Short Stories by Lucid Illusions

Depths

Growing up a latch-key kid, he had to spend a lot of time on his own. While he liked playing video games, he could never spend too much time on it. What he really loved was reading, immersing in the stories, living vicariously through the characters, far away in their worlds. There were adventures and companionship, and as he lost track of time and reality, it was his own TARDIS.

One day, while walking back home, he saw a book lying on a bench. he thought maybe someone forgot it there. He picked up the book, and read the title “You & I”, there was no cover design, or a name of the author. He was intrigued further. He decided to sit down and read it, while waiting for the owner to return and collect the book. He felt this way no one steals it, plus he gets to read a book too.

As he read a few pages, he realized the book was quite different from any other he had ever read. He quickly flipped through the book and he was intrigued that there was no beginning, no chapters, and quite a few empty pages. He took a deep breath and started reading properly… The book seemed to have no plots, no dialogues, no descriptions. It was a book that had only words, someone’s hallucinating thought process just added there…

The words though flowed endlessly, without pause or punctuation. Strings of words that made no sense, but it somehow hypnotized him. Words that drew him in deeper and deeper, until he couldn’t stop reading. Words that surrounded him, enveloped him, drowned him.

He realized too late that he was trapped in the book, and that there was no way out. He realized too late that he was suffocating in the words, and that there was no air. He realized too late that he had reached a depth that wasn’t possible within a book, as his thoughts turned into words and filling empty pages.