RiceGum and the Man in the Book [Chapter 3: The Book]

Halloween is today, so I thought I'd share this nice little story I wrote up about 3 weeks ago with you.
Previous chapters:
Chapter 1: The Content Cop
Chapter 2: The Pistol

Spoiler: Chapter 3

Chapter 3
The Book

1 DAY LATER


"Sir, do you think, p-perhaps, we should cut out the part without the beat at the end? It's... it's kinda shit."

"IT DOESN'T MATTER. AS LONG AS THE DISS TRACK IS OUT, YOUR FANS WILL BECOME SUFFICIENTLY UNINTELLIGENT, AND I WILL ASCEND."

The diss track was finished. All that was left to do was to upload it, then the Man in the Book would ascend, and RiceGum could return to his normal, pathetic life.
Of course, Rice wouldn't let this happen. He needed the Man in the Book to write lyrics for him, so he could keep making shitty diss tracks and claim that he has no ghost writer. He needs it to know how to manipulate his audience into thinking he's a god. He needs it to be rich and to avoid paying his taxes.

"BESIDES, YOU KNOW, NO MATTER HOW GOOD THE DISS TRACK IS, YOU'RE NOT GOING TO GET OUT OF THIS HOLE. THERE'S NO WAY YOU CAN JUSTIFY ALL THE SHIT IDUBBBZ EXPOSED YOU FOR DOING IN A 3 MINUTE RAP."

Rice was aware of this. He didn't want to make a diss track against iDubbbz in the first place, because he knew it would just dig his grave deeper. He'll probably meet Leafy on the way down there. But he had to make an excuse for visiting the Book.
However, he only now realized how bad this diss track truly was. He's fat-shaming H3H3 in this - what does he have to do with the Content Cop, except that he had a cameo in iDubbbz's diss track? There were other YouTubers there, too, but Rice didn't know their names. They were probably all irrelevant. But the lyrics themselves... Why were they so bad? The Man in the Book never wrote this kind of horseshit. Was the Man in the Book losing its grasp, or did it simply want Rice to go out on a terrible note?
Either way, Rice wouldn't let this happen. He needed the Man in the Book. It was the only thing that allowed Rice to get to this place.

"RICE, CAN WE PLEASE JUST UPLOAD THIS PIECE OF SHIT? I'D LIKE TO ASCEND TONIGHT."

"Sure, w-whatever."
The little stuttering that Rice still did to appear afraid was mostly fake now. In his mind, he had a plan. A plan to make sure the Man in the Book will not ascend.
He wasn't sure if it was going to work. He hadn't experimented with the Book at all. But he had to do something.

Rice began uploading the video. He turned to the Man in the Book.
"Sir, what will you leave behind for me to go on?"

"YOUR MANSION, YOUR FAKE MODELS, YOUR MONEY. I THINK THAT'S FAIR."

"But... Who will write the diss tracks?"

"NO ONE WILL. FORGET ABOUT THE DISS TRACKS. THEY'RE A DEAD TREND. THEY ONLY MAKE YOU GO DOWN LOWER. IN CASE YOU HAVEN'T NOTICED, IDUBBBZ PROBABLY ONLY MADE A DISS TRACK TO PARODY THE AMOUNT OF DISS TRACKS YOU'VE DONE IN THE PAST."

"And what about my taxes?"

"DO YOUR TAXES. I'M LEAVING YOU WITH ENOUGH MONEY TO PAY YOUR TAXES UNTIL YOU'RE DEAD."

"What about my audience? How will I manipulate them without you?"

"MAYBE YOU SHOULD STOP. TELL THEM THE TRUTH. TELL THEM THAT YOU'RE A FRAUD. MAYBE THEN PEOPLE WILL APPRECIATE YOU FOR YOUR HONESTY."

The Man in the Book gave a chuckle.

"NO, THAT'S... THAT'S NOT HOW IT WORKS. JUST... JUST FORGET ABOUT YOUR CHANNEL, RICE. LIVE A NORMAL LIFE. BE A NORMAL PERSON."

A normal life. A normal person. Rice hated normal people. Those poor simpletons that don't manipulate any children into loving them. No one loves them. No one sucks their dicks.
"I don't want to be a normal person."

"TOO BAD. YOU WERE BORN SO INFERIOR THAT YOU HAD TO CONSULT THE BOOK, AND THUS MADE YOURSELF LOOK SUPERIOR TO OTHERS."

The Man in the Book paused for a moment, its rigid grin slightly twitching.
"What? What is it?" Rice asked, confused.

"I... I APOLOGIZE. I HAD A FLASHBACK."

A flashback? Rice never knew much about the Man in the Book, but this sudden humanity in it was... unsettling.
The video was done uploading. All Rice had left to do was to press Publish, and it would all be over.
So he did.


Within ten seconds, it already had thousands of dislikes. It didn't matter, though.

"THAT'S IT. THE PACT HAS BEEN SEALED. YOU SHALL LET ME ASCEND NOW."

Rice and the Man in the Book descended down the ladder under the dusty trapdoor in the library. When they returned to the dungeon, the Book was still waiting there, on the pedestal.

"DO IT," the Man in the Book ordered.

Rice was hearing the voices again. He didn't know what they were saying, but he could almost make it out.
"How... How do I do this ritual again?" Rice asked. The instructions were usually written sloppily on the pages of the Book, but this time, there were only names on it.

"LISTEN TO THE VOICES."

Rice listened. They were so coherent... he could almost understand them...
One of the voices was louder than the others.

"goat... blood... ink..."

Rice took the milk carton of Icelandic goat's blood and the pen he used to write the now non-existent TV's broadcasts. He emptied the pen's ink cartridge and refilled it with the red liquid.

"draw... circle... last... page..."

Rice opened the last page of the Book, which was completely empty, and drew a large circle on it with the goat's blood.

"write..."

Rice then heard a few odd words. He knew they were in an old, dead language that no one has been using for millennia. But somehow, he understood every one of them, and wrote them down inside the circle. His eyes were rolled back in his head, staring into the divine. He couldn't see what he was writing.
When he finished the incantation, his eyes rolled back and he vomited a liter of blood out.
He tilted his head as high as he could, and saw that the circle and the inscriptions in it were glowing.

"THAT'S IT. I SHALL ASCEND NOW."

The Man in the Book was moving towards the Book, its arm forward, reaching for the circle Rice had drawn.
When the Man in the Book's bloody hand was inches from the circle, Rice closed the Book shut and stared the Man in the Book in the eye.

"WHAT... WHAT ARE YOU DOING?"

Rice took out a knife from his pocket and threw it with all his force at the Man in the Book. To his horror, it didn't leave a scratch on the creature.

"RICE, YOU MORON, WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING?!"

Rice was out of options. That was his only plan, and now he had realized how fucking stupid it was.

"YOU CAN'T STOP ME FROM ASCENDING, RICE. THE PACT HAS BEEN FULFILLED. YOU'VE DONE THE RITUAL. THERE'S NO REVERSING IT. TONIGHT I ASCEND."

Rice thought for a moment. There was no way in goddamn hell that he was going to live a normal life now. He manipulated thousands of people. He threw away his real friends for money. He shot a rape victim.
So, without thinking, Rice grabbed the Book and yelled, "Not if I burn this fucking Book!"


The Man in the Book's grin disappeared. Its eyes were fixed on Rice, and Rice stared back. In them, there was something Rice never saw before. Was it fear?
"T-That's right! I'll burn the goddamn thing in the kitchen, I'll destroy it!"

"YOU DARE?!" it howled, towering over Rice.

The Man in the Book's voice was slightly quivering yet confident, as if he was unpleasantly familiar with this situation.
"I DARE! What the fuck are you gonna do about it? Huh? What CAN you do about it?"
The Man in the Book shot a bloody arm toward Rice, and Rice used the Book as a shield. The creature was screaming. Rice watched in shock as its hand melted into black dust.
"You can't touch the Book!" Rice was the one grinning now.
He skipped the Man in the Book and started hastily climbing the ladder.

"NO, BUT I CAN TOUCH YOU!"

And with that, the Man in the Book started towards Rice, threatening to kill him.
Rice was climbing up the ladder as fast as he could, but he knew the creature was faster than him. When he got to the trapdoor, the creature grasped his $100,000 shoes and began pulling them down. Its flaming skin burned through them, scorching Rice's left ankle. He screamed in pain. He was holding the surface of the library as hard as he could, but he knew the Man in the Book was stronger. Rice took off his shoes and the creature fell down, screaming in a thousand voices.
Rice went through the trapdoor and closed it behind him, Book in hand. He stumbled towards the kitchen and turned on the oven, but to his horror, the power was out. He looked for other ways to make a fire, then spotted the clothes of the murdered rape victim. Hastily, he searched through them, and found an odd plastic stick with a metallic end. He grabbed it, and immediately felt a flaming hand grasp his throat. The Man in the Book was holding Rice from below, choking him. Its grin was back.

Rice touched a button on the plastic stick and the metallic end lit a strong fire. The creature was distracted by the technology. "WHAT MAGIC IS THIS?"
"It's called an anti-pervert flamethrower, bitch." With that, Rice slam dunked the Book of the Dead onto the flames, scorching his wrist in the process.
The Man in the Book screamed, melting down into bits of black dust. Its grasp was lost, and Rice fell onto the floor.
The Book itself sizzled as it was burning. A black ooze was coming out of it.
The flames were now high as the ceiling. Rice panicked, rushing to grab a fire extinguisher, but then a thought hit his mind:
Let it burn. Let it all burn. My mansion, my computers, my money. Let me turn around and look at the life I've been running away from all these years.

But as he turned to leave, the flames died out. The black ooze was still coming out of the Book. It was forming a pool on the ground, from which an arm was coming out.
"Oh shit," Rice muttered. The face that followed was unfamiliar to him, however. This creature wasn't red or bloody. It looked like a man. A big nose and short, black hair, with real skin. The man stood to his feet and reached for a handshake.
"Hello Rice. Nice to finally meet you in the flesh, as he says." He spoke like a normal man.
"Who... who are you?" Rice responded.
"You called me the Man in the Book, in your head that is. My name is Antonio."
Antonio... Why was that name so familiar?
"Antonio? SoFloAntonio?" Rice stammered.
"Yes, of course. Anyway, you better replace me before problems arise."
"W-what?"

Antonio walked over to the partially burned Book and placed it face-up.
"Antonio, we've both been in the YouTube business for a while, how come you were the Man in the Book all along?" Rice stammered.
"Well, you see, Rice, I haven't actually been the Man in the Book for 6 years. I've only been for about a year and a half. A different person, someone I think called George, was before me. After you stopped meeting him in 2011 someone found it and threw it away, and it found its way to me.
"I had been consulting the Man in the Book regularly, like you were supposed to. He aided me in creating the stupidest channel on the internet, and before he ascended, I burned the Book. Unfortunately, he had tricked me, and wanted me to burn the Book on purpose, because that is the only way he could, er, 'ascend'."
Rice was taking this all in slowly.
"You tricked me too?!"
"Rice, I didn't trick you. I thought that the ritual you performed was a safer way of doing it, but now I realize that there is no such thing as ascending. Once you're the author, you can never stop writing."

Rice was still confused. "So how did you become the Man in the Book?"
"After destroying the Book, George had to create a new one, since there were many people who were supposed to be dying at that point who weren't. When he created the new Book, he made me the author, and 5 days ago, he returned the Book to your dungeon".
Rice shivered as he recalled a familiar man covered in a black hood coming out of his mansion 5 days ago, with long, blonde hair and two tiny eyes. Was that George, the previous Man in the Book?
"Anyway, you know what this means, right?"
Rice took a moment to put two and two together, then realized his fate. He didn't want to say.
"It's time to start writing a new Book of the Dead. With a brand new author."
Antonio placed the Book on the counter. "Now be a good boy and get in the Book."
Rice moved to run, but his legs were locked. All he could feel was that he was staring at his new home in the pages of the Book. As he moved closer, Antonio said something but it was already from another world. The color of the pages became his field of view. His muscles were twitching madly as he transferred between dimensions.

When he could open his eyes again, Rice found himself in a cold cave sitting in front of a carved pedestal, on top of which sat a copy of the Book of the Dead, with a familiar pen in his hand. He became aware that he was writing names in the Book. These were all the deaths in the world as they were happening.
Rice wondered about his YouTube channel. What would happen when all his fans would notice he was missing? Then he realized, that didn't matter. Nothing there mattered anymore. The mortal realm was nothing but a speck of memory in him now; A place that he barely knew, and would soon easily forget. L taken.