Below The Surface

 

BELOW THE SURFACE

Seven Fables for a Man Who Never Left

Jhon lives alone.

Or at least, that is what he tells himself.

He lives inside a tired, yellowed flat where the clock is forever trapped at midnight, seven dead flowers wait in a cracked glass, and cigarette smoke hangs in the rooms like something that refuses to leave.

Every morning, Jhon gathers enough courage to imagine another life.

A life outside.

A life with people.

Friends.

Laughter.

Perhaps even love.

Every night, however, the same old ghosts return.

Fear.

Shame.

Desire.

Regret.

Sadness.

They know his name.

They know his memories.

And, more disturbingly, they seem to know what Jhon refuses to remember.

There is a door in the flat.

There are seven steps beyond it.

There is a woman who appears whenever Jhon begins to believe he might finally escape.

There is a pub called The Black Lantern.

There are letters he does not remember writing.

There are rooms that should not exist.

And there is always tomorrow.

Tomorrow, Jhon will leave.

Tomorrow, Jhon will find someone.

Tomorrow, Jhon will finally begin to live.

But tomorrow has a peculiar habit of never arriving.

Below the Surface is a dark collection of seven narrative fables about loneliness, shame, memory, longing and the strange architecture of the human mind.

Written in a haunting British-English poetic voice, the book moves between dark poetry, psychological horror, gothic fiction and surreal fable. Its world is filled with rain-soaked streets, smoky rooms, dying flowers, old pubs, bitter coffee, cigarettes, broken mirrors and the quiet humour of a man who has become almost too familiar with his own despair.

But beneath the poetry lies another story.

A quieter one.

A story hidden inside the numbers.

Inside the doors.

Inside the clock.

Inside the things Jhon remembers incorrectly.

Every chapter brings him closer to something he has spent years refusing to face.

And the deeper he goes, the less certain the reader becomes about where the flat ends, where the street begins, and where Jhon himself truly belongs.

Perhaps the ghosts are haunting Jhon.

Perhaps Jhon is haunting the ghosts.

Perhaps the door has never been locked.

Perhaps it was never a door at all.

Seven chapters. Seven steps. Seven memories.

And beneath everything Jhon believes he knows...

something is waiting.

Welcome below the surface.

Below The SurFace

About the Author

enitnatsnoC oãoJ is a Brazilian independent poet, writer and musician whose work lives somewhere between darkness and music.

His writing explores loneliness, memory, obsession, regret, love, psychological solitude and the strange beauty found in broken places.

Rather than writing darkness as mere decoration, enitnatsnoC oãoJ treats it as a landscape of the human mind.

His literary universe is populated by rain-soaked streets, dying flowers, cigarettes burning at midnight, abandoned rooms, broken mirrors, smoky pubs and characters who are never entirely certain whether they are escaping their demons or becoming them.

His work blends narrative poetry, gothic imagery, psychological introspection, surrealism and dark humour, often creating stories in which reality gradually becomes unreliable.

Influenced by the atmosphere of blues, nocturnal music and psychologically intense literature, enitnatsnoC oãoJ writes about the places people rarely admit they visit:

fear.

shame.

longing.

regret.

loneliness.

and the quiet desire to disappear.

Below the Surface is part of that literary world — a collection of seven dark fables in which poetry becomes a corridor, memory becomes a room, and the reader is invited to keep walking long after the lights have gone out.

Because, in the world of enitnatsnoC oãoJ, the darkest places are rarely underground.

Sometimes,

they are within us.