the Word

"I'm not kidding, it's true”, he said gravely. “If you write down the Word, the next sentence you write after the Word will become reality."

We were sitting in our usual coffee shop on our usual Sunday morning catch-up, but our conversation was starting to become somewhat unusual.

He looked down and rummaged in his backpack for a few seconds and withdrew a small black notebook and a tri-coloured pen. He clicked the pen onto the red setting and handed everything over to me.

"I can’t tell you exactly how it works and there are rules, but the general gist of it is that all you have to do is write down the Word in red ink on a blank sheet of paper in a black book. Then after the Word, you can write one sentence and whatever you write will come true."

I sighed and took the notebook and pen from him and shot him one of my trademark raised eyebrow looks, which I thought made me look cute but probably just made me look silly. I was highly dubious and started wondering what kind of practical joke Gabriel was trying to pull on me.

Gabriel had always been a unique individual, but this was one of the things which attracted me to him. We had met only last summer in an antique bookshop when I was doing some research for an article I was writing for the local paper about the occult history of our small town. At the time I was looking for an old grimoire which was supposedly written by a Pope from the 12th century named Pope Honorius III. As I was scouring the occult section of the bookshop, he was in the same section and I couldn’t help but notice the myriad of exotic rings with esoteric symbols glinting on each of his fingers as he searched through the collections of books on each shelf. I’m ordinarily a reserved person and wouldn’t think of striking up a conversation with a stranger. For some reason, though, I felt an impulse to throw caution to the wind and blurted out some embarrassingly unclever observation about his rings to get the conversation started. He turned to me and immediately graced me with a warm grin and explained that they were merely family heirlooms that were passed down to him from the estate of his deceased grandfather. We got talking and I found out that he too was looking for the same grimoire of Pope Honorius III, as he was a collector of antique books. Pleasantly surprised, I saw this happenstance as a good opportunity to keep the conversation going. I needed to talk to him further to suss out whether or not he was single like me and more importantly whether or not he was gay. I suggested we get a coffee, to which he readily acquiesced and we departed together without even finding what we were originally looking for. Little did we know at the time that this chance encounter would turn into a seven-month relationship.

“Come on Gabe”, I replied to him as I put the notebook on the table with the pen on top of it.

“I know you’re into all that hocus pocus and I think it’s really cute that you have such a unique interest, but please, it’s kind of insulting that you would think that I am so gullible as to believe something so crazy.” I rolled my eyes at him and hoped he would change the subject soon.

“Raph. Just indulge me for five minutes, OK?” He pleaded.

“OK, fine.” I said.

“Do you remember that book we were both hunting for last summer?”

“The grimoire of Pope Honorius III?”

“Yes, that one.”

“What about it?”

“Well, I found it!”

“Great! But so what?”

“Well, OK, I’m going to be honest with you, and please, don’t be angry at me. I actually already had it before I met you. I only said I was looking for it too so that we could keep talking. I had found it in an online auction of a deceased estate from Tuscany. I don’t think anybody knew exactly what it was and I probably paid way too little for it, but the same day that we met I had just received the book in the post.”

In an excited fashion which grew increasingly manic, he went on to explain to me that on the day we had met, he had spent the morning poring over the grimoire. After an extensive study of it to validate its authenticity, he concluded that it was just a bunch of gibberish and he couldn’t make much sense of anything that was written in it. He said the complete merits of the book just amounted to a bunch of rubbish incantations and fictional pentacles written in corrupted Latin. Fed up and disappointed, he went to put the book onto a shelf and as in so doing, the grimoire slipped from his hands. As it hit the ground, a single leaf of paper fell from its pages. He picked it up and told me that is where he found the Word.

He told me that initially he didn’t know what it was. It was just a single sheet of paper with the Word written on it and after the Word, was written:

GABRIEL WILL FIND THIS SHEET OF PAPER AND HE WILL KNOW WHAT TO DO.

As soon as he read that piece of paper, he immediately knew exactly what to do. He knew what the Word was; he knew how to use the Word; and he knew that the Word was true.

“It was like I’d been struck in the chest with lightning! I hastily ransacked my house for that Moleskine notebook that you gave me for my birthday last month. It was the only black-bound book that I had in the house. I found it and found a red pen. And on that day that I met you, I wrote the Word into the book and then afterwards I wrote:

GABRIEL WILL FIND THE LOVE OF HIS LIFE TODAY.

Later that day, I met you.”

I said nothing for a while and then I burst out into laughter.

“Oh my god Gabe. Really? I mean, that is the most convoluted way of telling someone you love them that I have ever heard! Maybe in the whole existence of ways anyone has ever told someone else that they love them for the first time. Bravo! Bravo!”

My laughter subsided and I felt a warm sensation of love and happiness well up in me.

“I love you too.” I said to him. “You can say it, don’t worry. The feeling is mutual”.

He kept staring at me without smiling and it soon dawned on me that this was not the response I was expecting.

The smile and mirth slowly drained from my face.

“Raph. I’m serious. This is exactly what happened and I am going to show you. I am going to tell you the Word and I want you to take this notebook and this pen and I want you to try it too. A person can only use the Word once and when they have used it, they must pass it onto someone else within 7 months and 7 days or whatever they wrote will unravel and become untrue.”

He looked gravely at me and my feelings of doubt began to morph into feelings of unease instead.

“OK. Fine.” I said to him. “Obviously this means something to you, and I know how superstitious you are so I’ll do it for you. But I want you to know that I am doing this only because you are asking me to do it. I’m not doing it because I believe in it, but I am doing it because you believe in it”.

He nodded hurriedly and eagerly pushed the book and the pen closer to me.

He leant in close and I could feel his warm breath against my ear.

Then he whispered to me the Word.

It wasn’t a word I had heard before, but for some strange reason it did have the ring of a word which sounded familiar to me. Like when you go to a new city on holidays and you just wander the streets without getting lost, all the while feeling as comfortable as if you’d always known the place.

I looked at him and down at the now open Moleskine notebook in front of me. I opened it to a new page. I felt a strange sense of anticipation. The virgin page was waiting to be written on and I didn’t know what to write. I knew the Word, but what should I write afterwards? What if everything that he said was true? I smiled to myself and shook my head. How could I possibly be entertaining such thoughts? This whole exercise was just a manifestation of Gabe’s unique and individual sense of superstition.

I put the top of the pen in my mouth and chewed on it for a little bit as Gabe looked on anticipatedly. I chewed the pen a little more and racked my brain for something to write. But what to write…? What to write? Then it suddenly hit me. Earlier that month I had entered a writing competition. As a struggling writer I entered as many competitions as possible, mainly for the fun of it. But this one made more of an impact on me because the prize was much larger than any other writing competitions I had ever entered. The grand prize was $20,000.

I took the pen and placed it against the blank piece of paper and without hesitation, I wrote down the Word. I felt a small tingling sensation at the base of my skull which extended down my arm to my right hand. After the Word, I wrote:

RAPHAEL WILL WIN THE $20,000 SHORT STORY WRITING COMPETITION.

I put down the pen, smiled to myself, and looked up to see Gabe appearing relieved.

“There you go, hon. Look, I did it. Are you happy now?” I said to him.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you, Raph!” He replied to me greatly reassured. “See? It wasn’t so hard, was it? Now, all we need to do is wait, it’s going to happen any moment now.”

I rolled my eyes, “Oh Gabriel. You really don’t believe in this do you? It’s only a silly superstition, things like this don’t really happen. When we met that day, it was just by coincidence, it had nothing to do with some mystical word that you wrote down! I’ve done it now, can’t we just put this nonsense behind us and do something else?”

I started to raise my hand to get the waiter’s attention to settle our bill, but before I could my phone suddenly started ringing on the table. The number was an unknown number and involuntarily my pulse quickened.

I looked from the phone ringing on the table to Gabe. He shot me a mischievous smile and a knowing look, which I found infuriating. I pouted and narrowed my eyes at him. Whilst looking at him, I picked up the phone and swiped to answer the call.

“Hello Raph speaking. Who’s this?”

“Hello! Is this Raphael Vigberni?” asked the other person on the line.

“Yes, it is he. Who is this?”

“Raphael, we wanted to call you to congratulate you. You have won the Lacov Short Story Competition. You’ve won $20,000!"