Belial’s Teachings by Vlad Tudosie

Val Penny ♦ February 17, 2021 ♦ Leave a comment

I am delighted to be part of the tour for Belial’s Teachings by Vlad Tudosie run by Love Book Tours. You have the chance to follow the tour this week.

The Blurb

Living alone and forgotten by almost all those he loved, life does not seem to have much in store for a depressed writer. That until one day, when a mysterious apparition from outside the physical world decides to show him new ways of thinking through intelligent and sometimes humorous observations that challenge the status quo, which will bring change to his life forever. A change that, as he will soon learn, comes first and foremost from within himself.

The Excerpt

I used to sit all day on a wooden chair that wasn’t even mine, at a desk that wasn’t mine, working on a notebook that I had gotten from work, so one might say that that also wasn’t mine. The only things that were mine were my ideas. I used to earn my bread by writing philosophical bullshit for a local newspaper. I had them send me my paycheck through the mailman, which I didn’t even sign for on my own. I ended up without the money a few times, but violently complaining about my situation with no real intent to reaching for a solution was well worth avoiding the whole ordeal of calling in the police and having to deal with another round of people having no real interest in my well-being and putting up a whole show to make me believe they actually cared. The only human interaction I had left was one sweet old lady in her 90’s who also happened to be my neighbor, possessing excellent abilities in terms of copying one’s signature and with a deep concern for a ‘poor, sick youngster’ like me. Missis Kowalski, who seemingly had both better physical and mental conditions than I did, would bring me all the groceries that I needed twice a month and helped me with paying the rent, utilities and other stuff of that sort. Must have been the Polish genes keeping her so strong and lively at an age by which most people would have already died for five times in a row, minimum. Even if I had asked her to buy me the cheapest products she could find at the store, at the end of the month, I would be left with just enough money to afford a new pair of socks. That was pretty much all the worth of my ideas. Survival and a pair of socks. I could decide to take the drinks out of the equation, but they perfectly fit the definition of ‘survival’ for me. Then, there was this particular cheap drug I had her get from my high-school ‘buddy’, just another person that had betrayed my trust in a way I would have never imagined, accusing me of being the school’s dealer in front of the principal. Funny how the tables turned and I had to resort to him for the same drug with which he had gotten me in trouble. Still, it was cheap and effective. I had no idea what it was, and I liked the way it could make darkness appear colored, looking like rainbows shot out of nowhere. A great percentage of it must have been dust, because I could never seem to overdose on it and die a heroic death, but I had begun coughing and sneezing quite often since using it. I knew my lungs weren’t in the best of shape because of it, but I thought I could compensate through the lack of smoking in my life. It was my belief, which I lived by, that men weren’t made for putting long things into their mouths. And, frankly, I could never grasp the concept of drawing something different from air into my lungs without then coughing up to the point where I would literally feel my guts working their way up into my esophagus.

The Author

Vlad Tudosie’s first story was influenced by a chain of events in my life which led to me trying to form my own perspective of life, as a means of coping with what was and what will be. He writes a little bit daily, to keep my mind engaged. I can just return to that certain page or paragraph later and make changes with a fresh perspective.

Just a pharmacy graduate who spent one year of his studies being dedicated to his writing project. Could be because pharmaceutical chemistry just wasn’t interesting enough, but it’s more likely a result of finding a very special way of expressing thoughts and feelings in making a book, and wanting to share them with others.