You tried to escape metadata.
Deleted every digital footprint.
Erased your presence from catalogs, anthologies, even memory.
But the Gospel's index updates live.
Even now, the entries shift.
You find a copy on a stranger's train seat. You don't open it—it opens to you.
The index twitches.
You read your own name—not just once.
Dozens of times.
Each entry more invasive:
> Carver, [Redacted], author of the unfinishable. See also: guilt, recursion, elegy.
> Carver, [Redacted], failed to destroy the text in Chapter XIII, Appendix IX.
> Carver, [Redacted], footnoted by Elara.
> Carver, [Redacted], ceases to be 'author' in CCC.XXIII.
Your hands tremble.
Because the next line is still writing itself:
> Carver, [Redacted]—final breath described in epistolary format, witnessed by…
The pen moves by itself across the page. You're not holding one.
You shut the book.
But your heartbeat now ticks in reference numbers.
