Hysteria

Rain pours from the calm yet gray clouds. The loud pitter-patter against the window was soothing. The gurgling of the coffee maker brewing was the icing on the cake. The ring of the doorbell broke the stillness.

“Coming”

Lia opened the door expecting to see the mailman, but no one was there. She closes the door and decides to walk to her study. While reaching for the door handle, she heard the doorbell ring again. She sucks her teeth.

“Coming!”

She aggressively walks back over. Swings open the door. Yet, again no one was there.

Frustrated and confused, Lia steps out on the porch and looks around to see if she can see anybody. She trips on something. Catching herself from falling face-first, she grabs hold of a pillar. She looks behind her to see an odd-looking black book, no name, no postage stamp, nothing. She picks it up to get a closer look. She dusts it off.

“Strange”

The book is faded black, and the material feels like leather. It’s peeling and has that musty book odor to it. She opens it, and the first few pages are blank, with no dedication or anything. She flips through the entire book and realizes the whole book is empty. Against her better judgment, she takes it inside. The coffee maker’s gurgling starts to get quiet. She places the book in her study on the messy desk filled with other books and loose paper. She goes to the kitchen to pour her cup of coffee. The first sip hit the back of her throat, and the warmth felt like home.

“Alright, now back to writing.”

Lia took her cup of coffee into her study and placed it on a coaster on her desk. She sighed as she remembered the mess that had invaded her desk. Most of it she knocked on the floor, only leaving room for her keyboard, coffee, some pens, and the book. She cracked her fingers. She began typing, she was reaching the end of a deadline and had a bit of writer’s block. She typed a whole paragraph and then deleted it.

“Ugh”

She slumped in her chair. Each moment she spent frustrated at herself was a moment she wasted not writing. She gave in and gently smooshed her face into the keyboard. She started to doze off until she heard a page fluttering noise. She quickly lifted her head.

The black book opened, but this time the pages had drawings in them. Lia pulled the book in front of her. The images shown had to be drawn by an artist. They were so detailed. They were gory and violent, but as a horror writer, Lia doesn’t scare so easily.

“These are good”

It didn’t take her long to realize that the drawings matched what she had been writing about. She turned the page; it read the crow. The page after that showed the crow eating a woman’s eyeballs.

“Wait a minute….”

She took a closer look.

“Is that me?”

The woman getting eaten by the crow looked identical to Lia. Lia panicked; she quickly rose out of her chair and dropped the book.

She was so freaked out she didn’t realize the rain had stopped. She walked into the bathroom to splash water on her face. She took a deep breath. She heard a tapping at the bathroom window and looked up to see a crow.

“What the…”

Lia quickly left the bathroom and went back into the study. She picked up the book, and the pages were blank again. She thought she was losing her mind. Before she could even take a second to think, she heard loud bangs at her window, over and over again. She drew back the curtains.

“Oh my god.”

There appeared to be thousands of crows flying into the window. The window became a bloody mess as the crows smashed their bodies into it. Lia was shocked and afraid; she didn’t understand what was happening.