before you know it you have turned the
page. The last figure, you realize, is straight ahead
of you. He is the reason you are here at all. Yes, you
begin to recall, you followed the man to this room,
this place. Before you came here, you had been in a
room with seven pictures on the wall, though one frame
hung empty. The room belonged to the man before you;
you had followed the man into the picture of... of a
book, this book, you realize. Only shortly before that
you had just met the man. He had been seated in a
grand chair, a throne, it must have been. Thin and
pale with eyes that never quite came out from the
shadows of his raven black hair. No, no, you realize,
that’s not right. His hair was as silky white as his
skin. The black truly was from a raven, perched just
over his shoulder. The man had stood, then, to cross
to the picture-room and you had realized how tall and
slender he was for the first time. You belonged to
this man, you had somehow understood at that point; at
this moment in time, in this place, you and everything
around you belonged to him. The tall man had allowed
you to follow. It had, you suppose, amused him to do
so. 
<br><br> Before the throne room there had been another tall
man, taller than this one. You strain to remember now,
feeling the page fading into white. The other man, not
pale like the others, but thin and willowy, had told
you where to go. 
<font face="american typwriter" size="4" color="gray">
What had he said his name was? You
can barely hold the image in your mind, and everything
is fading quickly, now, to whiteness. He had said
something, something about a library, something about
the books that people didn’t write. Not this book,
though, no one didn’t write this book, you’re quite
sure. 
<br><br> Soon the whiteness of the page will overcome the
words entirely and you will be forced to look up. You
will not, however, look up from a thick, leather-bound
book to see the six pale-faced strangers. You will not
look up to see again the face of the man you followed.
You will not have a chance to look into the eyes
beneath the shadows of his brow. 
<font face="american typwriter" size="4" color="darkgray">
<br><br> Though you did follow him out of the room of
pictures, you know you never left and that you are
still in his home, still under his rule. The man
turns, as you read quickly to catch any last glimpse
of an answer. He is watching you now, as if waiting
for you to look up, waiting to bid you goodbye. The
words are about to disappear and you are about to look
up, and then you will realize that you have allowed
your mind to drift into sleep while reading some piece
of abstract fiction, and that you have only just
snapped out of it. The piece, you imagine, must have
reminded you of a world you have seen many times
before, in different ways. The matter, incidentally,
is not worth thinking about too hard. You let it go,
allow the page to fade, and look up from the paper. 
<br><br>

<a href="/Endless.html">Turn the page back</a> ... 
<a href="/writing.html">Close the book</a>



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