The Sixth Book

By Jess Blenkarn

Rebellious and immature Finn Howell turns his life around when he meets the young, sophisticated Maia Boerio and falls deeply in love with her. Their shared love of rare novels becomes a burden in Finn's life when he finds a series called A Tale of Time piled in with one of his rare book purchases. It is no ordinary series of rare novels, though.
These six books were published in the mid-nineteenth century, but they describe world events occurring from 1879 to 2059. The sixth book, however, predicts the future—a future that lies on the pages resting in Finn's hands. As he struggles with his sanity in trying to determine who wrote the books, who gave him the books—and more importantly, why they gave him the books—Finn discovers a difficult truth.

• Language: English
• Publisher: World Castle Publishing, LLC
• Release date: Jun 29, 2021
• ISBN: 9781955086332

Jess Blenkarn

Jessica Blenkarn was born in Hamilton, Ontario in 1999 and is the youngest of four children. Jess studied Business and Speech Communication at the University of Waterloo and graduated in June 2022 as part of the Dean’s Honours list and with a departmental award for distinguished academic achievement. She now works in the field of marketing.At the age of fifteen, Jess wrote her first novel, Irrefutable Annihilation, in thirty days as part of the NaNoWriMo program (National Novel Writing Month), and has since written three other novels: Soul Survivor (2016), West of Dawn (2017), and The Sixth Book (2020). The Sixth Book was professionally published by World Castle Publishing in June 2021.Besides writing novels, Jess enjoys writing short stories and speeches. She has won numerous awards for her writing, including Hamilton's Short Works Prize and multiple Southern Ontario speech competitions. Jess even went on to compete in the Optimist International Oratorical Competition in St. Louis. In her spare time, she enjoys baking, exploring the outdoors, and listening to rock music.Website: https://jblenkar792313.wixsite.com/jessblenkarnbooksFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/JessBlenkarnBooks

Book preview

Chapter One

There it is. The sixth book. It stares at me, and I cautiously stare back. Do I open it? Do I read it? Do I chuck it out my hotel window, onto the road, and wait until it bursts into a hundred pieces?

No. No, Finn. I knew this would happen. I knew that once I read the other five books—books painted in blood—I would be reluctant to open the sixth book.

The sixth book of the series, by the name of A Tale of Time, chronicles—and takes the name of—2039-2059.

It is May of 2028.

I am waging an internal war. My brain is loading nuclear weapons, ready to win at any cost, but my heart is drafting peace treaties even faster than it can beat.

I don’t know if I can open it. I should never have even read the first five books. Then I wouldn’t know if they were accurate, and I wouldn’t be tearing myself apart trying to decide if opening this one is in my best interest. Not only mine but the world’s best interest.

Books one through five address the years of 1879 to 2029. Sounds like an interesting read, doesn’t it? The only problem: they were written and printed from 1868 to 1878.

The unnamed author somehow predicted the future, and I have only one novel left to read in the series. Don’t worry. I verified the publishing dates. I wouldn’t want to sound crazy, right? See, I wouldn’t consider even reading the sixth book had my best friend not been murdered because of it this morning.

When I was eight years old, I read a book by the name of Signature Steel, which frightened me into never wanting to touch another book. I found the novel on my mother’s night table, and eight-year-old Finn thought there was no harm in reading an adult horror novel.

All I remember from that novel is a villain who terrorized a town and left every member of it lying in a pool of their loved one’s blood. I look at the sixth book like it is Signature Steel.

If the sixth book is as accurate as the other five, opening it will either give me the key to preventing the world’s destruction or leave me with all the answers and the inability to do anything about it. I’m just not sure I want that kind of pressure.

Part of me wishes I could go back and change my profession so I could be anything but a rare book collector and book store owner. Or at least be some other person with the same profession but a different life. That way, someone else could have stumbled upon the only copy of A Tale of Time and be forced to make a decision which would change their life and the lives of all eight billion people on Earth. Any takers? Didn’t think so.

Perhaps I need to return to the time before my life felt like a steeping hot bowl of lava. Perhaps returning to this time in my life, before the books were crammed into it, will help me find the answers I am looking for. Perhaps I will then decide what to do with the sixth book.

***

I met my beautiful wife in April of 2024—the day of my best friend’s wedding. Patrick Gerber, or Pat, as I called him, was having the worst day of his life on what should have been the best day of his life. He had been let go from a job where he, too, worked with rare novels of many genres. Apparently, people just aren’t as interested in rare novels as they used to be, but Pat and I argued that was a bullshit way of saying his employer found someone else for his position.

We were right; he was replaced within the month. His incredible skills got him hired elsewhere within the week, though, and with a higher pay.

Pat, however, took his firing as some big sign from the universe that he was not supposed to get married on that abnormally warm twenty-five-degree Celsius April evening. Pat had always been a bit of a nut when it came to superstition, but I have since come to understand his perspective.

Being his best man, I, of course, had the duty of slapping him across the face and screaming at him until he got his head out of his ass and married the woman of his dreams. A woman way out of his league.

Pat was a little on the larger side. He enjoyed the occasional fast-food burger and fries. By occasional, I mean this combination consumed his breakfast, lunch, and dinner, usually five times a week. His career kept him on the road without much time for exercise, which I can respect, but not to the extent that he should have been upward of 275 pounds and only five feet nine inches tall.

While he was larger and perhaps hit puberty a little later than most—resulting in a face covered in pimples on his wedding day at the age of twenty-seven—he had a personality that matched his youthful appearance. Perhaps that was why Ashley O’Boyle, a woman who could make every man fall to their knees, was happily ready to walk down the aisle and take the Gerber name that evening.

While Pat should have been able to name a million reasons to marry Ashley in his sleep—she’s beautiful, funny, kind, intelligent—I still had to convince him that the universe, and every species inside, was counting on him to stand at the end of the aisle and say I do. Plus, Mr. O’Boyle would have beat the living shit out of Pat if he followed his cold feet out the church door.

The wedding itself was nothing particularly special. He stood there at the end of the aisle. She walked down it. They said some impromptu vows which would likely be forgotten within the decade and finished with a kiss. That kiss, I will admit, was felt by all eighty people sitting in the pews that day. It was the kind of kiss I would only experience once in my life—on my own wedding day almost four years later, to a young woman named Maia Boerio.

The reception was when the party really began. Another fifty people arrived, and the alcohol was finally served. There was an hour before my best man speech, so I was not supposed to get sloshed just yet, but apparently, that didn’t stop me that night. I liked drinking, sometimes too much, and I thought no one would ever change that. I didn’t think I would let anyone ever change that.

But then, there she was.

Would you like another? Maia asked, pointing at the five drinks in front of me.

There was a slight twinkle in her intoxicating brown eyes. I couldn’t stop myself from saying yes before I realized just how beautiful she truly was.

Maia had short brown hair, ending just above her shoulders and tucked behind her ears on both sides. She was only twenty-five years old at that time and had been working for a few years as a waitress before she was promoted to supervisor and sucked into a contract of five more years.

I wouldn’t normally come out here and serve, but I was curious as to why a handsome man like you is biting his nails and slouched over a bar full of drinks rather than dancing with his woman.

She winked at me. That was the first time Maia ever winked at me. She winks at me often, even to this day, but that first wink put me in a trance that I truly think I have not been able to get out of since that April evening in 2024.

Her statement was hard for me to digest. My best friend had just gotten married, and what was I doing? I vowed not to whimper over my failed relationships too much that evening, but the whimpering had already begun, and I was only five drinks deep.

I…, I began, stumbling over my words. I don’t actually have a woman.

I find that hard to believe.

She slowly moved closer toward me, sitting on the very edge of the table and slowly placing my five glasses on her tray.

I was unsure of what to say. Just as I was about to speak, I became entranced by her freckles. They painted her face, and I studied them as though they had something important to tell me.

She caught me staring.

Is there something my left cheek can help you with? she aggressively investigated.

I began to stumble over my words again, attempting to provide an excuse that would not send the message that I was some sort of swine. I gave up when I saw Maia begin to laugh.

Scared you, didn’t I? she giggled. That was amusing.

Maia began to leave once she had all of my glasses on her tray.

Wait! I called after her, nearly falling over in my chair. If you don’t have to be in the kitchen, would you stay out here?

It was a total gamble. For all I knew, she did think I was some sort of swine. But I like gambling—just ask Pat. He and I blew eight thousand dollars each last year in Atlantic City. Pat and I thought it was a blast, but Ashley didn’t feel the same way.

Maia chuckled again, and I thought I had really blown it, but then she gripped my wrist and whispered, I will be back once I bring you one more drink. Maybe two.

You should probably make it three. I winked.

She smiled and went on her way. I thought I would see her again within a few minutes, but after fifteen minutes she hadn’t come back. I even checked the kitchen, but I couldn’t find her. As much as I wanted to see her again, I was really looking forward to those drinks.

I flagged down another waitress, and she brought me two more beers, which I promptly drank within the ten minutes before my speech.

I began by clanging on a third glass of beer for perhaps a few seconds too long, especially since everyone had already been staring at me since I was introduced an entire minute prior. I was off to a good start.

I started by explaining how Patrick and I had had a great time during the years before he met Ashley and was tied down—both in the relationship and in the bedroom.

The lovely couple’s parents didn’t find that one too funny.

I went on to describe some of these moments to the crowd, including the time Pat and I had painted the town red by literally spray painting much of the neighborhood with red phallic symbols just three years earlier. One of the houses turned out to be that of a retired priest.

The speech is blurry for me, and not just because I was beginning to feel the effects of those last two beers. I recall telling stories of Pat and I in our glory days, but of course, I made sure to tie it all into Ashley’s influence. She did make him grow up. I could have used someone like that.

My best man speech concluded with referencing many of the great times Pat and I had shared, but that his greatest times were yet to come alongside his beautiful new wife.

It was not bad for a drunk who could barely stand.

It was during the applause that I recall seeing a beautiful face standing at the back of the room. She wore a black pantsuit with a name tag. I would recognize those freckles anywhere, and that time, the freckles told me to follow her. I stumbled off the platform in her direction. A tray of beer passed by, and I, obviously, had to grab one, but when I looked up, she was gone.

I continued in the direction I had noticed her, but she was nowhere in sight. I asked a nearby waitress if they had seen the employee with the freckles, and they responded that she was likely just busy as the supervisor.

I slumped in my chair for a while, drinking and thinking. People began to leave after I watched the beautiful bride and her incredibly lucky husband leave for their honeymoon shortly after she threw the bouquet, and I hugged them goodbye. Some women went crazy over that cheap flower display, which was only bound to die alongside their dreams of finding true love.

The woman who caught it was twenty-three years old. She ran over to her then-five-month-long-boyfriend and showed him, informing him that he must propose. He broke up with her on the spot, and she spent the rest of the night crying into the bouquet.

I downed four more drinks to make a total of thirteen.

After my twenty-fifth pee of the evening, I returned to my seat and found a note placed on it. The note read, Dance with her.

I looked up and spotted Maia across the room cleaning up dishes from tables as more and more people filed out of the building and the music continued to play.

I swung my head around the room, checking if I would make eye contact with the person who had left me the note, but no one was looking my way. Even still, I figured one of Pat’s many friends or family members, who adopted me for many holiday dinners, was playing some kind of trick on me.

My drunken self had decided it was an intelligent idea to stumble over to Maia, tap her on the shoulder, and show her the note. She asked me where I found it.

It was on my chair. Wait, you didn’t put it there, did you? I asked.

She shook her head. Why would you think it was about me?

I didn’t know if it was, but I wanted it to be.

Maia hated cheesy lines, but apparently, that one worked. She wrapped her arms around my neck and pulled me close. We danced through four songs before we realized the first one had finished.

What’s your name? she asked, nearly at the end of our fourth song.

Finn Howell. And you?

Maia.

I don’t get a last name?

She winked again, putting me back under her spell, saying, You have to earn that.

The disk jockey was hired to play for another hour, even though only twenty guests remained. Maia and I spent the whole rest of the evening together. We danced to another two songs but then chose to get to know each other instead. I knew she was beautiful on the outside, but I would soon find out she was even more stunning on the inside.

Maia was one of those few people who had charisma bursting from her pores. She knew this, and she didn’t try to hide it. Her smile really did light up the room, and when she laughed, I laughed.

There are few people in this world who know they are going to marry someone the day they meet them.

I was not one of those people.

Maia and I seemed too different. Sure, she had the odd story of being youthful, but the truth is, she was very mature for her younger age. Yes, I was twenty-seven years old, and she was only twenty-five years old, but our maturity levels separated us by an amount I was uncomfortable with. Maia acted about forty-five, and I acted about twenty-two. I never thought we would work, but the more she put me under her charismatic spell, the more I thought about a second date.

I remember a story she told me about one of her first days as a waitress when she was twenty-one. She had not quite mastered the ability to balance multiple plates on her arms, yet she was sent onto the front lines on Valentine’s Day, one of the busiest days of the year.

As she was turning away from delivering water to a table, a man grabbed her arm and spun her around. She promptly dumped a bowl of scorching broccoli soup all over him by accident. As her first reaction, she jumped to grab napkins and also spilled a plate of fettuccini alfredo on him and a plate of pasta primavera on his wife.

The man was so unimpressed that he began throwing the food back at Maia, demanding coupons for free food, which they did not have, and then attempting to hit her. When Maia’s co-worker called the police, the couple ran off, but Maia was left with noodles in her hair and a scar on her heart.

She told me that night that she had a hard time returning to work the following day, but the restaurant gave her more training and kept her behind the scenes until she was comfortable. She left that restaurant six months later and began at the catering company she was working with during Pat’s wedding and is still at to this day. She became a supervisor six months prior to the wedding due to her strong work ethic, which impressed me.

Maia also told me about her favorite book, called The Last Beginning. I had this book in my rare book collection, though I sold it a few years later since we didn’t need two copies, and it shocked me to hear that Maia, too, had read it—and not only that, but she loved it.

Maia said she loved The Last Beginning because it was, essentially, about a young woman who saved the day. I wouldn’t see Maia as a feminist, but in this perspective, she loved the novel because of the heroic female protagonist who had control over her own life and her own actions.

This protagonist shaped the lives of the entire world, and Maia felt proud to love a book where a woman got to embody that narrative. Women in those narratives had been becoming more and more prominent as of 2024 and are especially prominent now, in 2028, but I was still glad to hear from such a progressive mind.

It felt like Maia told me just the one story that evening, but I’m sure I didn’t seem to be giving out too much information either.

I am a relatively private man. The only person who knows most of my stories is Pat, and that is because he lived most of them alongside me. Pat was my only friend for most of my life. He was there at age thirteen when my father tried to re-enter my life after eleven years of radio silence. I had tried to reach out when I was still a naïve child, but in my teenage years, I stopped calling him.

Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself. I kept these deeper inner facts a secret that first day, and I figured Maia had been doing the same, but she didn’t tell me the truth about her life until we were about to be engaged.

Now, look at us. Four years later, and I can’t even tell Maia about the series, especially not the sixth book. Maia would know what to do, though—she always does. She would tell me not to read it. She never would. She says she likes the mystery of life. Perhaps that’s why I haven’t asked for her opinion.

Chapter Two

As the reception began to wind down, I helped Maia with some dishes and put the leftovers into Tupperware to be taken back to her kitchen on the other side of the city. When her job was finished, she assigned a subordinate to drive everything back to the kitchen, so she was free for the night.

I had the bartender pour a beer and offered it to Maia, but she refused.

I don’t get drunk.

I smirked. It’s just one beer.

Yes, but one beer turns into five. Or thirteen, in your case.

If you don’t drink it, I will have to. And fourteen-drink-Finn can be a nightmare.

She took the beer and chugged it. I think it may have been that very moment I decided there was going to be a second date.

Another for the lady? I inquired, though it was mainly sarcastic until I heard her answer.

Make that five, she responded, wiping her mouth with her sleeve.

The bartender had already poured them before I questioned how she would drink all of them in time. She hadn’t thought of that. I quickly rushed into the kitchen and found water bottles. Pouring the beer into them, I asked her if she wanted to take them to a burger joint. I winked at her, and I think she became just as entranced with me as I already was with her.

It would be my honor, she replied with a smile.

She followed me outside before I realized we had both driven to the event. In most cases, I would likely have decided I was fine to drive home. I’ve never been in an accident and have only had a few charges for speeding, but I had never gotten a ticket for driving under the influence.

I am quite proud of one of my speeding stories. I was intoxicated at the time. It was in 2022, and I was twenty-five years old—probably eight beers deep and climbing. It was a sixty-kilometer-per-hour zone, which was ridiculous—down from an eighty zone just a month prior. I was going ninety-five.

I should have known the police would be patrolling the area, but my drunk ass didn’t seem to care. I was the soberest of the three of us in the vehicle, and I didn’t really feel intoxicated. The other two in the car were my friends Eric and Felix. We fell out of touch shortly after I met Maia. Had I told Maia this story the evening of Pat’s wedding, I probably would have tried to justify my actions. But right now, I would like to go back in time and beat my immature ass over the head.

I heard the sirens and saw the lights behind me, and had my friends hide the bottles. We drove with the windows down because we wanted the wind in our hair so it didn’t smell in the vehicle.

When the officer came to my window, I made sure to answer everything he asked with complete precision, and he left without suspicion of my drinking, but he still ticketed me for speeding. This wasn’t my first speeding offense. This ticket came to something in the three-hundred-dollar range—a real kick in the nuts. I think I must have felt invincible that night because this behavior continued for the next few years.

And then there I was, standing with a beautiful woman, drunk out of my mind, with her having had one and a half beers as well. I knew if I even suggested her driving, I would likely have never seen her again, and that wasn’t a viable option.

So, we walked. We walked for forty-five minutes before we found an open burger joint and stumbled in right before closing hour. It was almost three in the morning at that point, and Maia had obliterated the water bottles full of beer. I have to say, I was quite impressed.

I bought us the same burger from Papa Burger: double patty, extra bacon, ketchup, mustard, pickles, onions, and a splash of hot sauce. Maia rarely has hot sauce but told me she was trying to be adventurous with me that night.

And the adventure continued.

We talked for two more hours until it became incredibly cold, and Papa Burger was nowhere near another public building, so we couldn’t go inside.

I had already offered my coat, but she refused, instead nuzzling up to me and placing her head on my shoulder. Later she claimed she did so simply to keep warm, but I would always joke about how Maia went way too far on our first date.

I don’t think Maia found this joke very funny since she had been undeservingly called a whore throughout high school. About two years into our relationship, Maia told me she had nearly been raped in grade ten. The man, who I later punched without Maia knowing, was not only a pervert but a complete jackass if those two don’t already go hand in hand.

Ned Fron was the captain of the football team in 2015 and decided he was not already pleased with the many women he had previously got drunk and taken advantage of, so he added my dearest Maia to that list.

He invited her to a party, continuously gave her free alcohol, and pressured her into drinking it. For a woman who was rarely invited out, Maia was ecstatic to be at a football team party. She drank more than she had ever drank in her life—eleven beers. Previously she’d grown a tolerance to a maximum of five. Upon hearing the story, I was surprised she didn’t have to get her stomach pumped.

Ned brought Maia to a bedroom so she could get some rest, and he suggested helping her remove her clothing to feel more comfortable, but she said no. He insisted. This pattern persisted until Maia was so drunk and tired her mumbles were too slurred for anyone to understand her words.

Ned took this to mean yes.

Only the tip of Ned’s penis had touched Maia when another consensual—and sober, I might add—couple burst into the room and threw Ned off the passed-out woman on the bed. They found her wallet, took her home in a cab, and left her a note about what had happened.

To this day, Maia does not know who helped her in that room. She considers them heroes, even though they would not come forward as witnesses when Maia tried to have Ned charged.

The following day, Ned told his extremely well-respected football friends that Maia tried to take advantage of him and that she was into bondage as a dominatrix. Maia, a girl with few friends and no proof, had no way to deny the claims. This led to her near-suicide until she found The Last Beginning and became empowered by the woman in the novel.

When I first heard Maia’s story, I stopped making the joke about Maia going way too far on our first date. This is why she told me she would never get drunk anymore either. I guess she trusted me enough to have those drinks with me the night of Pat’s wedding and why she stayed with me through all the jokes about going too far.

Maia made me promise never to discuss Ned Fron. She said it wasn’t in her plan to have a child so early in her life. It always seemed as though that’s what scared her the most when she thought about Ned.

Sitting on the curb outside Papa Burger, I looked down at her with her head on my shoulder. She looked so warm. So comfortable. So peaceful.

I couldn’t help but think about Pat and Ashley, who were, by then, on the plane to Cuba for their honeymoon. I always had alcohol to keep me company, but I strangely quite liked the feeling of Maia cuddled close to me. It felt safe. I didn’t yet know just how dangerous my life would become shortly after our wedding.

I should get home.

There they were—the words I knew were coming but didn’t want to hear.

You’re right, I forced myself to say. It’s quite late.

She began to get up off the curb, and I realized just how warm I really was with her sitting close to me. I wanted to reach for her to come back, but I also really had to pee again and had to get all the way home still.

Do you live far from here? We could share a cab.

I was glad to hear Maia wasn’t quite done with our date, so I called us just one cab. Little did I know we lived in opposite directions. The charge cracked triple digits.

While we were waiting, she reached into my jacket pocket and retrieved the note from the reception, which read, Dance with her. She slipped it into her own pocket and whispered, Maybe you’ll get this back one day.

While I thought I was beginning to sober up, my drunk mind still did all my talking. Would you want to go on a second date sometime? I blurted out.

She giggled and said she would think about it.

The taxi ride could not have been slower.

Between the anticipation for Maia’s answer and the severe need to pee, I was ready to burst. We made polite small talk, but I made sure not to share information which would frighten Maia