Chapter One: Discovery He was alone. His face was in his hands as if trying with all his might to push the pain from his heart back down. Then, with out warning he broke. Hot tears ran like fire down his cheeks, and through his hands could be heard the muffled sobs of man who could take no more. She had left in the night and with her taken his only reason to exist; his children. They were his foundation, his world. His sobs turned to strangled gasps of air. Perhaps he would suffocate here, in this pool of self pity and agony. He wouldn’t mind. His mind then turned to darker thoughts. Perhaps this was it, the culmination of all his #life’s failures. He remembered the hand gun he had bought, and where he had lain it. Nobody will miss him. If they needed him they would’ve stayed. His mother had dementia, and wouldn’t remember she even had a son. Dad drank himself to death over 10 years ago. He was no longer crying. His breath hung in the air infront of him. The building’s heater must have stopped working again. It was Christmas Eve, and they couldn’t even be bothered to fix the heater. He thought to himself how fitting it was for his last moments to be alone, in the cold, on a day meant to be cherished. He made a move to stand up, but slipped on wrapping paper strewn on the floor and fell. For a few brief seconds all he could see was the blur of the room around him. Then, a sharp pain bringing with it enveloping darkness. When he awoke he felt a great deal of pain on the right side of his head. Blood had trickled down the side of his face and began to pool beside his head. With a groan he sat up and looked at what he had hit. It was the corner of the small coffee table he had first bought when he moved in here. There was a small amount of blood on it, and it seemed to have moved a few inches from its original position. He pushed himself up on the couch again and laid down. He glanced at the table again, but this time something more than blood caught his eye. Upon the table was a gift wrapped in what looked like ancient, coffee soaked paper. He had not remembered it being there before. There was no indication of who it was for, or who it was from. He picked it up and unwrapped it. It looked like a small paperback novel. The cover was red, and it was slightly shabby looking. He opened it up and nearly dropped it in the same motion. On the first page, scribbled in large, loopy, and untidy handwriting was his name. Heart racing, he opened the next page. What he saw made his insides squirm. Written very scrunched together, but orderly from the top of the page to the bottom on each line were two numbers, and a sentence. The first one was written “1975. 5. Vomited on mother’s favorite dress". From there it kept going. He felt sickened and afraid. Had someone been watching him? Was this some sick joke? He kept reading. Page after page was filled with wrong doings and mistakes. bHe kept turning and turning expecting to see or reach an end but the pages were endless. Anger rose up within him. He wanted to burn this book. He wanted to tear it into a million pieces. Who was this person, this author and how did they know so much about his #life? Who were they to keep tabs on his mistakes? Surely they were not perfect themselves! Suddenly, realization dawned on him. His bump on the head when he fell. Surely this was a hallucination, a manifestation of his self loathing. Suddenly, the book wasn’t so evil or scary. For a brief moment he felt stupid for ever even being afraid in the first place. Flipping through the book once more he noticed the dates becoming more and more recent. He flipped on wards until he reached the date of yesterday. His heart sank as he read the last entry upon the page. "2013. 44. Forgot to tell children goodnight”. He felt the sudden stinging of tears but held them back. He was nervous, but flipped to the next page. It only had 5 entries. The final one read “2013. 44. contemplated suicide”. He had finally had enough, and threw the book against the far wall. He stood up so quickly that he nearly lost his balance on the wrapping paper again. Every sin, every flaw was written plainly for the whole world to see. He paced back and forth infront of the fire place, occasionally glancing at the book, but mostly keeping his eyes straight forward. Should he tell anyone? Who was there to tell? His anger rose in him again, but subsided just as quickly. He decided to go the hospital for his head wound. Once propperly medicated and healed, this book would be nothing but another sour memory. He had fallen asleep in the clothes he wore yesterday, so he did not need to change. He walked towards the door, and as as he opened it he was suddenly overcome with dizziness. The world around his was spinning once more. He stumbled forward against the railing of his apartment walkway. His knees buckled and he collapsed to the ground. He looked up at the now spinning ceiling, and let the darkness take him once more.
