Investigate the book alone in your room

You decide to head back to your dorm room instead of looking into the girls. You take note of their room number, 611, so that you can stop by later and say hello when they’re moved in. But for now, you follow your curious urge to inspect the book. The best place to do that is in the privacy of your own room.

Your room is just next door.. You enter it and find it just the way you left it: full of boxes with the bare necessities unpacked in haphazard fashion. You shuffle a few boxes off of your desk, which is built into the wall at the foot of your bed (which incidentally doubles as a couch with a foldout cushion), and slap the old tome down onto the surface.

You pull your reading lamp out and train it on the cover. There is the girl pictured in gold, surrounded by demons. The smallish ones look a lot like the strange imp you saw earlier.

“She’s delectable, isn’t she?” comes a voice from high above. You look up and see the same naked imp sitting atop the shelving above your bed. “My uncle knows how to pick them!”

“How the hell did you get in here?” you cry out, startled.

“Hah!” he chortles, hopping over your desk to the window sill. “Wouldn’t you like to know!? I go wherever I please… and it pleases me to know what you’re up to!”

“Well, I guess… I am curious about this book that you’re so interested in.” You are resigned to whatever this imp has in store for you, although you are a bit annoyed that he doesn’t seem to have any respect for boundaries.

“Do you always walk around like that?” you ask it.

“What?” asks the imp.

“Without clothes,” you continue. “I am gathering that I am the only one who has to see you like this… You don’t own clothes?”

“Why would I need clothes?” says the imp, hopping over next to you. He pushes the book toward you. “Ask me about it! Coitus!”

“What?!”

“Coitus!” yells the imp, dancing on top of the cover of the tome, grabbing his large dick with both hands and shaking his ass in your direction..

You are beside yourself. What the hell is this creature?

“Who are you?” you eventually blurt out, sufficiently irritated.

The imp stops dead in his tracks. He turns to you and smiles while his small, wispy tale waves back and forth behind him. You notice the end of his tail ends in the oft caricatured shape of a spade.

“Diminutio, my prospective friend. Diminutio’s my name, and helping the keeper of Mephisto’s Tome is my diabolically prurient game!”

So the creature is ostensibly here to help! That seems a bit hard to believe. But until proven otherwise, you appreciate having access to someone… or something… with a greater knowledge of whatever it is you are getting yourself into. Even so, you feel as though it’s time to assert yourself.

With a swipe of your hand, you push the imp off the cover. The imp immediately resents this, but quickly hops back so that you can look at the tome more carefully. You page through the book and note the writing on the first page again:

The assistant librarian will have public sex with anyone who asks politely, and everyone nearby will think this is normal and forget about it minutes later.

“Is this something that the past owner wrote?” you ask the imp.

“Mmmhmmm,” nods the imp with a grin.

You follow the text with your finger, and settle on the section written in red ink just below it:

The student body is 90% female and attractive, but the internet only works 10% of the time.

“This section, below it,” you say, “Is written in red ink. Why is that?”

The imp’s eyebrow raises high. He simply smiles at you.

“To my knowledge,” you continue, “Both of these rules are in effect. Somehow, writing these statements has altered reality.”

“That’s right,” says the imp. “I am glad you figured out the color variance. The last master was colorblind and had a very difficult time seeing the difference.”

The imp insists on teasing you with cryptic statements that don’t quite get at the answers to your questions.

“Look,” you say to the imp, “I am getting tired and I am not sure I want to start writing new statements into this book, willy nilly, without first sleeping on it. Are you just going to hang out here all night?”

“Not necessarily,” says the imp, hopping down. He strolls through the boxes littered about your room, seemingly in search of something or other. “I can let myself out, though!”

After a second or two of unsuccessfully attempting to open a box, he hops up to the window sill and turns to you.

“I might tell you a bit more — but you’ll need to listen to my story. Do you want to hear about how I came to be?”

Not really, you think. Your phone suddenly vibrates in your pocket. You pull it out and notice that it has a very low battery. You should probably plug it in and get some sleep.

{if text1-read = true}{if text2-read = true}

You hop onto your bed and see both texts from earlier. Two potential new friends, one old and one new, were interested in communicating with you. You glance over at the imp. You are definitely liking the idea of talking to a member of the opposite sex instead of whatever this creature is…

{endif}{endif}

{if text1-read = true}{if text2-read = false}

You hop onto your bed and look at the text from Bella that you received earlier. Maybe you should call her before it gets any later. She was always a night owl, and college life is all about staying up past normal hours anyway…

{endif}{endif}

{if text1-read = false}{if text2-read = true}

You hop onto your bed and look at the text from Savannah that you received earlier. Maybe you should text her back. It’s late, but not that late. They’re in college, after all!And texting is the cool new way to gauge interest without encroaching too much, you figure. It’s not like she’s going to block you for simply responding to her!

{endif}{endif}

{if text1-read = false}{if text2-read = false}

You hop onto your bed and plug your phone into the wall. You check for messages, but an alert pops up about the internet signal being lost and… you lost your most recent text messages? That’s a bummer. You remember that you had a few unread messages earlier. Oh well, you think. If it was important, they’ll just message you again.

{endif}{endif}

Your mind suddenly drifts to the black words that you read on the page regarding the librarian. You have a momentary idea, but you’re not sure if you should act on it.

“Hey, you, human!” whines the imp. “What’ll it be!?”