Story below cut
The library
I've heard the wispers, when I was young. Well younger. I thought they were stupid or some mass hallucination. Till the dream found me.
It was beautiful. These old wooded shelves that ran for miles on every aisle. I started in the middle. The entrance. Where an intricate indescribable statue stood. Carved in curves and spires that melded in every metal like Damascus blades. Golds and silvers and browse and rust ran along in spirals of colors that shone in sparkling lines of dulled metal. I could not tell you the thing the statue depicted. A God, a person, an animal, or even a concept. It didn't make sense. Every time, I thought I knew exactly what it was. I didn't. It was never a thing I knew.
The first time I was there, in that library. I thought it was heaven. Old books bound in every kind of leather, paper, or fabric. It took no less then a moment of wonder and I was lost down one of the towering halls of shelves. Endlessly stepping through hard wood floors. I only found an except of taking a book from a shelf I could reach. The leather was old. Cracking. Chiped and faded. I hardly held it when the corridor opened up.
The hard wooden floor gave way to soft dark carpeting. Chairs of all ages stood. Well maintained and perfectly shaded for reading. I took a second to flick a stained glass lamp before falling into a recliner. One that seemed to firmilur to pass up. My gran had an obnoxious green one. This was a dark red. Plush and suffocating.
I lost myself in the book. Tails of old nights and worriers who fought unknowable and monstrous things. Dieing and running, but sometimes. They win. Sometimes, they actually slay the nightmare holding them. Then it was done. I had turned the last page. The book was over. And I lost myself in the halls again.
By the time a chime sounded, I had piled mountains of books along every surface around my chair. My hair was down my shoulders, dragging as I walked. And the sun ran through endless windows and sky lights for the however many-ith time. I've read every book I could find. I hated some of them. I lived through some of them. I fell so deep in love with some books I constantly carried them with me. Dragging them with me every step.
Then I was awake. It had been so long since I could sleep. Blink or even rest my eyes. But I woke up. Flickering visions of the library shattered behind my eye lids. My hair swayed on my shoulder, longer than I remember it being now that I remember falling asleep. I was in my bedroom. A plush dark rug under my desk chair, dark hardwood floors surround my bed. A cheap copy of a Damascus blade hung on my walls. Tall cupboards run along one of my walls. Doors long since rotted off. This place is old. The house we lived in, my family has lived here for generations. Rebuilt more times then I could count. I turned 8 a while ago but sometimes I feel older. So much older.
School started, but the library followed me. It was supposed to be a dream. A stupid one night wonder in endless knowledge. But no. It followed me into every nap, every slumber every dark corner. It smothered me every sleeping moment.
People called me smart. Said I was reading way above my grade, told me I was smart. Praised me.
Except I wasn't smart. I was fucking trapped. I didn't read at a college level because I could understand and comprehend beyond my age.
I was loosing my mind.
Every night, I had nothing to do but wonder old corridors of books. Stepping passed books I've long memorized in languages I couldn't speak and took years to even read coherently.
No one questioned how I could fall asleep in any science lecture and wake up understanding more than any PHD could teach.
Tomorrow I turn 9, tomorrow I'm actually older. But I don't know if I'm going to have a party. Granma is still mad at me. I shaved my head, close shave. It helps me find myself in the awake. Becuase in the library my hair trails behind me, wraps around corners and books and pillows. The color has started to rot. Meld. Bronze and golden hues shaped into twisting nots that trail in ropes down endless hard work floors. People said it was a thing kids did, cutting thier hair. It was a silly thing all kids do one.
But I'm drowning in the empty corridors. I need to watch my nails as I read, they catch and poke at thin pages with the winding length they are growing to. I've given up biting them off.
I'm scared to go to sleep. But I need it, people ask question after two days, when I'm stumbling, babbling mispronounced dead langues.
But I'm even more terrified of dieing.
If I finally stop.
If I close my eyes for the last time. I'll become it.
A part of that library.
I'll be that statue.