Quiet and indifferent, the crest of morning began to build with a lazy amble upon the horizon. The mud yellow of sunrise filtered across Balendup, illuminating the chaotic mess of a third story apartment and a ritual left abandoned. Blood, still damp on the kitchen table, stagnantly reflected a small sun dog onto a patch of faded wallpaper as dark wisps of some hidden menace lingered in the air.
Locked in Marla’s sock draw lay an inanimate copper penny that, due to the aforementioned botched apocalypse, now contained one human soul. A soul who over the last six hours had discovered that not only could he only count to 10,083 but that coins are completely incapable of sleeping.
Bored beyond comprehension and after finally working out the thread count of a nearby sock, this soul, Andrew, decided to try yelling again. ‘Marla? Are you still there? It’s not your fault this all happened’ he paused and strained what a coin would approximate to be his ears.
A sniffle! Quiet, but definitely one of a person who had been up all-night crying. ‘Whenever I was sad mum used to tell me that “It should be comforting to know that, from this moment, everything will either get better or get worse but never ever get both” um… I don’t think it really helps here, bu-’ His ramble was abruptly cut off by a brief flutter followed by the force of a book slamming into the sock draw -In this moment Andrew offered a short prayer to whatever Norse god was responsible for Ikea’s structural integrity.
‘You’re not helping Andrew!’ said Marla emerging from the tangle of doona covers that she had burrowed into with hopes of hiding from her failure. Her robes, grubby from burying a corpse in the bush last night, were dumped on the bedside table[1]. ‘I ruined my only shot. The ritual works once! The soul chalice only works once!… You looked so innocent.’
‘I think I still am technically innocent,’ The impact of another book rocked the sock draw with punctuation.
‘Don’t make me put you into a vending machine coin!’
With a short mope and breakfast out of the way Marla was ready to try leaving the flat.
Two tear-filled regressions later, the failed cultist was on her way downtown carrying a blood-flecked grimoire under her arm and a melancholy in her step, while Andrew, unwillingly fabricated into a necklace, bobbed along with her.
‘What now?’ he began, unable to let quiet moments sit still.
‘Now? Well, “now” we go to the library, steal their Wi-Fi, and read depressing literature. What we do about the fact that I’m a failure that can’t sunder reality? I don’t know, I’ve tried crying about it’ kicking an unsuspecting rock across the road she shifted the heavy tome to her other arm. ‘There has to be something I can do, it’s unfair that you only get one chance to sever the membrane of matter and time. This thing says nothing about do-overs’ said Marla, sulking as she attempted to scratch some dried blood off the book’s cover.
Being that it was a Saturday, and an off week for the bridge club, Marla knew that library should be pretty much empty at this time of the day, and with a bit of luck she could take the short walk downtown without really having to talk to anyone. But yet the looming specter of social angst awaited her arrival as she neared the library’s automatic doors, a personal demon that she had yet to conquer, that of the book return.
Steeling herself with a deep breath Marla strode forward and was instantly halted by the door failing to open. Stepping back with crushing embarrassment she furtively waved at the sensor who then, with a flourish and a mechanical sigh, decided to open as dismissively as it were capable of.
One hurdle down.
The stone eyes of the librarian fell heavily onto Marla’s unwashed hands as she placed her borrowed grimoire on the counter. Showers were definitely suggested after digging a grave but much to the sudden despair of remembrance she had cried herself to sleep and forgot.
Brushing some of the dirt off the counter and desperately avoiding eye contact, Marla attempted to both apologise and say thanks, instead only managing to stutter an awkward ‘thorry’ before retreating into the safety of the free reading area.
Libraries across the eons have been known to contain small pockets of shadow in which librarians lurk ever-present. Hidden behind lexicographical mystery they await in readiness, casting leers of pure malice toward a customer attempting to place something back upon a shelf unaided. Their system must be observed, it must be observed.
Able to break even the strongest of souls with only direct eye contact librarians were not to be trifled with. So, in hoping to avoid that potential interaction, Marla grabbed a small book from the fiction section titled ‘good weather for digging’ and found her favorite brooding beanbag.
‘Can that help us fix the chalice thingy?’ Andrew, whispered with the hushed decorum of which a library demands.
‘Nah nothing can fix that again’ replied Marla as she looked toward the ceiling in thought. ‘But I think I have an idea though,’ Tendrils of smoke flickered, searching for loose threads in seam of reality. Shadow coalesced and began to ebb gently from the corner of Balendup Library.
‘I think I have a very good idea.’
[1] Apartment table count currently at 3
J.MCcray
2019
Sunday Short Stories 