The Last Librarian
The smell of new books? That's a distant
memory. Old books with dog-ears and yellowed pages and coffee stains are all I
know. Old books with flimsy, faded covers and dust and words unread for years
and years and years. As of yesterday, I have started eating the books for
sustenance, but I don't think the paper and ink is good for my body. They have
little nutrition to give. I never liked Dickens, so he will be the first to go.
I eat Great Expectations while sitting by a fire made from Dostoyevskys on the
third floor. By now I have used up all the varnished timber hand railings on
the stairs and balconies. I am glad for the change, as the fumes from the burnt
varnish made me light-headed and I almost fell two storeys down one time. I have
made a toilet section in fine arts, and use DaVinci to clean the excrement from
my backside.
I am the last librarian left in the world.
I spend every morning taking books off the
shelf and reading them. And I spend every afternoon sorting through the returns
and putting them back exactly where they belong. But there are always more
books in returns than those books I've taken myself. I think there is someone
else in this library reading my books. I did not read the Lord of the Rings
last Tuesday. I did not read Nineteen Eighty-Four two days ago. I did not read
the Hunger Games this morning. Yet they still appear in my returns pile. And I
think they're moving things around. Taking books from one shelf and putting
them on another where they don't belong. I go to bed on a stack of John Grisham
novels and dream about lawyers doing dangerous and exciting things. I wake up
and find Winnie the Pooh has been moved to the non-fiction section in between
the Mr. Men books and Harry Potter. Calvin and Hobbes turns up in philosophy.
That one seems about right. I pile up my books to read and eat this morning and
pluck Mein Campf from children's fiction.
My work is never done.
Copyright S.T. Cartledge 2012
