Dimus played a weird thumb game with his fingers. Putting a thumb over the other, then the one below at the top again. He knew a lot of people, but he was a loner. He rarely ever went out except for work. Weirdly, but yeah, he didn't like the scent of the crowd, even though he had accustomed himself to working in it.

  It had been roughly ten minutes since he checked the message. The unknown message.

  He just had himself right now. Nothing was pulling him in, but the insidious pdf. Dimus even started to imagine that it was calling him out to click on it.

  It was like the wrong choice, we know. The horrendous choice, we know we shouldn’t make but we still do. And just by himself, he was getting curious as heck. He tried to scrape the skin of thought out of his head. But either he missed the mark, or he just didn’t want to.

  Whatever it was, curiosity took over him.

  He was about to click on the download button, but his below-dangerzone savings stopped him. But yeah, his mind wasn’t letting him get away with it.

  He searched for his old phone, in the cabinets of his Almirah. Maintained by Dimus, it was messy as heck, but nothing that several minutes of tedious searching couldn’t find.

  He charged the phone, and just kept on shoving the power button inside, to switch it on. Took some time, but it powered on.

  Its screen was bruised with cracks, and it lagged like falling honey – slow and viscous. Of course, Dimus wasn’t minding if it got hacked.

  The room vanished from his conscious mind for the moment. Perhaps, even from the subconscious, which must be busy searching for the ultimate path. He was hellbent on making the wrong and careless mistake, so the mind was onto navigating the best way to do the wrong.

  He factory reset his burner phone, and opened it up again, with a clean slate. Honestly, it felt like a “I’m a detective” moment, so it just hyped him up further into this.

  He went to his computer, and installed the VirtualBox. Being an art student – the jack of all trades kinda people – and his work, being heavily connected with the computers. He was quite the hacker himself.

  He downloaded Ubuntu, and created a virtual machine, booting it up. He connected the internet for a second, downloaded the pdf in the virtual machine and disconnected the internet.

  Absolutely, nope. This wasn’t the safest and things could happen, but you know, what does a dying man not do? And, Dimus was also dying. Dying out of curiosity.

  Now he transferred the file to his burner phone, poking the usb into his computer. And then, inside the computer? He shut down the VM, and deleted the Virtual box. The computer was back to before, like nothing just happened.

  The pdf got into his phone, and finally he could get his hands on it. For the moment, the time of him being alone in the room, holding his phone. It felt like he achieved everything he could in the world. Like the old men, retired from the military who go to the countryside shootings, and shout, “I’m ready to die in peace.”

  But yeah, he wasn’t dying before sneaking a look into this pdf. A thorough look.

  He opened the pdf inside his burner phone, and lo and behold, it opened with a title

  He scrolled down, and all the way down to the Preface – as always. It just made him connect more. Helped him know, it’s written by another fucked up and slightly more knowledgeable human than him.

  “”

  Dimus started reading this weirdly weird preface. Though he did expect, the banned to start with something weird.

  “

  ”

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  To catch a breath, Dimus wanted to look away, but that “let’s do one more line” sung a vibrato inside his head.

  “

  ”

  As soon as Dimus’ eyes registered the blank paper under the preface, as the preface ended. He slammed the phone over the lump of papers on his table.

  As the lines had ended, there was no “Let’s read another line” addiction. And his mind instinctively, reactively, driven by the pure soulful reaction to the horrific, blatant lines written in the preface – slammed the phone.

  He just read something wrong. He was meant to read the book for the project, then why did he open a random banned book sent by a stranger.

  It has to be a joke. It looks like a written book, but it has to be a joke.

  Dimus was open minded as hell. He had seen rainbow-colored octopus hair on the heads of people, and he’d say, “It’s unique, and cool.” And, no, he wasn’t lying.

  But this?

  This was a book screaming about voices, demons, and gods as if they were sitting on his eyes, dancing on his face. And never in the whole world, was Dimus up for it.

  If he were sixty years older. The eighty-two year old guy who had accomplished everything in his life, and now can only sing songs inside his mind because his voice won’t come out. And just wait for his son to arrive with his grandsons, rocking in his rocking chair.

  He still won’t accept this.

  Delete this – was the thought repeating, munching inside him.

  Not deleting from the phone. But deleting it from the brain. Prove it false, and laugh at it. Laugh at himself, on how much of a stupid he can be sometimes and just happily go on, living his days with a clear sense of accomplishment.

  Deleting this pdf means, he accepted something that doesn’t exist. Accepting something written insanely, as sane. And there’s nothing more wrong than accepting the insane as it is.

  The twisted, the dark, the weird and the gruesome – the insane. They don’t have power on their own, but it is powered when the sane accepts it.

  Dimus won’t give this a chance.

  He looked at the clock, and it was eleven-twenty one. A time he slept in, probably once in a blue moon. But he was going to today.

  He wanted to see just how much so-called mystical power did this shouting book have.

  Just how much did this run on, a petty, psychological trick of “I’m insane and I will act insanely scary”. And how much power did this book actually have to appear in his dreams.

  His eyes were open like a curtain stuck up in the morning. His brain was powering like ever. His ears were picking on the slightest sound off from the engines whirring in the streets. Or from a drunk parade of mingling drunkards.

  Never did Dimus want to take a break, this moment. He was too hyper-aware to take a break. But biology is real. Exhaustion doesn’t just exist in the – the prefrontal cortex shuts down in the sleep – lectures.

  The exhaustion seeped into him, and he did not know when he fell asleep.

  In years, and the first time ever since he entered college he slept at eleven-thirty.

  Beep, beep – the alarm beeped. It was five in the morning, and every damn day, he woke up at five, before the alarm.

  He had had a week where he passed his days on candies and water, so the wake up was a soulful survival. But the alarm tired itself out of all effort and Dimus kept sleeping. The kind of sleep, where you sleep and only wake up to know, “Oh, I slept.”

  The kind of sleep where scientists debate – Is consciousness an existence in itself?

  Two hours, and thirty-five minutes later, at Seven thirty-five in the morning, Dimus woke up.

  Actually, he leapt up on the mattress. As if he had woken up from a nightmare, but he wasn’t breathing heavy. He was calm.

  He had seen no dream, it was blank.

  The mind, this just picks on the thoughts of the “before sleep”, even after waking up blank. Like when the laptop is put on sleep, and starts at the same moment.

  So, Dimus’ mind just rebooted the whole previous night in a short snippet.

  The mind is always quick, and precise with these.

  ”

  This started to sing like a lullaby inside his mind. Something he couldn’t stop. But he didn’t want it to stop either.

  Last night, he got too emotional being thrown off by the writing. But now that he re-lived it inside the mind. It was beautiful.

  How beautifully did the writer write a cursed human. A human turned away from humanity by a curse.

  ”

  ,running in his mind. He couldn’t help but look out the window.

  And yeah, the truths did falter.

  Not because it was mystical, but because he never woke up at seven, and looked out the window.

  Never did he ever know, there would be a chain of pigeons in the buildings outside, or over the windows – ogling him.