Day 2

Prompt: “Smoke hung so thick in the library’s rafters that she could read words in it.”

Amelia dejectedly closed the book.

“Ugh, can’t anyone write something good. This is awful.” She said quietly. “What words would be in the smoke? It doesn’t make any sense.”

You looked around the library. Everyone was reading. Here a man was reading a newspaper, there a woman was perusing the periodicals, another one was looking through an encyclopedia.

Amelia thought it odd though everyone was reading something, no one was reading novels. It seems people had abandoned fiction for more straight forward nonfiction. She decided to check this out more. Getting up from her chair, she walked around the library. Some kids were looking at a magazine about video games, a woman was reading a book about true crime, two men were looking at books about garden design and one skinny teen was checking out a book about carrier pigeons.

“How odd,” Amelia mused.

She approached a librarian. “Excuse me, I’m looking for something new to read. Something well-written.”

“Oh, there’s a lot to choose from,” the librarian chimed up, “We have some excellent essays on politics, or some travel memoirs, ohh, how about some biographies?”

“No, I’m looking for fiction. Novels, really,” explained Amelia.

The librarian crinkled her nose. “Well, I suppose you could find something over there,” waving her hand in fit of ennui. She went back to shelving how-to videos.

“How odd,” murmured Amelia. She went off in the direction the librarian indicated. As she ventured into the stacks, she felt a chill run down her spine. The air was thick with dust and the shelves strewn with cobwebs.

She absent-mindedly ran her finger along the spines of a row of books.

“Joyce, Hemingway, Ibsen, Steinbeck, Chekhov, Adams,” she read off the authors on the shelves. “Why is no one reading these writers?”

She caught movement out of the corner of eyes at the end of her current row.

“How odd,” she exclaimed again.

Her curiosity got the better of her and she tried to catch sight of the whatever-it-was. She walked to the end and peered about. See nothing, she returned to her examination of the books.

“PPPPSSSSTTT,” Amelia jumped at the sound.

“What the…”

PPPPSSSTTTT, down here,” whispered the voice.

She knelt down and looked through the shelf of books to spy someone, or something.

It was hard to describe what it was. It was small, pale, sickly looking with wild eyes almost crazed looking.

“You need to be careful, very careful,” the voice said. “These books are dangerous, really dangerous.”

“What do you mean,” Amelia asked. “They are just books.”

“Just books?” scoffed the unknown, “Just books?! These books contain something that can’t be found anywhere else. They contain unreality.”

“Do you mean fiction?”