My Private Collection

We are in my private study, at the Brubaker in Soma. Do you remember Soma? The Lost City that is within my cells? If you do, that’s kind of impressive. If you don’t, just … don’t worry about it.

The Brubaker is an old, smallish tenement building/brownstone kind of deal. Supposedly other people rent here, but it’s pretty much just me.

We’re in my apartment, which has many rooms and is shockingly large.

One of these rooms within is my private study, as I said.

Spinning on the antique-looking recorder player in the corner is “Get Thee Behind Me Satan” being sung by Ella Fitzgerald.

After we descend a small staircase, you look back at it and see that the steps themselves are bookshelves.

There are many different books here comprising a vast array of subjects. But there is one you are drawn to. Of course you are because everyone is.

You walk to the off-center bookshelf in the left portion of the wall. About two rows from the bottom—not all the way on the ground, but low enough you have to squat or bend to reach it—is a thick spined book. Upon seeing it closer, it looks oily, the spine. You wonder if it’s a trick of the light, and want to pull it from the shelf.

Something inside warns you, says maybe you shouldn’t. You look over your shoulder at me.

I’m standing there in a short skirt, no shoes, and a flowy top that you can barely see my nipples through. My hair is down and long and looking extra blonde in the light. I have on a little eye makeup, but that’s about it.

What is this one? you ask.

“That,” I say. “Is the Black Book of Fear.”

The Black Book of Fear? You repeat it as a question.

I fold my arms, unconsciously I suppose, and nod. Yep, I go. The one and only.

You might feel a bit silly asking, but you can ask me if it’s safe.

“To pick up? Sure. Just go slow and don’t read anything aloud.”

You turn your attention back to it, and it calls to you. It makes your nipples hard when you touch it—not like when you are turned on, per se, but like when it’s cold outside. You get gooseflesh, too.

Though it looks oily, it feels dry—weirdly dry in your hands, almost as though it’s so dry it is sucking the moisture from your fingertips and palms: whatever part of you is touching it.

If you wanna forget about it and put it back on the shelf, make a willpower check. If you succeed, you can put it back on the shelf. Then we go fuck and watch TV or something. Whatever you want to do.

If you failed you willpower check, or if you simply want to open the book, then you do open the book.

The pages make sound like they are crisp and stuck together. You anticipate them to feel thick, like parchment, but they feel very thin, like scritta paper. Each page sticks to your finger a bit, almost like static electricity.

I think it likes me, you say.

I smirk. I smirk because I know it does. How I know it does is because it likes everyone.

And you wrote this? you ask.

“Yes,” I say. “In the Fall of 2015. I wrote it on Ello.”

What’s Ello? you ask. Unless you know what Ello is, in which case you do not. Skip the next two lines.

“‘It’s like this other thing that doesn’t exist.’” I’m quoting Melissa Broder, but you probably don’t know that.

You frown and shrug, turn your attention back to the Black Book.

You ask, So this is, what, like a novel, right?

“Uh huh,” I go, then nervously start pacing. It’s not fast, so you may not notice. It’s a kind of anxious amble. I try to seem graceful and sofisitcated and shit as I make my way to the record player and put on another song.

Hozier’s “It Will Come Back” plays after a brief bit of static.

If you know the song already, then you react however you would.

If you don’t know it, then you ask who it is, and I tell you.

“It’s kind of like the book’s personal theme song,” I add.

This one? you ask, gently lifting the book in your hands.

I nod. “Um hmm.”

The book has its own theme song, you say.

“Yep. It’s alive.”

Alive? you go. Like alive alive?

“Um hmm. Like alive alive.”

You don’t really believe that do you? you ask.

I smile in a way that’s hard for you to read. Maybe I’m anxious and sad. Maybe I’m being a playful little flirt. Hard to tell.

“Just don’t read anything aloud, m’kay.”

You glance down at the page and see a picture on there.

Who is this? you ask.

I don’t look at the book. I know who you mean. You might notice that, you might not.

“That’s Riley,” I say.

Riley, you repeat.

“Mm hmm.”

Who are they? you ask. Unless you know. If you know, the you turn the page.

If you don’t, I reply to your question. “They were a friend of mine.”

Were? you ask because you aren’t sure what I mean by that.

“Yeah, we were close and now we’re not.”

Oh, you go. I thought maybe they were dead or something.

I don’t say anything about that, and you know whatever you know.

Did you guys, um … you ask

“No,” I say. “Wasn’t that kind of friend.”

You say that you didn’t know that I had any other kind of friend, which makes me smile.

“I’m not really a slut. Just in the books. And online a little bit.”

You smile and say you were only teasing.

I say, I know.

On the next page, you read a bit of what’s written there, then say, It says here that you got the book at the Umbral Drop Basement Book Emporium.

“That was dangerously close to reading something from it aloud,” I say.

You huff but smile. That means whatever you want it to mean.

“I did,” I say. “You know. In the book.”

But in reality, you wrote it, you say.

“Uh huh,” I say. “I sure did. Twice, in fact. Both times on Ello. I wrote it live in nonsequential bits first, then rewrote it that November in sequence.”

You wrote it in thirty days? you ask.

“Well, the second time, yeah. I’m not sure how long the first draft took me. Maybe six weeks? Not sure. Wasn’t counting, in part because I didn’t realize I was writing a book. I was just workshopping scenes as a way to showcase my writing and meet people.”

On Ello, you say.

I giggle. “I know, it was a dumb idea.”

You smile. Maybe that’s not what you meant.

Either way, we’re done with the book for now, so you gently close its covers.

I rub my arms through my shirt as though a cold breeze blew through. You can clearly see my erect nipples now. You feel however you feel about it, and either ignore them or stare at them based on what you want to do.

“C’mon,” I say, “We can come back here some other time. But now it’s time for coffee and tea.”

The vinyl record is crackling, having reached the end.

Play procedures:

• If you would like to borrow The Black Book of Fear, Teresa (I) will advise you against it but ultimately let you, so long as you promise not to use it for magick. What you do with it, of course, is entirely up to you. I remind you again that it is alive and so it will become hungry and need to be fed, but I don’t tell you what, when, or how to feed it.

• If you didn’t understand what I meant in the above passage when I said you could make a willpower check, then you can create your willpower score now, if you would like. Just write it in your journal. I suggest you pick a number on a scale—say on a 10 or 100 point scale—and assign yourself the number you think best suits you in life or in this book or both. If you would rather it be randomly assigned, here are a few subprocedures for how you could do that:

  • Roll a six-sided die, like the one you would find in most boardgames or that are used for casino games. Whatever the result is, that’s your willpower score on a scale of 1 to 10.

  • If you know what a d10 is and happen to have one handy, roll that instead.

  • Add your courage and self-control scores together. If you don’t have those, then assign yourself a score for each on a scale half the size of your willpower scale (e.g., if you picked a 10 point scale, rate them 1 to 5; for a 100 point, rate them 1 to 50.)

  • Think about the last 10 things you attempted that might have required willpower. How many did you achieve? Write them in your journal, count them, and that is your number. If you lied about it, subtract one.

• Write down how you feel about me in this book. Are we friends? Are we lovers? Are we going to be? There isn’t a wrong answer so long as it’s how you really feel. You don’t have to tell anyone. Just be honest so the book will be better for you.

Day 7 of National Novel Writing Month 2022 and The Teresa Van Santāna Literary-Somatic Experience