The Diary of the Person Who Will Ruin You

It started with a storm.

The kind of storm that makes the air hum like an old television and makes you question if something's about to go terribly wrong. Eli didn't like storms, but he liked staying inside even less. He’d always been the kind of person who walked until his thoughts quieted down.

That night, his feet led him to the edge of the old town square—where the light barely reached and the buildings felt forgotten. There, half-buried in ivy and brick, was the old Galloway Public Library. No working lights. No open sign. But the door creaked open when he pushed.

He stepped into the silence. The air smelled like yellowed paper and something older—something sour and metallic. He wandered past shelves of books no one had touched in years. Most were unmarked. A few had notes inside. It felt more like a mausoleum than a library.

And then he saw it.

A single book on an otherwise empty shelf labeled: "MISC: LOST & FOUND."

The cover was soft, worn leather—dark, like dried blood. And on it, in neat stamped letters:

"The Diary of the Person Who Will Ruin You."

He felt a coldness slide up his spine.

He opened it anyway.

It wasn’t written like a horror story. It wasn’t trying to scare. The first entry began:

"I saw you reading this. Your hands were cold. Your breath shallow. That’s how I knew you were the right one."

Each page after that wasn’t fiction. It was accurate.

The diary began to mention people Eli knew.

His roommate, Julian:

"He will pretend not to believe you. But his fear will come out in how he chews his nails tonight, down to the quick."

His ex-girlfriend, Wren:

"She still reads your texts. She won’t admit it. But the moment she reads this page, she’ll start thinking about what you owe her."

Eli slammed it shut.

But then, stupidly, he brought it home.

That night, he showed Julian. “Just read one entry,” Eli insisted.

Julian did. Then laughed nervously. “Creepy, dude.” But afterward, he stopped talking to Eli altogether. He became paranoid. Changed the locks. Blocked him on everything.

Wren saw a page too. Days later, she showed up at his door, crying and furious—accusing him of things he’d never done, swearing the diary “knew too much.”

Eli noticed a pattern.

The people who read the diary changed.

They became... worse versions of themselves. Or maybe more real. More raw. Like the book wasn’t influencing them—it was giving permission.

He tried to destroy it.

He burned it.

It didn’t burn.

He threw it in the river.

It reappeared the next morning in his bed.

He stopped showing it to people. But he couldn’t stop reading it himself.

And every time he read another line, he felt something slide into place inside his chest.

As if the book wasn’t just predicting his future—it was writing it.

One night, a new page appeared.

"There are others like me. Diaries hidden across the world. We’re not books. We’re seeds."

"And you, Eli? You’re growing perfectly."

His hands trembled. The lights flickered.

Another line formed slowly beneath the last.

"The final page is ready."

He turned to it.

Blank.

He stared at it for hours. Until words began bleeding up from beneath.

"The more you read me, the more I exist."

"And the more I exist... the less you do."

Now Eli doesn’t sleep.

He watches people.

He takes notes.

And he’s started writing in a new diary. One that’s not blank anymore.

It’s called: "The Diary of the Next Person I Will Ruin."

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