Weighed down by the darkness he had to sit. Clutching the book still in his hand he tried for the small high-back chair by the office door but missed. Instead he slumped along the wall to the floor, his eyes glued to the spine of the book that bore his name as the author.
Usually he favored three to four word titles, even using colons and subtitles on three of his nine books. But this was book ten; he’d counted seven or eight times since first noticing the book on the shelf. This title, the tenth title, was one word, ‘Portent’.
As though compelled he slowly opened the book, painful as this meant taking his eyes off the title inscribed on the spine. The title pages made no mention of publisher or copyright. They only repeated the title, ‘Portent’, and underneath as the author, M. Sanista, his name.
Fear bade him stop, close the book, go downstairs and forget this. But the darkness willed him to continue, and so he did, slowly turning the page to reveal the first page of text, Chapter one.