The text in this journal isn't in a language. I know that's hard to imagine, but many things about the original, physical book, the one I'm copying all of this off, are just wrong in ways that you won't believe, because of course you don't believe that the journal is real in the first place. I won't bother trying to convince you it is real. I'm still not fully convinced, despite holding it in my hands. I can, however, tell you a bit about it, as an object, whether you believe me or not.

The journal's covers are of undyed brown leather. The leather is very thin, about three tenths of a millimeter, but despite this the covers are both very durable and extremely flexible. The covers and pages are cut to dimensions of about 135.4 by 303.2 millimeters, and the book's thickness is about 22 millimeters—I'm saying "about" because I don't know if there's a normal way of measuring books, with clamps around the edges or whatever. I do know, however, that no standard paper on the planet is made at that particular size. The paper itself is similar but not identical to ordinary printer paper, the texture being a bit rougher and the color being a very faint orange off-white. The ink is the most recognizable part of the book; while I don't actually have the tools to go and test what it's made of, it seems to be ordinary ink, of whatever kind you'd get at Staples or Target.

That makes it all the stranger that what's written on the pages isn't…it isn't one thing at a time. Well, it is, but it's not.

To take a step back, I speak multiple languages, sort of. I grew up speaking American English, and then I learned a bit of Spanish in middle school. How much Spanish actually stuck around in my brain? Not as much as I'd have liked, so I went back through Spanish classes in college. As it stands, I'm maybe conversational, but I can read faster than I can listen.

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

The best way I can describe what I saw when I opened up the first page of the journal is that it was mostly English, a little bit Spanish. I don't mean Spanglish, it wasn't specific Spanish words mixed in with the English words.

No. When I look at a word in the Journal, I see the word in English. I also see that same word in Spanish, overlaid on top in a way that somehow produces no overlap.

I've showed it to a friend who speaks French, Spanish and English, all three pretty fluently, and he said he saw an overlap of all three languages. He showed it to his friend, who spoke French and nothing else. That person didn't notice anything unusual about the writing journal, besides the contents. To him, it was in French. Neither of them were told anything before I opened the book.

A sample size of three isn't enough to base any sort of thorough experiment on, but to really prove anything I'd have to show the Journal to more people than I personally know. Obviously, I'm not going to do that, because while I'm perfectly happy telling all you strangers on the internet about this thing you'll never believe, on a site made to post fiction, the moment there's any proof that the things I'm saying are real, I know my life is essentially over. I'm only sharing this here because it felt somehow wrong to let something so strange never be heard. Maybe it'll be important, if the things written in it are true.

I've written all of the not-words in English, but there are certain foreign words which appear to me to be written phonetically, and I will copy them out in italics for clarity.

I have nothing more to write, so I'll let the material speak for itself.