Malahi checked his notes.

They called him crazy.

Crazy!

Delusional. A child in a man's body.

‘He’s a liar! Seeking attention!’

No one believed him and his teachings!

“Fuck!” His teeth clenched, he grimaced, his posture had been starting to slouch. The flooding memories forced a curse out of his mouth.

He recalled all the insults that bore deep into his core. That burrowed into his mind. All of them! It was impossible to get out! All of it!

But he knew what he saw. It wasn’t a trick of the mind nor was he a 'schizo' as they called him. It haunted him to sleeplessness, haunted! And yet despite that, he obsessed in equal measure. Why? Why all the struggles? Restless nights, endless research, and all the preaching!

Oh the preaching!

So much preaching, but none listened to my beckoning! None! No one! I alone face these happenings! He prostrated himself towards his altar, arms spread in a position of forgiveness.

Forgive them for they do not know oh lord Moon!

In reliving transgressions toward him and his beliefs, without realizing, his hands had tensed into fists, nails digging into his palms.

He glanced elsewhere a moment later, relaxing. His nails had been leaving impressions in his palm.

He reached towards a black nightstand adjacent to the right of the altar.

He flipped through the notes and diagrams the notebook held. The drawings and tables diagrams. Teeny tiny notes in the margins. Every page filled to the brim. Sticky notes protruding from every which where. Everything had to be written down somewhere, this type of information was fleeting, as he’d found. Malahi stopped flipping pages.

Mirrors.

His hand hovered over the notes, and tingles ran from his fingertips, through his arm, and into his body. His eyes darted about every corner the page held, as if to be scared to be stuck in one spot.

‘Reflections that moved too slow. That lagged behind every other movement I made. They smirked or moved in my peripheral vision. Stared me down as I looked away. I saw it.

It?

It.

It!It!It!It!It!It!It!It!It!It!It!!!

...

Falling leaves fluttered side by side and washed away the roar that filled his mind.

His mind stopped there, exhausted. Simply thinking about it sent his mind in and out and turning all over itself. It was simply not humanly comprehensible. Trying to think further than delicately skirting around euphemisms and metaphors left him stuck in a feedback loop of the subject and only the subject. But that was fine.

I know. I don’t know what I know. But at least I know that I know.

Malahi tried not thinking about it.

It?

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

It!

– !

A roar in his mind grew louder and louder the more fixated on the anomaly he became, yet the more fixated he grew, the louder the roar became!

Then, his hat fell off, breaking him out of the vicious cycle. He carefully put the fragile gear back on.

Penance lord, for you had to save me in dire times yet again.

…

Silence.

He gave a brief gesture from his chest.

Tiptoeing around the subject is tedious but necessary, evidently.

Malahi wrangled his thoughts around until he remembered the gist of them. He tried to recall the memory.

As quickly as i_ had appeared, as quickly as _t had confirmed all my suspicions and made my dreams come true, as quickly as__ had folded my mind inside out, losing continuity, the apparition had disappeared.

It left only a contorted mind. He remembered nothing about the thing’s appearance or actions, but he didn’t need to. Because he remembered the aftermath. The reeling in pain as his eyes and ears bled all over, as his bones broke down to putty then liquid then solidified once more. The emptiness as he realized that his life’s work had been so close, yet had departed right then and there. And in the middle of it all, his mind pushed and pulled in just the right way until something resonated. He saw a light. He heard the whispers. Insects crawled to and from all over his body.

There is a world beyond the world! And I know!

The fact of existence, and its consequences, yet the widespread belief they don’t exist!

Secret Societies! Hands behind the scenes obscuring their existence!

And I’m the only sheep who knows!

A wolf emerges from the sheeple!

Thank you lord!

Wait - Malahi abruptly paused.

Sheep? His thoughts came crashing down on him.

It's not safe to be the only black sheep.

Why?

The nail that sticks out the most is the first to be hammered!

It’s not safe to be enlightened!

It’s not safe to know! He clutched his hat to himself in a moment of fear. It was his only protection against the unknown.

Why?

Why don't they want us to know?

As for who ‘they’ referred to, not even Malahi himself knew. His knowledge on the matter started at ‘they must exist’ and ended at ‘conspiracy.’

Yet this was enough for him.

For the briefest of moments, he calmed.

Malahi shivered. He steered his thought away from the horror at hand the only way he knew how.

I’m not crazy!

They thought me a fool! A maniac!

But I’m not!

No!

No!

No!

I’m not!

I’m the messiah! He shook his fists in celebration to himself and inadvertently yelped out.

He gloated to himself even more.

He wasn’t crazy! Not at all! The supernatural really does exist! A warm, tingly feeling rose from his chest to his face, his heart racing. Pins and needles he didn’t know before shuddered throughout his body. He could hear his heartbeat in his ears sing like the rumblings from before.

Sing?

Before?

Malahi quickly cut that line of thought down.

It was madness. It is insanity. Yet it will also be freedom.

The supernatural was real, and it had followed him.

Malahi turned from the altar to his left.

His eyes glanced up to his conspiracy wall.

THE OBSIDIAN MIRROR

Written in permanent marker, the writing on the wall superseded information Malahi found superfluous. Threads came to and from the main subject, the mirror, in a deep intricate web. One notable thread linked ‘The Obsidian Mirror’ to a ‘redacted location’ he had been currently researching.

That was the conspiracy wall. This was his magnum opus, the culmination of all his research and blessings from his lord.

Writings as dense as his notebook filled the wall: ramblings from before.

One such rambling was covered by pinned paper.

Malahi lifted the paper and glimpsed.

“If you don’t look at it, the mirror can’t eat you.’

Written.

But not by him.

Highlighted in red.

But not by him (red is a dangerous color).

Someone had left this here.

Just for him.

…

Malahi went to bed keeping the altar focus closeby, the aforementioned passage sticking to his mind as if it were the stretchy, sticky, toys he knew from his childhood.

Sticky Hands, he thought, as his mind drifted to sleep.