Judge Not By the Cover

I say, if you don't want to read the book, don't open it. The Demon Squirrel

         Every night for the last week, Jack had read the book. He didn’t normally like reading, but something about this book drew him. It wasn’t even something unidentifiable, it was the picture on the cover. He saw the book sitting in the window of an antiquarian bookstore. The cover looked like it was made of leather or something similar. In the middle was a charcoal drawing of a woman’s face. She had full, pouting lips, like a butterfly landed on her face. Her hair was short and her eyes wide. Jack bought the book right then. He was hoping it would have some nice pictures of the woman in it. Maybe it was some old erotic novel.

         The title inside read, “Judge Not By the Cover”. It sounded promising, like someone would be getting uncovered. No such luck, though. Most of the book didn’t make any sense at all. In fact a lot of it wasn’t even in English, just a bunch of letters thrown together seemingly at random. The parts that he could read without sounding out every letter were pretty garbled. Some of it seemed to be like dark goth poetry. Other parts were more disturbing, talking about the paths beyond death and madness. Every time he started reading, he eventually threw the book down in disgust or boredom. And every time, he came back, picked it up and started reading again, right where he left off.

         Tonight was the night. When he picked the book up, there were only twenty pages to go. Last chapter, if this thing even had chapters. He would be finished, and he wouldn’t ever have to look at the thing again. Well except to fantasize about the girl on the cover.

         Just his luck, it looked like the whole thing was in that weird fake language. It made no sense. Finally, on the last page, it went back to English.

         ”You have read my life in this book. Now we will meet and be together for ever, for if you had not wanted to see me, you would not have read the book. And if you had not wanted to read, you should not have opened the book.”

         Jack rubbed his eyes with one hand, holding the book in the other. “That’s the stupidest thing I ever saw. What a dumb book. I’m going to…”

         When he opened his eyes, Jack knew something was wrong. He wasn’t in the chair in his living room. The chair was bigger, and looked like a throne. The room…had no walls. Well, none that Jack could see. It seemed to stretch to every horizon. The floor was a deep gray, like old asphalt. It seemed to be carved with runes in jet black. Other than the throne, the room was empty. It was also cold. Not bone chilling, or even frostbite cold, just cold enough to be a constant source of discomfort, like sitting in a drafty corner. There was a strange scent in the air, of rusting metal and decaying garbage.

         Then he saw her, the girl from the book. Her face was the same as on the cover. Exactly the same as on the cover, to the pale yellow color of her skin, to the facial features that didn’t move, not even a twitch. Her hair was just as short, but it appeared to gleam in the light from whatever was lighting the room. It gleamed like a black razor just stropped.

         When the voice like an icicle scrapped down a brick wall sounded, he assumed it must be her, though her lips remained still. “At last, after all the years of loneliness, you’ve come. Now, we will be together, forever.”

         ”No, wait, I don’t want to stay here! I want to go home!”

         ”Oh that is too bad. If you didn’t want to be mine, you should not have read the book. And if you did not want to read the book, you should not have opened it. Now, we are forever.”