We sat at the bar of the library. The smell of pages and red and brown bindings sat patiently waiting to be picked up. Occasionally, a small book, the kind that could fit in your pocket, shouted inaudible words into the air but its pleas were muffled by the librarian and her fleeting form pushing the poor books back into place.
“How long have you been here?” I asked, sipping the mug of cocoa that appeared before me. A haze of chocolate filled my lips. A hint of… What was it?
The old man sighed, his pointed nose perking up from a smile. “Ninety years. When I was a boy, I fell asleep and for ninety years, I read.” He gestured at the grandeur around us. A bar? In the middle of a library? A high ceiling giving way to lighting from beyond. The books who yearned to be read fluttered in and out of the sunlight.
“Do you think I could stay too?” I sipped once more. What was that? It tasted… Old. Like the smell of a newly discovered forest in the rain just not so.. wet. The warmth turned into a chill sensation down my throat.
“When the breeze starts to cloud your mind,” he sipped. Beside him, I thought I saw another man holding a black book with gold binding. I thought I had.. But only the black book fluttered slowly back to a shelf taking its time to settle in and quiet down. “When you start to remember the world up there,” he gestured towards the ceiling and the light shining in through the windows. “When the edges begin to blur, say no.”
As if on cue, the counter of the bar begin to disappear, I couldn’t taste the chocolate, the scent of worn pages and wooden shelves began to escape my senses.
“No,” I yelled. I dug my way out of blurring cold and forced the books back around me and the red velvet seat under my being.
“Very good,” he smiled. “Would you like to stay here forever?” The taste filled my mouth once again. Sweet, like a memory. Like a memory, the realization pooled and ran down my face as tear drops and the old man looked at me and smiled that wrinkled, friendly smile.
“It’s okay,” he said. “You come back every night and leave every night, but it’s okay. This is the first place you’ll go to..”
His voice grew faint and inaudible. I saw the blurred figure of the man get up and shadow himself in black reaching up for a book before holding it close to his heart. The taste sizzled on my lips, filling my bones with a chill, my head filled with memory, my heart filled with.. Pain.
The smell of worn pages still rested on my skin as I hugged my pillows and drew the blanket in closer letting the sunlight reach me through the blinds. It was cold. The taste of life and death rested on the tip of my tongue.
