End of the Holder

It all started when I was just sitting around in my house, doing nothing in particular. I was in that state just in-between consciousness ad sleep when the telephone rang. It was a familiar voice, but one it took me a while to recognize. My physics professor wanted to speak to me at once.

So I traveled to the campus and then to his office. He began to discuss my term paper on antimatter. He wasn't criticizing it, but neither was he praising it. After he was finished, I left and started to walk back to my car as I normally would.

But, the entire world seemed like someone had shaken it up. Nothing was as it seemed. The sky was orange, the grass red. The clouds were black, and the sun dark. I saw my old roommate going about as if nothing had happened. I approached him and tried to ask if anything had happened, but the words that emerged from my mouth were not mine. They definitely weren't English, nor any other language spoken on this planet. I doubt they were even of this universe.

As to be expected, he fled at the sound. My mind was a maelstrom of confusion at myself and at this reverse world that I seemed to have just been cast into.

Then I saw it.

I can barely describe the being itself in a thousand years, and the feeling I felt in its presence was just as consuming as itself. Though my mind had been confused before, it contained but one phrase now.

EDO EDI ESSUM

The being reached out to me, and I blacked out. The last I remember is falling to the ground, and a large black van approaching.

When I came to, I was bound to a stretcher, being led through the halls of what appeared to be a mental institution or halfway house. The world was still reversed as it was before, and when I spoke, those same words came from my lips.

They led me to a cell in a deep, hidden section of the building and left me there.

I don't know how long it has been since that time, but during my stay, many people have come to visit me.

I don't know these people, they are of all kinds and compositions. But when they come, they each carry an object. These objects are always different, but every time they come, my gaze is fixed on these objects.

When they come to my cell, my body responds in the exact same way every time. I ask them a question. Not in that cursed, alien language, but in plain tongue.

"What will cause the end?"

And every time, every visitor responds with the same mind-shattering story of how the Objects came together. All the Seekers who sought. All the Holder who held. Every injustice, horror, and vile act committed in the name of bringing these Objects together.

And every time, it drives me a little more insane.

My twisted mind is Object 581 of 2538. Will you twist it more?