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How long had he waited lingering in the pages of his own history? It had been years, too many years piled into one. He damned the last woman over and over for her stupidity. She assumed after his three months were up that he simply did not want to reveal himself to her. So, she punished him. The idea was laughable. Did she really think he could punish any more than he was already punished? Living in the very pages of his history only to be released by true love? Ha! It was a joke. There was no such thing as love true. He had been alive now for more years than he cared to remember or possibly could remember. There had been no love. Not in the past and not in the future. He was a man jaded and doomed. He knew women to want only one thing of him and while that did indeed give him grave pleasure it would not release him. He was damned.
The fates had been kind. He did not seem to notice years passing. Time was some how warped in this book. But, he could not revisit his history, he could not go back and he could not make a future. His tale was stuck; he was captured. Adrastus had been stuck in the pages of his own life for 89 years. His only company had been darkness, closed spaces and the sound of the world changing around him. He learned to sleep. It was the only thing he could do to prevent the loss of his mind. How his book had been found in the crowded trunk it had been settled in was beyond him.
But, suddenly sound exploded around him. There were voices. High voices, low voices, music, and information it all seemed to come at him in bits. He had been placed inside a bookstore. And, he learned everything form the latest fashion to the news forms of sexual pleasure. Lately, he found he spent more and more time awake. There were certain hours appointed to sleep and other hours to be be awake, alert. Things were different in this world, much different.
So many times he had been so close. If only he could shout to the women,take the book, buy it! He tasted freedom on more than one occasion. But, it had only been fleeting. He was resolved and resigned. There would be no release for him in this world, perhaps in a next. Imagine an entire world he was missing out on. Language, Adrastus learned many of them years ago. He had no idea what place he was in. The truth of the matter was through the centuries, he had been moved around so much he was no longer certain what language would be spoken. Would he have to spend a month learning a new language?
Sleep, it was the cousin to death. But, sleep had become a dear friend to him. It cuddled his mind and saved him from insanity. And, so he slept. This day would be no different from the next. He would once again wake to the sounds of voices around him. After waking up so many times in the same place he no longer had the desire to listen. He was sentence to hearing life but not living it. Soon, he had learned to shut his ears off to everything around him.
Adrastus had been bought and sold on e-bay. His book was wrapped, packaged and shipped to Greece. The book keeper however, was not Greek. He did not know he had been returned to the land of his heart, the land of his father. It seemed almost as soon as he had been placed on the self he was picked up by a tourist and bought. Adrastus slept through the entire process. There was nothing for him beyond the worn pages of his life. He had come to terms with the fact that he was cursed imprisoned. Bested by a woman and her witch mother; there could be nothing but shame for him. He was a great warrior that could not even continue his own name. He had bought shame to his family and unto himself.
He could only hope during the various centuries he had been allowed to walk the earth, some woman carried his child. Though, he knew they would not be his own. They would bear the name of the woman’s husband. There was nothing for him to cling to, nothing left for him.
Adrastus had been resting as always. Then it began. He could feel himself being pulled. There was only one reason for such a tugging! He had slept through one of the most important moments for this century! He was being flung from his book!
The room suddenly pulsed, spiraled and contorted and in moments the large male body was flung unto the floor. Adrastus hit the floor with a thud, “*Skata.” Naturally he spoke in his native Greek tongue. It was the language he thought in. It was what he defined himself by. Adrastus lay on the floor. He knew from experience that if he moved too soon his body would object. It would take him fifteen minutes to simply stand up. He had been through this process many times before and this time would be no different that he knew.
Adrastus was wearing clothes from 1919. Tight trousers and a frilly white shirt; the clothes had been borrowed from some lady’s husband. He could not remember her name now. The time had been too great and he had long ago began to loose his memory. He flexed the muscles in his back and shifted his legs. Pain! He was thankful for it. Even the floor beneath him had his gratitude. It did not matter to him; all that mattered was that he was out of the damned book! Now, he had to do it. He would not stay another century in a book! There was always a way out of these curses and he would find the way!
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Translation
*s**t
*s**t
