It was a moonless night, depriving Zachary Fabrice of the light he so endlessly sought after. The flame of the candle he’d scavenged his modest ‘house’ for, if it could be called one, flickered in the occasional cold wind that decided to grace the despairing writer with its presence solely on this particular night, seeming to taunt and mock him.
Zachary sighed in resigned irritation as he held his pen faintly tighter, staring at the blank page in front of him, the proclaimed cause of his misery. He had to deliver; he needed to deliver. The damned editors hounded him every waking moment, oftentimes not sparing him even the solitude of his home, making appearances in his supposed ‘dreams’.
As a result, a sense of dread and uneasiness always seemed to well in his chest the moment he caught the simplest glimpse of the book he’d once used to religiously write in, day in and day out, that now lay forgotten, buried deep within his closet.
Until now.
The words of the public seemed to have finally gotten to him as he slowly set his pen onto the paper, his hand trembling; he couldn’t quite tell if it was because of the cold or something else. There was something at the back of his mind that was pleading for him to pull back, throw it all away, and try it another time, yet his stubbornness put on a fierce protest. He slowly took in a shaky breath as if attempting to regain some semblance of sanity within him, and wrote his first words.

‘Pereat. Pereat omnes.’

‘Let them perish. Let them all perish,’ was not the best word choice, especially when it was in Latin. Zachary stabbed the pen through the page and shut the book and threw it away, burying his face in his cold, trembling hands. The cold breeze swept through again, seeming to almost tantalize him, putting away the peace that seemed impossible to obtain.
After a few minutes of sitting in silence that seemed to stretch on for hours, the writer got to his feet and kicked the book aside, not even sparing a glance at it. He walked into his house, each forceful footstep reverberating throughout the walls. He ignored the clock that meekly displayed the time 2:14AM, and walked straight past the faded poster a fan had once given him at a book signing reading ‘FABRICE ORIGINATES FROM “A SKILLED CRAFTSMAN”; YOU HAVE CRAFTED MY DREAMS AND ADORATION OF LITERATURE’.
He flopped onto his bed, uncaring of anything else in the world, simply drowning in his despair. His eyes slowly closed shut, and he drifted off into a rather restless sleep.

Zachary awoke to the blaring sound of something he recognised well; someone was calling him again.
He groaned, desperately not wanting to wake up after he’d just started to genuinely fall asleep. He pulled the covers over himself, barely managing to drain out the ringtone.
The call was promptly forwarded to voicemail, yet the person on the other side didn’t seem to want to give up. The phone rang once more, this time vibrating and making its way to the edge of the nightstand, hanging precariously.
The person called one more time, and this time the phone fell on Zachary’s face. He jolted awake, his breathing shallow; adrenaline rushed through his veins, yet faded as quickly as it came when his gaze fell on the screen.

‘4:19AM.’
‘PERSEUS FINCH.’

Zachary frowned, his brow furrowing in concern. His best friend didn’t usually call him, and he certainly wouldn’t when it was this early in the morning. He slowly reached out and picked up his phone.
“Perc—”
“Zach!” yelled the voice on the other side. Perseus sounded breathless, and it sounded like he was running. “I’ve got— news—!”
The writer got out of bed and made his way to the kitchen, putting the phone on his shoulder.
“News, you say?” he said, trying to sound disinterested, but the absence of his usual monotony betrayed him. His hands deftly moved around the kitchen counter, making his usual morning black coffee. He’d have to continue writing that damn story of his, if he could call it one. He expected another call from Harold and Silas, or whatever their names were, at exactly 5:57AM, as if they knew when he—
“Sylvester and— Harvey are— in the— hospital!”
Zachary’s breath hitched in his throat, his train of thought immediately coming to a stop. He froze in place, his eyes going wide as his heart skipped a beat.
He couldn’t deny the sudden pang of elation he’d felt, but he quickly suppressed the feeling as Perseus’ voice pulled him back to reality. He seemed to have stopped somewhere to catch his breath, his voice a little more clearer now.
“Zach? You there?”
The writer shook his head, as if attempting to clear it. “Yes, yes— how exactly did… they… get into the hospital?” The word ‘they’ was spoken with obvious disdain in his voice.
“Good question,” Perseus said, still faintly breathless. Zachary could almost hear the smirk in his voice. “Find it out yourself, though. Put the news on.” And then he hung up.
Zachary cursed under his breath and finished making his morning coffee, settling down on the couch and switched the TV on, leaning back.
The news basically yelled in his ears, almost making him jump out of his skin. He lost a few drops of morning coffee, but he considered it the cost of seeing those damned editors in a hospital.
BREAKING NEWS: EDITORS FROM PRINT PALETTE FOUND IN FIRE, CLOSE TO PERISH; CAUSE UNKNOWN
Serves them right, Zachary thought for a moment before sighing. He was about to turn the broadcast because the faces of those damned editors showed up, but a specific word in the headline caught his eye, the reporter’s voice fading into the background.
Perish.
Hadn’t he—? No. Of course not. A silly coincidence.
He sighed, running a hand through his hair. ‘You’re being silly, Fabrice,’ he told himself. ‘Just get to work, Fabrice.’
He reluctantly got up from the couch, preparing himself for his dull shift ahead at the bank, a job he’d taken up after the last book he’d written.
Zachary had, somehow, managed to shrug off the incidents of the morning for the most part. There was still something that nagged him at the back of his mind — the part of him that insisted on not writing in that godforsaken book, the surprisingly still-existent rational part of him — that kept telling him this wasn’t a coincidence.
But that couldn’t be.
Could it?
Zachary returned home at 8PM after work. His colleagues kept their distance from him the whole day, almost afraid that they would accidentally set the man on a rant.
The writer threw aside his shoes and bag, immediately scavenging his house for the cause of all his problems, his manner bordering on insanity. His frustration grew with every single item that wasn’t the damned book, and his house looked like it’d been broken into when he finally found it.
He froze almost immediately, wide-eyed as he stared at the book, unblinking. He slowly picked it up, holding it in his hands for a moment, before flipping to the page.

‘Pereat.
‘Pereat omnes.’

Zachary’s eyes narrowed at the sight. The ink stains from where he’d stabbed his pen into the page, his unruly handwriting, the ominous Latin.
He took his leaking pen from his pants pocket and with a trembling hand and set it on the page, the rational side of him simply vanishing into thin air.

‘I videre omnia.’
“I see everything.”

Zachary paused, reading through the words he’d just written again and again. Surely his theory wouldn’t work.
But it was worth a try.
He closed the book shut just as he did last night and tossed it aside. He really wished he wouldn’t see that godforsaken book again as he walked towards his bed.
The night did not show the writer any mercy. It was unusually cold, and his windows seemed to refuse any attempt to close them, not offering any resistance to the cold breeze that seemed to return once more, mocking him, adding the unwelcome fuel to his paranoia.
He awoke to a piercing headache. His shoulders and heart felt unusually heavy, as if he was suddenly given the very weight of the world to carry and put upon himself. He groaned, clutching his head with one hand with his other hand hovering over his aching chest, a sense of unease and utter hopelessness crashing through him.
The pain almost made his vision blur, and he just managed to slowly turn his head to look outside the window. It seemed to be rather early, perhaps 5AM.
Just as he was about to make an attempt to get out of his bed, it seemed as if a wave of images, visions, things he couldn’t possibly process, were just thrown at him. He was visibly taken aback, his heart starting to pound in his chest as he was almost ambushed, drowning in the relentless waves that came crashing down on him, one after the other.
He staggered to his feet, letting out an involuntary yell. He grabbed onto his nightstand for support, barely managing to stand upright. He struggled to open his eyes, immediately scanning the room in a feeble attempt.
The book.
He made a mad dash out of his bedroom, almost tripping over himself but holding onto a doorframe or any object in sight. Those visions clouded his mind, but he focused all his remaining will — the only shred remaining, in fact — into the task at hand. He dug through the mess of his living room, throwing anything aside without any hesitation, without any regard of where it ended up.
And then he found it.
He took it as soon as he caught the smallest glimpse of it, holding it so tight his knuckles turned pale. He simply stared at the plain black cover, his eyes wide, having an unnatural insane glint to them, and breathing ragged and shallow.

‘Just tear it up, Fabrice.’
‘Shred it to pieces. Burn it. Throw it away.’

The waves seemed to calm down — almost stop, it seemed — as his gaze rested on the book, unmoving.
He hastily flipped to the page.

‘I videre omnia.’

He positioned his hands at the top end of the page.

‘Do it, Fabrice.’
‘Destroy it.’

Zachary let out a shaky breath, making his first tear, barely a centimetre long.

‘Why are you hesitating?’
‘I said do it, Fabri—’

He swiftly took out his pen and striked the phrase out repeatedly until it was completely unintelligible.
The visions ceased, and he fell to his knees, placing his palms flat on the ground for support. The book fell to the floor, the page still open. Everything seemed to be making fun of him, taunting him.
Zachary reached out to the book with the hand that still held his pen, his other arm trembling, struggling to keep him upright.
He tried collecting his breath as he feebly set his pen on the paper once more.
And slowly, a grin bordering on manic formed on his face.

—

Perseus sat at his office desk, drumming his fingers on his desk nervously. It had been three months since his best friend, Zachary, had disappeared. There was apparently a serial killer on the rise, as well, which just made his concern skyrocket. He hadn’t been getting any sleep for a while, evident by the dark circles in his eyes. The namecard on his desk that read ‘DETECTIVE PERSEUS FINCH’ was now faded. This was the first day he’d decided to get back to work and take charge of two cases: Fabrice’s disappearance, and the murders of The Delirious.
He looked through his files and found a newspaper on his desk. Nathan must’ve left it there. He narrowed his eyes at the headline.
THE ‘DELIRIOUS’ PRINT PALETTE MURDERS: WHODUNNIT?
“What have you gotten yourself into, Zach…?”