Oh Snap! Ch. 1
By MasterVivid
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Hello! This is my first story on here, so any feedback would be greatly appreciated. If you have any ideas for the series, or anywhere you'd like the story to go, please feel free to comment down below. Thank you so much for reading, and I hope you enjoy!
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Hiding in a corner of the local library, Mark felt some comfort return. The smells of hundreds of thousands of texts, dusty equipment and old leather furniture always seemed to relax him, even after the events earlier that day. Most of the time he visited libraries he found himself exploring new books like an addict, constantly craving a fresh experience.
But not today. Today he just wanted to forget.
Mark had always been shy, shy to the point where it interfered with his life in drastic and negative ways. Despite being a fairly average young man, his sensitivity and lack of social graces had always seemed to drag him back down.
He had expected a fresh start by going to his local community college. A place to reinvent himself, to develop friendships and community with others for the first time in his life. He had expected his peers to have grown out of that silly phase of their lives where social status was important, where your relationships mattered more than who you were.
Of course it couldn't just be that simple.
Amber Hill was a local sorority girl, a genius at the social level who held connections on every level of campus life, and was a stunning brunette beauty. In other words, the antithesis to Mark. He had trusted her, for some God-forsaken reason, when she told him that a classmate he had been crushing on liked him back. Amber had even pushed him to ask this girl out in public (every young woman wants to be asked out in public, didn't you know that?).
So it came as a complete shock to Mark when, instead of accepting his request for a romantic relationship, the girl laughed. Laughed in his face. Laughed alongside Amber. Laughed alongside the entire assembly of students and their sick joke, even as a cooler full of Gatorade was dumped on his head from behind.
So Mark was fine being alone in the library, still sticky from the grape-flavored drink and free to ignore the world. He had everything he normally wanted around him, from nice books to a comfy bean bag chair. However, even his makeshift sanctuary couldn't keep out his darker thoughts; Should I even try? What's the point in livi-
There are few things as painful as a book falling from a great height onto your head. As it impacted Mark's skull, it somehow managed to drive its hardest corner into the most painful spot it could find, thoroughly distracting him from whatever he had been thinking about previously.
"Yeow! Where did that come from?!"
Given the day he'd been having so far, Mark fully expected that someone had purposefully beamed him in the head with the hard tome. However, as he looked around, he quickly realized he was well and truly alone.
"Huh. Even the books have to hate me today, I guess."
Picking up the text, it was one he hadn't seen before, with a glossy black finish, obviously well made, and titled in a sweeping golden font:
"I'm Sorry for Your Pain, I Promise It Will Get Better."
Wow. What a load of shit. The cosmic forces at play were surely just fucking with him at this point; there wasn't even an author claiming to have written it. As he went to the first page to try and find one, however, what he found instead just piqued his annoyance even more.
A snap to grab attention,
A call to force your will,
If done in proper sequence
The victim will fulfill
Whatever you desire;
Your wish is thy command.
The power of this knowledge
Will now rest in your hand.
Mark quickly flipped through the rest of the book, confirming it was empty. It was a strange little riddle; not that anything about the black tome made sense to begin with. What was its purpose? It almost seemed like a guide for mind control, but that would be absolutely idiotic. Why would anyone go to the trouble of making thi-
"...Mark?"
He startled, not expecting anyone to find him, and quickly realized that if someone had to find him on this shitty day, it just had to be her.