One Page to the End

Alice arrived at the library earlier than she had intended to. Good, she needed a lot of time to do her research. If she had known two years ago how much time she would spend in that very same library, her face hidden behind dozens of books at a time, her back starting to give in to the bad posture, she would never have started Law School.

“Good morning, Ms. Hales.” She greeted the librarian, receiving a warm smile in response.

“Good morning, my dear.” Alice couldn’t avoid thinking that when even the librarian starts to take a liking of you, it’s definitely time to take a break from books.

She walked to the Law aisle and started collecting several books. Because they were heavy, she went back to one of the available desks and left them there, before she could go to the Science Fiction aisle. Every day Alice picked up some random genre book. It was a good strategy, she had found out. Whenever she was starting to doze off or think about cookies while studying the Constitution, she would take a break and instead read a few pages about someone having an adventure. Usually, it was enough to give her some energy, since coffee was prohibited inside the library – even for VIP readers.

“One Page to the End.” She read out loud. “What kind of title is this?” Alice stared at the book in her hands and shrugged. She needed a book, not a good book, almost anything would do. Sometimes bad books were even better, the nonsense would wake her up in a minute.

She brought the book back to the desk, placed it beside the large stack already lying there, and started to go through the first volume of “History of Law”.

After a couple of hours, her head started to feel heavy, and the letters were dancing before her eyes. Alice took a deep breath and rubbed her face in an ineffective attempt to quicken her brain. It was time to switch books.

She pushed the Law book aside and reached for “One Page to the End”. More often than not, she would go through the table of content section to try and find the flesh of the plot, some scene full of action or mysticism. This time she just opened it aimlessly and started reading the first lines on page 125.

“In a cold night of December or in a bright day of July

In the depths of the Autumn or the heights of Springtime

Either by the beauty of truth or deceit of pretend

Whoever reads this page is doomed to The End”

Alice blacked out.

She knew she wasn’t asleep, but she wasn’t awake either. At least not in the same way that being awake had always felt. Her hands were numb and her mouth was suddenly dry. She breathed in and her chest didn’t move, her heartbeat was very slow, and yet she felt adrenaline running through her veins like never before.

She opened her eyes – wait, were they closed before? – and it took her a while to recognize the library. All the shelves were wrecked and the books were burned, the only one remaining intact was under her hands. Alice moved away from it as if it was the plague. She didn’t know why or how, but she was pretty sure all that madness had to do with the book she started to read.

Stupid fiction books!

Alice ran away from the library, without even thinking about grabbing her belongings. Outside, the chaos was even greater. It was like if she had stepped out from her morning shower into the Third World War. As far as her eyes could see, there was only destruction. All the edifices were wrecked, the trees laid defeated on the ground and not one single soul was left to inform her about the Apocalypse.

And then it clicked in her mind.

“Scratch!” Her little black kitten had been left, sleeping and defenseless, in her apartment. She started running again, this time with more despair. She lived three blocks away from the library, on the first floor of a modest building, mostly occupied by students.

While she sped down the street, she noticed that some buildings were still on fire, whatever had happened to them, was not so long ago. In the middle of them, was her favorite coffee shop, Alice turned to look at it, probably for the last time, and the next thing she knew she was colliding against a wall of muscle.

Before she could feel the relief of finding another human, the man pointed his index finger to her forehead and, for the second time that day, Alice found herself unconscious.

She woke up. This time all her senses were instantly spurred. She was in a dark room, and voices were coming from behind the only door it held. Her hands and feet were tied with heavy-duty ropes, and she was sitting on a comfortable leather chair. There was a table placed in front of her and two other chairs on the other side.

Alice looked around trying to see anything familiar and started when she spotted a picture of herself hanging on the wall on her left.

“What the…” She didn’t finish the sentence. The voices outside were getting louder and now she could also hear steps. They were coming for her.

Her heartbeat increased its speed by at least three times the regular pace and she felt like it was going to explode. A headache immediately hit her. What should she do? Pretend she was sleeping? Try to get some answers? The second thought brought her to the reality that, as things looked like, she was the one supposed to give the answers. The whole setting was nothing more than an interrogation room, even though it displayed more furniture than in the movies. Her only solace was the lack of torture equipment – even though she wasn’t sure that the ones coming towards the room weren’t bringing them along.

The door opened and Alice didn’t have time to come up with a strategy.

The same man that had run into her was now accompanied by a blond slim woman, about the same age as Alice.

She smiled politely and stated:

“Welcome to The End, Alice. Shall we begin?”