There Is No Way Out. Andrew Zolt

customs. A cheap price for this kind of power. Cole knew – it would pay for itself many times over. People had always paid well for death. Only now, death was cleaner. Quieter. No bullets. No evidence. He only needed to write the name.

      He found his first job quickly – a businessman he knew was swindled out of ten million by a fraudster. Two days later, the face of the swindler appeared on a new page.

      The businessman paid generously – hundreds of thousands.

      Cole bought a house – cozy, with a fireplace and thick carpet, nestled in a lakeside village.

      The clients found him themselves. Sometimes they couldn’t even look him in the eye. They would simply speak the name and give a description. Cole would write, and wait.

      Sometimes the portrait would appear within the hour. Sometimes not until midnight, when every lamp in the house had gone dark.

      He had become a master. He wrote slowly, with a strange reverence, as if the way he shaped each letter decided the balance between life and death.

      And then, one day… He opened the book. And froze. One blank page. The last one.

      Only it wasn’t blank anymore. Line by line, his own face was materializing.

      The right cheekbone. A lock of hair. The chin. Only the left eye and the lips remained.

      The book slipped from his hands. The dry paper seemed to pulse. It was alive.

      He tried to tear the page out – it wouldn’t budge. He tried to burn it – the book refused to catch fire. He drowned it in the lake – it was back the next morning, dry as ever, lying neatly on his bedside table.

      He knew. He understood.

      At the bottom of the page, the writing appeared, clear and final: “He who inscribes others shall be the last inscribed.”

      He closed the book. Slowly. And for the first time in ten years, Cole wept. He stared at the page where his face was almost complete. The final stroke appeared – a faint shadow under the left eyelid. He couldn’t move. His body filled with lead, like the strings controlling him had been cut.

      Cole felt himself slipping away. But not the way people described it – no tunnel, no light, no peace. Only disintegration. His identity crumbling like a house of cards in a storm.

      Was he in his body? The book? The shadow on the wall?

      And then – the page stirred.

      The portrait where his face now lay etched wrote itself. Ink rose from within the fibers like blood from a deep wound:

      “Do you want to live? Add new pages. Kill someone. Every person is a new page. You filled a hundred. Now you have to add the same number of blank pages here. Each blank page is one person you killed. Kill. Or die.”

      He read it again. And again. First in disbelief. Then in horror. Then in grim, silent acceptance.

      Cole looked deep inside himself.

      And realized – he wasn’t ready to die. He had suffered too much. Lost too much. Fought too long. Been beaten by life again and again. And only now had he found true power.

      Why should he surrender?

      He slammed the book shut.

      His hand moved stiffly, but it moved. His body obeyed, like a machine sputtering back to life. The nerves returned, sluggish but steady, like water trickling back into a parched riverbed.

      He stood. Dressed. Pulled on gloves, tucked a knife into his belt, grabbed a flashlight.

      There was no rage in his eyes. No fear. Only resolve.

      The first was the woman who had stood in line with him at the supermarket. A woman in her forties, laughing loudly into her phone. He followed her into a dark alley. One strike. Silent.

      He trembled – but not from fear. From something else. Awareness.

      The blood flowed slowly. There was something almost sacred in it.

      When he returned home – the book was already waiting for him. Where his own face had been – now there was a new blank page. Just one. Fresh. Slightly damp, as if it had just been born. Thus began the new count.

      He didn’t kill randomly. He chose. Weighed.

      And each time, the book rewarded him with a new page. Each life taken gave him back a piece of himself.

      He felt no joy. No triumph. Only duty. A vow. One hundred lives for his own.

      The hundredth person was a girl. Almost random. He caught her near the station.

      It was late. A light rain misted the streets.

      She was walking fast, her eyes on her phone. He struck – swift, precise, as always. It was all as usual: A blow to the head with the hatchet.

      He returned home. The house had long since turned into a tomb – a grey crypt where the air smelled of paper, blood, and fear.

      The book was waiting. He opened it. The page began to fill: the outline of a face, a forehead, hair, lips, eyes.

      And then he froze. He staggered back. Stepped forward again. Rubbed his eyes.

      No! No, no, no!

      The face on the page – Sophie.

      He hadn’t seen her in six years. Not since the divorce. Since the horror with the paralysis. Since he had disappeared from his daughter’s life.

      He hadn’t recognized her at the station. She had changed. Grown. Matured.

      And he… he—

      “No… It’s impossible… I would have known… I would have…”

      He hurled the book against the wall.

      It didn’t open. It simply lay there, closed – as if it had turned its back on him.

      He wept. Truly. Tears poured from him like blood from a wound – with unbearable pain.

      He stopped eating. He didn’t turn on the lights.

      The book lay in the corner, almost alive, almost watching.

      Sometimes at night he could hear it – pages rustling softly, all by themselves.

      On the third day, he found the strength – he opened it.

      Her face was still there.

      But now there was a line beneath it, just like always. Only now, the words were different:

      “You killed to live. Now live with it. Or become a page.”

      He grabbed a knife. Pressed it to his throat. His hand wouldn’t move.

      “Why?.. Let me… Please!”

      And he understood.

      The book would not let him go. Not through death, not through repentance.

      On the fourth night, Cole woke up to the sound of crying. Soft, distant – as if someone was weeping in another room.

      But the house was empty.

      He got up and walked barefoot down the hallway. Silence. Darkness.

      Only the book lay on the table, as always – open.

      He stepped closer.

      And then he heard it. A daughter’s voice: familiar, beloved.

      “Daddy… Daddy, please… stop. Don’t let it take more…”

      He recoiled.

      “Sophie?” he whispered. “Is that you?”

      The book answered with a dry rustle. Its pages turned on their own.

      A new page.

      His brother’s face – the brother he hadn’t seen in twenty years. Then his childhood friend. Then an old teacher, the