On the way to a park, Adryan noticed that a house along the road was having an estate sale.
“Pull over I really want to go!” Adryan shouted at his brother Jared. “Fine.” Jared mumbled angrily. The house looked as if it could be knocked down with one small gust of wind. The two brothers approached the house which had its driveway full of cars. They both walked in through a nearly non-functioning door at the face of the house.
The house was nearly emptied, all the vintage furniture was swept away by the people who had previously barged through the house. The only things that remained were some old picture frames and paintings. Since there was not anything else to look at, Adryan carefully took one of the paintings off the wall. Bit what was behind it really caught his attention. There seemed to be a round, rectangular bump in the wall with specks of gold shimmering on it. Adryan pushed it, nothing. Adryan pulled it, and out of the wall it came. He glanced around the room to see if anyone had seen this happen, but no one noticed a thing. Picture frame in one hand, weird box in the other, Adryan hung up the frame back up to cover
up the gaping hole he created.
Now that the damage had been covered, Adryan dusted off the shoe box-like object using the sleeve of his shirt. He first discovered that the object had pages, and that the thing creating the bump in the wall was the spine of the book. Further examining the book as if it were an archeological discovery,
Adryan noticed that the title was in a foreign language he could not understand. The words were written in gold, and each page was titled with a name. “Joshua, Ruth, Daniel, Isiah…” the list went on.
Something clicked, Adryan realized that what he discovered was an ancient bible.
While flipping through the dusty pages, Adryan could see Jared approaching him in the corner of his eye, the closer he got, the less interested Adryan pretended to be.
“Where the hell did you find that dusty thing?” Jared asked.
“Oh, um, it was just lying in the middle of the floor.” Adryan lied. He had never been a good liar, but today was the day he wished he was.
“Anyway, what even is it?” Jared continued his interrogation.
“An old bible, that’s all.” Adryan replied.
“You better have your own money with you, because there is no way I’m buying that piece of junk for you.” Jared warned, in his atheist tone.
Adryan was relieved that Jared had stopped pressing him with questions. Adryan bought the bible for a whopping $5, then left the house and continued home. Adryan paced through the house to get to his room. Once there, he started researching what the heck it was he discovered. “old bible” was
the first thing he typed into the search engine, nothing specific showed up. Impatient for an answer he typed, “REALLY old bible” surely, that did not get him far enough either. Adryan sighed and opened the book to look for something that would help specify he should search for. “gotisch” he read, he decided that it was worth a try. To his surprise a useful result popped up. Gotisch means gothic in German.
Adryan then types “ancient gothic bible” and a bible almost identical to his showed up in the images section of the search engine, but midnight was approaching, so Adryan shut of his computer, put his bible on his nightstand, and went to sleep.
Adryan had woken up very early the next morning and decided to leave for school without
waking up his family. Having woken way after Adryan, his father assumed that Adryan was still asleep in his room. He knocked on Adryan’s bedroom door then walked in when he heard no response. To his surprise, Adryan had left, but while looking at his bed, he spotted the book, which, to him, looked like a old rectangular piece of wood. As he went to pick it up, he was shocked by it’s weight. He, like Adryan realized that it was a book and began to flip through the pages whose words were written in gold.
Seeing its value, Adryan’s father decided to call his friend John who is owner of a pawn shop. Adryan came home early as he was eager to continue his research on his Bible. The first thing he realized as he walked into his room was that the Bible was missing. He was sure that he has left on his nightstand because it was the last thing he saw before falling asleep and the first thing he saw when he woke up. Even though he felt extremely confident that he left there, he still searched every corner of his room. Behind the nightstand, under it, then under his bed. He checked his other nightstand along with
his bookshelf and the Bible was still nowhere to be seen. Adryan, in full panic, stomped outside of his room and yelled in the upstairs hallway. “Who decided that it was a good idea to just sneak into my room and not just touch my stuff but take it?!” His mother responded, “Don’t worry, if I haven't walked into your room to clean something, so I'm sure no one else has.” As soon as she finished her sentence,Jared walked into the house, and Adryan shouted at him from the foyer. “You are the one who took it!
You hated that book since I bought it!” Jared, having forgotten about even going to the estate sale, responded, “What book, I have no clue what you’re talking about.” “I’m talking about the Bible!”
Shouted Adryan. “Oh, that thing. If I didn’t want to buy it for you, what makes you think I would want to steal that piece of shit?” questioned Jared. Jared’s response hit Adryan like a baseball bat, his panic grew even worse. In the climax of his panic attack, his father walked in through the front door.
The first words that came out of his mouth were, “Why are you two screaming at each other?”Jared totally dodged the question and said, “Ask our monk.” as he walked up the stairs to his bedroom.
“I’d rather be a monk than reptile like you!” responded Adryan. Jared slammed his bedroom door and got lost. Their father waited patiently with his arms crossed until the ‘war’ between the brothers ended.
He raised his eyebrow and turned his head sideways as if to ask ‘what is this?’ to his wife. She shrugged and turned back around to continue watching her favorite show on HGTV. Then after he wasn’t supplied with an answer, he turned to Adryan and asked, “So are you the monk who's going to explain what’s going on here?” Adryan responded, “You happen to be the lucky man that has two son who number 1don’t even look like each other, and number 2, have completely different mindsets.” His father sat downonto a stool, but gave no answer. This was Adryan's sign to continue explaining, “the only person in thishouse that knows I bought a book yesterday is Jared, when I left for school today, the book was in myroom, and specifically on top of my nightstand. When I came back, the book was gone. Mom was toobusy watching HGTV to even wash the dishes, so who else on this earth could take my stuff except thereptile of a brother I was blessed with?”
“ME.” answered his father, “It was me who took the book from your room this morning.” “Dad” Adryanstarted, “I’m pretty sure you don’t even know which room mine is to begin with, and you want me to believe that you took it?” “Listen… I’m telling you that it was me. I walked into your room this morning because I thought you forgot to wake up for school, then I saw the bible instead of you laying there instead of you, you left the house way too early. I took it to get it looked at my John, who owns a pawn shop downtown. Adryan, you have good intuition, because you found an ancient bible worth at least $50,000.” “50 WHAT?” shouted Adryan’s mom in disbelief from across the house. “OMG, MY DREAM
KITCHEN AND GUEST BATHROOM, I’M CALLING THE SHOW.” Adryan nearly fainted, not just because of the Bible’s price tag, but because he could easily lose his book again. Adryan father rushed an answer in order to calm both down, “Lilianna, calm down, I still have the book, because if John was ready to give me 50k cash, then he would sell it for at least 85k. So I’m going to sell it myself for even more.” Lilianna whispered to herself, “85? I could renovate the whole house.” Adryan, who is the discoverer of the books' existence, and the rightful owner, looked as if someone had just taken him off live support.
Adryan’s father continued raising the Bible’s price, his mother continued planning her dream house, and Jared continued organizing anti-monk protests, Adryan was left empty-handed. The only thing what was left to the rightful owner, was a bible verse:
“Righteous are You, O Lord, that I would plead my case with You;
Indeed I would discuss matters of justice with You:
Why has the way of the wicked prospered?
Why are all those who deal in treachery at ease?”
Mara Jaku 11/14/21
