide collection of all the Spice Girls' albums.
Some, light. Most, grave. Some secrets you should never tell another human being. Most stories waiting to be written. A few were meant to be guised as good fiction. Other secrets, you could only wish to be put behind you. A handful worth hearing. On the other hand, another handful worth forgetting. Some made us feel uneasy. A number relieving. Relieving that the tales we know are not of ours, and somehow, just one way or another, to a measurable level of relativity, we could say we have it better than the stories that we heard.
The book was heavier. Not in the sense that it was heavy with the secrets. At least it had doubled in width from the first time we found it. The pages never seemed to run out, and on the outside, it looked as though it was a treasure. Gold and etched on the outside with lines and symbols we could not understand. The spine was gilded with my name, the same way I would pen it, but it was as though it was written with gold, causing it to shine under light. I thought it would have been nice if Douglas had his name written on it, too, but there was no space left.
Vignettes did occupy every space untouched. Over the course of the month we had kept it, the elaborate strokes and the fine lettering filled the wonderful book with the dark, dark secrets of those who wished to relieve the heavy stuff that pounded from their chest.
I'd pointed out that little by little, the vignettes resembled a seamless piece. As though one would go right into the other, and belong there. It took a moment before Douglas could see a picture within the picture. The frontispiece, when the pages were folded in such a fashion, made an image of a house.
The house was big. Vines crept the façade of it. It seemed decrepit, almost, yet the stones were intact. As with all the lines in our book, it was gold. And it glinted gold. For it was gold. Such a marvelous sight to behold, and we both could not help but sigh.
The walls that surrounded us crumbled. We found ourselves on a cobbled pathway, excessively rocky. I'd suggested that we hold onto one another's paw, because Douglas sprained his foot the other day, and he agreed to it.
In truth, I was afraid. But that's not something you ask your best friend when his teeth were chattering, and it wasn't cold at the very least. I pulled him to my hip, and guided him through the cobbled path. It seemed to lead nowhere, but we ended up in front of a wall of thick, creeping vines.
I genuflected and gave my knee a well-placed pat. Douglas was unsure how to react to it, so I asked him to mount me so he could get to the other side. He did, and had to leap to hang onto the ledge. The walls were almost twice the average person, and it was impossible to do alone.
My turn. I can see my best friend offering a hand, but that's just for shaving the last few notches of my ascent. Vine after vine, I scaled my way up. My paws were sort from the tight grip I had. These wild plants are slightly itchy, too. One last stride, and our paws connected.
We were panting from the effort we exerted. I landed on top of my best friend when he pulled me over, causing us to fall some twelve feet or so onto the grassy lawn. I'd crushed him, but we harm came to neither of the two of us.
I cannot speak for Douglas, but I was less afraid. Grass was greener on this side of the lawn. When I guided Douglas up, I bravely took the first few steps by the doorstep, and watched my surroundings.
It suddenly dawned on me that I was in front of the porch, my friend on my back, and his tail between his legs. When I opened the door, I saw what lay behind the ruins.
Inside, it was cold. No vines. Plenty of books. It was a library, with shelves patching each corner of the house. It didn't smell as old as I thought it would.
Douglas told me what it was like to be in a shrink session. A comfortably air-conditioned room. Plenty of books. A kind fox listening with a tape recorder at hand. First, there wasn't any air-conditioner to be seen. And there wasn't anyone but us.
Why it crossed my mind, I would not know. But I thought the bookcase lacked one big book. About the dimensions of the book we found, at least in height, but not width. I pressed it between the gap, but nothing happened, so I shoved it back inside my messenger bag.
Where my friend was and what he was doing, I did not know. But I could distinctly hear his voice in the distance. I remembered it was lunch time, and he had to pop in a pill so he wouldn't talk to himself. He'd swallow another to counteract the side-effects of the first pill. I realized that we'd wandered too long and wouldn't make it back to class in time.
But he wasn't imagining anything, because I could see it right in front of my eyes. He was talking to a partly opaque arachnid. It had six, hairy legs, as though grubby hands waiting to grab me. I took a seat beside Douglas, who was already talking to it.
"Hullo." It spoke with a cold voice. "Do not be afraid. You are here, because you have my book."
I was about to say sorry when I produced the secret book with my paws. They shook slightly, but I was just afraid. Really.
"No, no, no. Keep it. I insist. You must keep it."