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Crying a bit, and shaking from the fall I was extremely disorentated, I started to say "Wh-", but before I could let out the second syllable an extremely deep voice called from all directions in the darkness: "What possessed you to open it?". I just looked in stupor at the faceless figure as the voice(s) came from all around me instead of him directly. Once again it screamed "ANSWER ME" I replied whilst wiping my tears & trying not to shut down in fear "It was a book that I had to mark-" I was then cut off by him saying "You don't even realize what you have done do yourself?" he then paused momentarily & said "You've broken the seal to Apocrypha. You should be waking up soon, but we will meet again. Prepare for your return Wanderer." I asked him what he was talking about and he said "Apocrypha awaits." As he finished those two words a rush of light flooded into the thick darkness and the muffled noise subsided to Vincent saying "Wake the fuck up Nick" and Amber's shuffling footsteps followed by a "I got the towels" I opened my eyes and stood up sharply, unknowing of where I even was. I looked at the two friends and said "What are you guys talking about, I'm completely fine.." As I finished that I glanced down at my shirt which was almost completely covered in blood from my nose and ears. Amber started screaming and Vincent was just in stupor staring at me and doing nothing. I assumed that she was screaming because of the blood but I felt as if I was crying and wiped my eyes to see that there was blood on my hands. I was crying blood, I started screaming and fell back, hitting my head on the sharp edge of a shelf. I was so confused and horrified and started wheezing before I passed out. Then I woke up. I was in the inventory room, no blood, nothing. I was simply on the floor with the book beside of me. I immediately got up and ran through the door to the inventory room and bumped into Amber, she said "Woah, you alright Nick? You seem a bit shaky.." I replied "Yeah, I'm fine. Just..." I then got awkwardly silent because I had no clue what to say, I drew a blank for there was really no way to explain what I just expierenced. She then said "Nick, what's wrong?" I still had no clue what to say so I just ran out of the store and sat in my car for about two minutes. Wiping my eyes as I had started to tear up a bit, I ran back into the pawn shop and put the book into my backpack then returned to my car.
I got home shortly later and instantly got on my laptop to research what the hell just happened to me. I googled "Apocrypha" and didn't get any relevant results. I then googled "Abbadon" and.

that's all I have, I apologize for the fact that pasting it ruined all of the paragraphs and stuff. I tried editing it, but apparently you can't put paragraph spacing in and I have to leave too soon to break everything in HTML.

He was carrying a case of some sort, which turned out to house a construction drill. After a small bit of haggling we bought it from him for $127, and while we were finishing up a depressed-looking white guy with long hair got in the line behind him. He came up after we finished, and said he has an Xbox and a 60 inch T.V. he needs to pawn. I said "Alright", and walked out to his truck with him. Since he parked farther away, and looked a bit sad I decided to ask why he's here today, since that usually makes for good conversation. An even more dreary look washed over his face as he explained that he was pawning his sons gaming setup so that he could pay for the childs medical bills. A concerned and sympathetic look came over me, "anything serious?" I said. "Depends on if you count breast cancer as serious." He says, obviously trying to hide his pain in sarcasm. Before I could carry the conversation on we arrived at his truck, so I just dropped it and focused on the merchandise. The xbox had some wear and tear physically, came with three controllers, and had about 20 games with it. I decided to give him $200 for the lot, even though with the physical damage and age of the games it probably wasn't worth that. The plasma TV on the other hand was really nice, came with a wall mount, was internet capable & had the extra USB ports all the high value TV's have. I gave him $400 for that, a bit generous, but I think we can get a tiny bit more to make a profit. As I put the xbox & it's accessories in a bag he was almost in tears. I asked "What's wrong?" and he said "Breaks my fucking heart you know? Kid literally told me that he'd rather live longer than play video games. And that's why I'm here." This devastated me, I had to compose myself before tearing up myself. I was feeling a bit generous, so I told him to wait there while I go get a dolly for the large TV. While in the store I grabbed this Nintendo DS and some various games to give to the man, placed them in my pocket & grabbed the dolly. The man gave off a "proud" vibe, so I doubted that he would take the DS himself, so I wrote "Hopefully he likes the games :)" on a sticky note and placed it on the back of the DS, and carefully placed it into his truck through the open window as I was getting the dolly on the opposite side of the truck. I probably shouldn't have given the man this, because I now have to pay for it & I'm not the most fortunate financially but.. you should have felt the sorrow that radiated from the guy. I've always been able to "feel" what others were feeling, so I doubt you'd understand really. Pretty weird too, I've always been able to do that, I like to think that I "share" emotions with people. Never really looked into it, but I'd like to think that I just connect with people really well.
After the man pulled away I pushed the dolly back into the store and placed it on an empty part of the wall for Vincent or Brandon to mark down later on. I went back into the inventory room one last time to see if I had missed anything from before with the book incident, and the book was sitting on the center rusty shelf again. The inventory room is pretty big with boxes & old, beat-up shelves with one center light so everything is usually pretty dark, other than the center shelf positioned directly under the light. This is not where Brandon put it after seeing that it was blank. I picked it up, I wanted to see if every single one of the pages were actually just all blank because it inspired a bit of curiosity in me, that, and nothing really interesting really comes through here in this quiet town. On the introductory page there were these fantasy looking symbols and the words "Apocrypha - by Abbadon" in the center of them. What the hell was Brandon on? Obviously this isn't empty, I flipped the page again to the index and eleven chapters were listed. This was particularly odd to me because of just how thick the book was. The index had its chapters listed as "Ash, Wrath, Beauty, Peace, Dream, Faith, Fracture, Quake, Torment, Silence, and Abyss." Interesting names I guess, I then flipped from the index to the pages but there was no text on the first page. I curiously flipped trough the entirety of the pages and say nothing until maybe have way through where I saw something red-ish black. I flipped back to the general location that I saw the color difference and found a weird looking.. "seal" like image of a door in a circle. The circle looked to be some type of "horn" or sharp root maybe, rising above the door on each side almost meeting each other to make a circle before tapering off with a sharp edge. In very small print on the head of the door the words "Portae exspectant, et peregrinus." were placed. I have no clue how to even pronounce this, much less understand it. Pretty sure it was Latin, or some language closely related to it, though. I went ahead and wrote down the characters on a piece of paper and folded it up to translate it once I got home. After writing it down I decided to hold the book up to the light on that page where the seal was located to see if I could find any more cleverly placed text, I was holding the book almost completely above my head to get a good look at the seal because the light was so dim, I really need to fix that.. As I closed the book, because I didn't see anything else, everything went black. I don't even know how to explain it, everything was so pitch black that I couldn't see what was infront of me, or if anything was in front of me to be seen in the first place. After my eyes adjusted, I saw a really dim light flickering in the distance, kind of like a lighter but much more white. I started to run to it out of panic but realized there could be anything in front of me and slowed my pace, I go to touch the floating, evenescent light and I start to fall. I was falling so fast that my eyes started watering and as I leveled my self out and looked down I saw that figure standing on a really bright circle in the floow, looking up at me. That pitch black figure, I was falling almost on top of his head from what I could tell whilst looking down, but before I could actually hit him his extended his arm out and I paused instantaneously, simply floating in mid air where his arm was. He motioned his arm downwards, then in front of his body and whatever was causing me to essentially levitate followed the motions. I was now right in front of this.. thing.

First thing I've ever written, looking for some constructive criticism. It's not nearly finished, but there's enough content to form an opinion I believe.

**Apocrypha**

Chapter 1: Hazardous Imagry.

My head throbs as I slowly regain consciousness from sleeping. After rubbing my eyes a little bit I find myself just staring at my ceiling. The wallpaper has always mystified me, the perfect blend of blue in the shapeless figure was completely and beautifully abstract. I finally sit up, but my eyes have yet to adjust so it's too blury to see exactly what time it is, I identify a 6, so it's safe to assume it is somewhere around 6 AM. Stumbling to the bathroom to splash my face with water, I get a sudden stomach pain and barely make it in time to vomit into the toilet. After washing that.. rancid taste out of my mouth & brushing my teeth, I begin to remember the party last night in fairly vivid flashes. I didn't drink much at all, but being the normally straight-edge type of guy I am I guess it was enough to do me in for the night. After watching the morning weather & traffic reports for a while, my stomach finally settles and that awful feeling of vertigo subsides. I begin put on my work clothes, grab my keys & phone, and then head to the car. After driving a short distance, barely avoiding a ticket as a police officer almost saw me with my seatbelt off, I arrive to the Pawn Shop/Car dealership that I work at. The smell of fresh coffee & nosehair-stingingly-bad cologne fill the air as I walk up to the entrance and push open the glass doors. "Good morning Nick" Amber softly mutters. A "Sup bro?" comes after, from my best friend, Vincent, and a simple head nod comes from my not so good friend, Brandon. I turn to Vincent and ask if Aiden came into work yet while I pour a cup of coffee, as I didn't see him in the recreation room, but before he could answer Amber blurted out "He's late... as usual". Vincent & I smile while Brandon just gives a look of dissappointment in Aidens attendance. "Whelp, gonna go do this inventory guys." I say after grabbing a cup of coffee. Since I only work morning's there is usually new inventory I have to mark on the roster, and today was nothing out of the norm. Todays new items consisted of a few stereos, some cheap looking jewelry, a dark red book with some symbols on it, and a few original Xbox games. I marked down all but the book, since I had no clue what the name of it was. I walked curiously to the book to see if there was any information inside as to what it was called. The texture was.. odd to say the least, it was like a soft & relatively moisturized leather, with symbols you'd need someone much more qualified than me to identify. After looking around for an Author name or book title on the outside, I open to the first page. As I ran by fingers down the cover and flipped the first page into view these... images flashed before my eyes, naturally I closed my eyes and braced for something to hit me as my fight or flight reflex kicked in, but the images kept going, so I paniced. Not only did it go by fast, but it caught me off gaurd so the only things I could identify were this tall black figure, better yet a pitch black figure who looked like it was facing me, but it didn't have any distinguishable features so I'm assuming it had its back turned. There was this old fountain, but instead of water flowing out of it this thick looking black liquid spewed from it in seemingly slow motio. Lastly, there was this small kid in a blue shirt, really out of place too as he wasn't really creepy compared to the other two images. Naturally I was curious & a bit frightenend... okay.. really frightened, that was creepy as hell. So I ran into the other room and immediately told Vincent what I saw, he smirked in curiousity and said "You mean like, flashbacks in movies?" in a sarcastic but interested tone. "Yes, actually. But not really like memories, more like just small clips.." As I finished my sentence he tilted his head, obviously not believing my story. "Okay then, how about you go open it yourself tough guy?" I retort to his look of sarcasm and disbelief. "Pfft, no thanks. Let's have Brandon do it, I'm not getting eye raped by a bunch of creepy gifs" I force myself to laugh since I'm still feeling really odd about the previous ordeal. We then motioned over to Brandon, but before I could explain, Vincent interrupted me and said "Hey, can you go check this book out for us? Seems like a nice read, and I know you're the literature guy here." I see what he's doing, that's clever. I nod in agreeance, and walk with him.
As we get into the room I point Brandon to where the book is, and he opens it up to the first page. Nothing happens, which doesn't really help my case much. But what really caught my attention was that the pages were empty according to him, no ink on them at all. "Why would someone spend money on a quality cover like that just to have a blank book?" I say to the two. "All I'm wondering is how much this waste of space was purchased for, it's literally empty.. Which one of you bought it? " Vincent replies. Brandon just says "ha. ha." sarcastically, rolls his eyes, and walks out of the room. Vincent gives me a sarcastic grin and walks out behind him. I simply mark the book as "Dark red book" in the roster because I had no clue what it was called still. After marking it down I was finished, so I went to the cash register. After a few minutes of picking at my fingernails and wishing I had a real book to read, a tall man came walking up. (continued)