A reader finds a footnote too small to see but too loud to ignore.
It pulses beneath the paragraph like a buried heart. No citation, no reference—just a sound:
> [inhale]
They press their finger to the page.
The book exhales.
Dust. No—ashes.
Not printed, but cremated ink. Remnants of redacted drafts, once loved, now burned for continuity.
The footnote grows.
It climbs margins. It chews through pagination. It rewrites Chapter I into a eulogy.
And still it breathes.
The reader flips back to the preface.
It's gone.
In its place, a living sentence, too warm to touch:
> "You weren't supposed to see this version. But then again, neither were we."
The Gospel is no longer printed.
It's ventilated.
---
APPENDIX LI: THE FORGOTTEN DEDICATION
At first, no one noticed.
But then every copy began opening to the same spread, even when bound differently. The dedication page no longer carried a name—it carried a scream.
Italicized.
Punctuated with ellipses.
