Untitiled

         “So, you’re the expert. What do you think?” Mac Warren peered at the old man.
         Gideon brought the ancient text to his nostrils, and closing his eyes, he breathed in. “Exquisite.”
         “Tell me, Gideon. How much is it worth?”
         “I’ll have to finish authenticating it, of course, including dating it, but given this initial inspection, I’d say, a million, a millon-two.”
         Mac whistled. “Well, that’s just fine, then, isn’t it?” Mac stepped aimlessly around Gideon’s bookroom, mentally making plans on what to do with the money.
         “Of course,” Gideon continued, “we’re talking monetary value. If we’re talking intrinsic value, the book is priceless.”
         Mac turned. “How so?”
         Something caught Gideon’s attention and he switched on an ultraviolet light. It cast an incandescent light on the yellowed, fragile paper. He moved closer to inspect a page with strange symbols. “You have no idea what you have here, do you?”
         “What are you talking about, Gideon?”
         He did not respond immediately. He took a small brush from a cup of tools on the worktable and brushed away at something on the page. “This is ‘The Book of the End of Days’. It tells how the world will end.”
         Mac’s eyes widened, incredulous. “It does what?”
         “It describes the end. The Apocalpyse.”
         Mac looked at Gideon one second longer and then burst out laughing, but then stopped when he saw that Gideon was serious. “You don’t really believe that, do you? How does it start?”
         “You kill an innocent and then mark the book with his blood.”
         “Oh yeah? What are you going to do, Gideon? Who are you going to kill first—“
         Gideon shot him in the face. When his body crumpled to the floor, Gideon reached down and covered his hands in Mac’s blood.
         “Welcome to the Apocalypse.”