Children's Books Shouldn't Be Written

 
(Authors Note- second draft of my short story for the two lines contest.)

"Dear Anyone who finds this,
Do not blame the drugs, they were just there sitting attentively on the coffee table awaiting my decision. My decision was too end this before the choice was taken from my hands and more people were made to pay for my mistakes. I'm sorry I wasn't myself. I don't expect anyone to understand why I did the things I've done, I don't truly understand why.....I've said too much...I guess this is goodbye."

Natalia Crawford sat with her head in her hands as the tape recorder clicked off for the 15th time signaling the last words of Corey Yeilds before he put the needle in his arm putting an end to his miserable existence, taking with him his secrets.

Natalia had sat here for hours listening to those words over and over again trying to find a clue in the vague words of her dead childhood sidekick.

Natalia sighed. It had been a long time since she'd last visited Corey; back before the accident that left her with a severe concussion and plagued by amnesia. Sadly Natalia remembered so little of the times her and Corey had shared in those years before the Ferris wheel on old man Louise's farm mysteriously started for the first time in years. It had been a sheer case of bad luck that she had been standing in front of it a bit too close for comfort when it started on its own.

Sadly all of what she did know about her friendship with Corey Yeilds was what had been told to her by the town's folk, but there were always those under the breath hushed whispers no one wanted her too hear and it had left her skeptical of the boy they all said was her friend. So much so that she kept her distance from him and left the old country town the first chance she got.

Still Corey had remained in her thoughts. Phone calls from home gave her the images of a crazed hermit ranting gibberish to himself in the middle of the night.

Maybe if amnesia didn't permanently plague her she could remember what had changed her childhood friend into the maniac that scarred his apartment  walls in pointless scrawl, words just words nothing that made any sense too her and still she had tried too find meaning in them just as she'd searched for answers in the short and terrifying tape recording.
Nothing about Corey seemed to make any sense to her in fact. Maybe because they hadn't spoken in 8 years, maybe the distance had severed her knowledge and the struggles of her friend were meant to be taken with him too the grave.

But then why the tape recording? Why did Corey want someone too know something was amiss?
Why did he want someone to know he had done something wrong?

Natalia was puzzled.

There had to be an answer somewhere in the remnants of Corey's sad final resting place. Somewhere in this cramped and dreary hole he'd crawled into there had to be something that could make sense of this mess.

Unable to just sit in place any longer in the tiny dining area she stood and made her way to the bedroom.
Where better to keep secrets then where you dream. Ha...she laughed at the thought of Corey sleeping...it was quite clear the moment she had stepped foot in her old friend's apartment that Corey's life for the last 8 years had been spent in torment. Whether by his own imagination or something beyond his control, Corey had been terrified and haunted by something no one but him knew.

Where better to hide your secrets then somewhere you spent so little time?  It made perfect sense...out of sight out of mind as the old saying goes; but for Corey out of sight wasn't enough too make whatever it was forgotten.
If there was anything to hide it had too be there, in that tiny claustrophobic room with its one window barred up like a jail cell...but where?

Natalia stood in the doorway scanning the room carefully. One good thing that came from the accident was her ability to take in every detail of everyone and everything she came in contact with. But this room felt more like a prison cell, a place a death row inmate would spend his last few moments before he was dragged down the corridor to his death in big Ben.
The room was barren of furniture say for the bed and a tiny nightstand, a vintage lamp that had seen better days sat on its cracked and brittle surface, The small closet held only a few pairs of jeans and overworn t-shirts nothing that screamed "Search here!"

The nightstand held little promise either it's one drawer was hanging empty from the hinges swaying in some mysterious breeze that Natalia couldn't feel.

That left the old and flimsy mattress that sat flat on the floor like a yoga mat, it looked so sad and lonely and un-promising, but maybe that was the way it was meant too seem.
If you want too hide your secrets, you put them somewhere no one would think to look.
No one, but Natalia...

Anyone else would have accepted that Corey's madness had drove him to take his life. That he had been plagued in mental illness and haunted by imaginary monsters of his own creation and that he could no longer fight them, but Natalia knew some how there was more too it then met the eye...

Natalia Crawford had a thirst to solve all unanswered questions. Perhaps because so much of her life had been severed from her memory, pealed away in minutes.
Whatever the reason she hated the thought of another person being unknown, and more so she hated not knowing someone who had once been the only friend she had or so she was told upon waking from a coma a month after the accident.

So standing in Corey's hole in the wall bedroom that felt more like a closet that mattress screamed of the unknown..
It screamed her name without sound begging to be split open and un- burdened of It's contents.

Before she knew it she was tossing covers to the side, ripping pillows apart sending feathers snowing to the tile floor until all that remained was the mattress itself too disect.

Winded and determined she ran to the kitchen retrieved a butcher's knife from the holder on the counter top and returned to the task at hand.

She slit the mattress from top to bottom so that the outer cushion could be pulled to the sides leaving the springs and anything else contained in its innards exposed to her.

There it sat in the center of the bed arched between the mattress springs like a treasure that waited patiently to be uncovered....

It wasn't something most would gawk at, just a miniature children's book cover...The title sent chills down Natalia's spine and she stood frozen with her fingertips hesitating on its cover.  

A noise from the apartment jolted her back to reality breathless and fearful. She removed the old and tattered book from its casket of springs and it shook in her hands sending her body flailing to the floor as the book grew life of its own, turning it's pages frantically before stopping....

One may say don't judge a book by its cover and in this case that couldn't have rang more true. The cover showed no hint of the horrors of what it held in its center.

Natalia watched in wide eyed horror as the book stood on its binds to reveal the pages it wanted her too see.

She watched stunned as the picture came too life, at first only the old Ferris wheel on old man Louise's farm and then there she was wide eyed and smiling, sneaking a peak back at the cameramen every so often, but then her attentions turned to something beyond the frame and her mouth opened to scream....

The Ferris Wheel turned on smacking her to comatose state on the ground....

She could hear the words now...so clearly....they wouldn't make sense to anyone that didn't know their nature, but she knew now...they were the same words written on the dining room walls on the front door, every wall in the house...

The book walked into frame, and she watched in horror as crystal blue fire cohearsed from her mouth into the book as if she were meant too fill the pages with her life.

She lulled lifelessly against the bedroom wall, as Corey's voice in rerehearsed fashion shot through her mind more painful then the blade of a knife. It was then she noticed the needle in her arm...a little to late.

"Go my book and help destroy the world as it is."