AN: I also posted this story on Wattpad, under the same username (actressen), so no, I am not plagiarizing myself. With that cleared up, enjoy!

Trump Ace

Chapter One: Of Books and Nightmares

"I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can't see from the center."

-Kurt Vonnegut

"Please, leave me alone," she cried, horrified by his face and yet unable to look away.

"Now, now, princess," he crooned, sticking the blade in her mouth, "you really aught to smile more."

With a sharp intake of breath, Antonia Cunningham awoke from her nightmare. She could feel the blood pumping through her veins, and her heart raced as if she had just finished a marathon. I really have to stop reading Stephen King before bed, she thought, glancing at the novel on her bedside table. A book did sound good, though, and she knew she wasn't getting any sleep anytime soon. She glanced over to her bookcase, a frown quickly forming on her face. Something tells me that Poe or Collins aren't much better. Sighing, she picked up her worn out copy of The Long Walk, figuring that if she wasn't going to be able to sleep, then she didn't need to worry about giving herself nightmares. She stroked her fingers down the tattered spine, feeling the numerous creases. She loved that about real books. E-readers just couldn't achieve that well-loved look, no matter how hard they tried. But no matter how many times she tried to explain this to her mother, or numerous others for that matter, they never understood.

Antonia had first laid eyes on a real paper book in the third grade, when Louisa Parker brought in a copy of a book written by her great-grandmother in the time before e-Readers. The book was passed around the classroom, and when it fell into Antonia's hands, she knew she was in love. The smell of the paper, the feel of the pages, the refreshing non-electronic-ness of it—she fell in love with everything about it. As the rest of the class obsessed over Johnny Collins's bunny rabbit, her mind was consumed with books. Why had she never seen one of these marvelous objects before?

Noticing that Louisa was too busy cooing over the rabbit to answer any questions about books, Antonia went over to Mrs. Stevens, who was reading something on an e-Reader. She figured that Mrs. Stevens was a teacher, which meant she knew stuff, and, anyway, she was old, which meant she was probably around when books were popular.

"Erm… Mrs. Stevens?"

Mrs. Stevens looked up, expectantly.

"Why do they not make books anymore?"

Mrs. Stevens furrowed her brow, looking thoroughly confused. "What on Earth do you mean, child? Of course they still make books!" She replied incredulously, gesturing to the e-Reader in her lap.

"No, no, Mrs. Stevens," Antonia paused, carefully considering her phrasing, "I mean real books, like Louisa's."

Comprehension dawned on Mrs. Stevens.

"Oh, you mean paper books!"

Antonia nodded enthusiastically.

"Well… to be honest, dear, I'm not terribly sure. I guess that e-Readers came along and people liked them better, so eventually they just stopped making them."

Antonia couldn't help but be a little disappointed. She had hoped Mrs. Stevens would tell her that they still made paper books, because she wanted her very own one terribly.

"So is Louisa's the only one left in the world?" she asked, suddenly feeling envious of Louisa.

Mrs. Stevens chuckled. "Of course not! They're not terribly common, but you can still find them!"

Antonia's eyes lit up.

"Really?"

Now, seven years later, Antonia had managed to work up quite a collection of books, 279 to be exact. Ever since her obsession started, friends and relatives, and friends of relatives, and relatives of friends, and everyone, really, started giving her whatever paper books they had collecting dust in boxes in their attics, namely hand-me-downs from older relatives. Not that she complained. Boxes of books were her favorites, because she never knew what she was going to find. Yes, many times all she found was dusty books, but sometimes she stumbled upon more interesting things. She had found twenty one journals, nine sketchbooks, four photo albums, and an autograph book, all of which she kept safely tucked away in a box under her bed. She also once found eighty two dollars hidden in a copy of the bible, and, on a less pleasant note, a rat carcass. But she didn't really like to talk about that.

Overall, Antonia loved the fact that all her books had once belonged to someone else. Occasionally she wondered what it would be like to own a fresh, new copy of a book, with a creaseless spine and pristine pages, but it was an idle fascination. The fact that someone else had read those pages meant, at least to her, that the book held not one story, but multiple: the story written by the author, of course, but also the stories of all the previous owners. These stories weren't carefully and meticulously written down in black ink, or even there in their entirety, but they were there. Sometimes they were no more than numerous creases in the spine, or dog-eared pages, but those were enough to remind Antonia that these people existed, and that they had their own stories. It saddened her to think about it, all those stories that were never told. All those stories that no one would ever know. She tried not to think about it, for that very reason, but failed miserably. It was just too fascinating to not think about.

While she adored them all, there was one book, for a reason she could not quite put her finger on, that caught her interest. It wasn't due to the story, which was actually just about as unremarkable as it could be: a collection of the brothers Grimm's fairytales. It was due to the rather nonsensical sporadic annotations and sketches in the margins, as well as two clumps of missing pages. Also, most interestingly of all, she found several scraps inserted in the pages, including a scrap of yellowing lined paper which consisted of a tally count of eighty three tucked in between pages 162 and 163, two ticket stubs from the film Affliction, and a receipt from Goodwill. Unsure of what to do with them, but unwilling to throw them out, Antonia kept them in a manila envelope labeled "L. P.", the initials she had found written in the inside cover of the book in question.

Something about the book made her nervous. She did not know what it was, or why it did, but she kept the book stashed safely away in the back of her closet, and never really spoke about it with anyone. She had tried before, only to find that the words seemed caught in her throat, as if she was physically incapable of speaking of it. While she found it curious, and somewhat concerning, she had never thought too much of it. There were always more pressing things on her mind. But now, awake in bed after yet another nightmare, she couldn't help but wonder about the mysterious book of fairytales sitting behind her closed closet doors, which filled her with a strange intoxicating uneasiness that she was unable to part with.