Patrick's Surfaces XII

The book now seemed more real than the room. The blue elms and red wooden bridge, the nasty gnomes and the worker monkeys, the danger, the passion, the puzzles, the hunt, Patrick's mind and Patrick's power, now, suddenly, with the coming of one clear memory, seemed more real than the front door, the computer, the desk chair, the empty whiskey bottle, the paper and glue and ink of the book itself.

I repeated my question to the unreal room, "How?" and was answered by nothing.

I opened the book to the last page and read:

You cannot read the last page of this book without reading the first and next pages of this book because the last page does not exist until you've created it from the second-to-last, the second-to-last from the third-to-last, the third-to-last from the fourth-to-last etc, starting with creating the second page from the first. Close the book and start at the beginning, dear reader, or this book cannot exist. P.W.

That was the last page of the book. I turned it to the right, opening the book to the third and second-to-last pages. The third was blank. The second had one line:

Thank you, Zachary, for coming back.

And then it had another line after it:

I'm sorry that you had to be torn about so.

And then another line:

I'm sorry it came to that.

The lines continued to appear, one at a time, the next after reading the last:

We were desperate. We needed you so badly. It took so much work , so much time, so many readers and their inventions, before we could find a way to you. By then, you had forgotten us. You would not have believed us had we shown ourselves to you as you had known us.

I could hear her voice in the words I read.