The Librarian
"Out, get out now, you little lout!" Eric stood rigid and pointed towards the door, Hitler-like, as the child ran, tears streaming down his cheeks, out of the library, out of the building, out of Eric's way.
The other staff looked at Eric in silence as he marched back to his desk. Eventually, Janice decided to speak up. "Was that really necessary? He was just chewing gum."
"He was making a noise with his incessant popping of bubbles. It was disturbing other readers." Eric said, through gritted teeth.
"What other readers?" Janice exclaimed, incredulous. "Except for the old man at the next table, who's wearing a hearing aid and probably wouldn't be able to hear him anyway, there's nobody else here."
Eric looked at her over his horn-rimmed spectacles. He was in a foul mood, and his unkempt mop of dark hair looked incongruous lying over his brow, as if he had stolen a scalp from a spotty teenager and stuck it to his own head. "Alright, he was disturbing me! Misses Tenney, I ask you to remember this is MY library, and if people want to use it, they follow MY rules."
Janice glared at him, before turning, shaking her head at the other staff, and walking, pacing, striding away to finish cataloguing the newly arrived books. None of them liked the chief librarian. Janice and Mary were senior staff, who had worked at the library nearly as long as Eric. They were settled and secure in their positions, and felt able to challenge Eric when the occasion rose, which was often. Jimmy was the junior. He had worked at the library six months now, and still felt intimidated by the older man. Nonetheless, each and every one had got a grasp of Eric's character, and despised, hated, detested him. When he screamed at customers for talking, they would clamp their jaws; when he refused to let out a book because a customer had too many late returns, they would gasp; when he loomed over children, waggling his finger if they so much as giggled, the staff would cross their arms and glare at him. Nothing changed his mean-spirited ways; any opposition to his methods was met with a firm affirmation that this was his library. The staff felt frustrated, powerless, ineffectual in the face of his belligerent malice.
The atmosphere was leaden. The recent incident with the child, and the earlier standoff between Eric and a regular customer, who had intentionally whistled while reading one of the daily papers, had created a tension, a strain, a pregnancy, which affected everyone in the library. Seemingly oblivious, Eric erected himself from his chair, and stalked to the classics section to tidy up the shelves.
Eric ruminated over the breaches of decorum at the library, while he straightened the books with a loving hand, and swapped those out of order. He hated the way people took liberties. A library was for reading; there should be absolute silence, a respect for the abundance of amassed knowledge contained on the shelves. His beautiful books should be revered, honoured, worshipped. The smallest sound irritated him beyond belief. Even the whisk of pages turning made his spine tingle with ire. He felt as tense as a drum as soon as he entered the doors of the library, the place he loved, and hated; loved it because books were his life, hated it because the public had to come in. He was at his happiest when the library was empty. His daily routine included a thirty-minute relaxation, once the doors had been shut, and the other staff had left. He would sit in the silence and soak up the lack of noise. Putting these thoughts to one side, he focussed and continued to caress his lovely books.
It wasn't until he had reached the sixth bookcase that he realised the bookshelf continued. He knew, intimately, every shelf, every book, every section in this library. The classics section only had six bookcases. He turned, slowly, to his left. The shelves went on, on, on into the distance. Fear. Trying to remain calm, he turned to look to his right. Again, the shelves disappeared to a diminishing point. Dread. Stunned, Eric stood back, turned completely around and looked behind him. The opposite shelving did the same in both directions. Panic. Where had the library gone? Why was he stood in a corridor of books with no end? Hysteria.
"Oh God, help me!" He began to run along the shelving. "Janice? Mary? Anyone!" He was sobbing now. "What's happening? Where am I? Help me somebody pleeeease!" Running, fleeing, hurtling, all Eric could see were the shelves fading into the distance. There was no end. Chest heaving he slowed, barely able to contain the shaking, quivering, shuddering terror inside. "Books, too many books. What have I done to deserve this? What is this? I don't understand, I don't understand. Please, please, somebody, what is going on!" Then he noticed a gap in the shelves. Slowly, barely breathing, he walked up to it and peered round the corner. There was a short, darkened, section of bookcases, and then another section at the end, running perpendicular to the opening. With trepidation, he walked through into the shelving beyond. He found himself in another corridor of bookcases, identical to the last one. His head began to hurt, his mind jangling with fright, alarm, horror. He walked, unsteadily, in the opposite direction to the way he had run in the first place.
After some time, he came across another opening, on the far side of the corridor; this was, once again, lined with books and lead to another endless bibliophilic corridor. A word popped into his head. Maze. All his life he had relished books, the smell, the feel, the wonder of them. They had been his first love, and his last. He had never married, preferring instead to bury himself in various novels. Nobody had ever been able to get close to him. Now the books pressed in on him like ravenous vultures.
Close to passing out, and completely numb with terror, he finally walked into the centre of the maze. He knew it was the centre because it was a large, open, square, completely surrounded by bookshelves that rose as high as the corridors had been long. As he peered into the vertiginous heights, he felt light-headed, overwhelmed, paralysed. Who owned this library?
"Me."
Eric span to face the source of the voice. Confusion. He hadn't spoken aloud, the voice had replied to his thought. Then he saw the creature. He thought it was female, but he couldn't be sure as the massive bulk of its body disguised all gender clues. It shuffled, like a gargantuan penguin, towards him. A wide grinning mouth covered its face, with tiny, pig-like, eyes nestled above it. There was no apparent nose, just a couple of holes burrowed into the flabby flesh, wobbling, shifting, rippling over its face.
"Who are you?" Eric finally managed to croak, through a tense, dry, nervous mouth.
The creature laughed, a horrendous turgid, gurgling, revolting sound. "I am the librarian." The grin got wider. "And you are disturbing my peace."
"But, but, but" Eric's voice was choked off as the librarian grabbed him by the throat, with a podgy, stumpy-fingered hand, and lifted him off the floor. He tried to protest as the librarian drew a gigantic needle and thread from the folds of the cloak that covered its body. But Eric was powerless to speak in the iron grip of the monster. He did, however, manage one final scream as the needle pierced his bottom lip, then the top, drawing the unbreakable chord behind it. The librarian, still grinning, sealed, forever, the offending organ.