“Before the reader continues, beware the grip this book has on you.”
I’ve always loved horror, it always brought a certain kind of joy knowing that whatever I read is pure fiction. But that’s before the night I happened to find a tattered and torn book on my way home from school.
It was a plain black book, and the material it was made out of felt almost like leather, but something was off about it. I set the book down and had forgotten about it, a few days passed before I remembered about the book. I picked it up and analyzed it. As I opened the book, a storm had started to brew outside, which was odd since it had been nice and sunny out the whole day. The first page contained a warning, “Before the reader continues, beware the grip this book has on you”. I laughed at the warning, for many horror stories about cursed books start like that.
As I read the book felt heavy in my hands with each page I turned the book got heavier and heavier, the story within the book explained how it would take what it was doing to the readers and add it to the story inside it, each of their final moments. As I got to the last page I felt drained, the book had taken a long time to finish. I read the final word when a strong numbing sensation rushed up my arms, my skin had started to turn the same color of the leather on the book. I tried escaping the books grasp, tried throwing it, but to my dismay it had a strong grip on me. In horror I watched as the last moments of my life were added to the book, with the warning echoing through my ears, “beware the grip”.
