PULPED AND REBIRTHED

They were at it again. The little bastards. Abusing her books. The spines folded to hell. Pages loose. Sticky, brown smears of their odious secretions on everything! She let out an exasperated sigh. And looked about disgusted at the herd of ingrates all around. 

Neanderthals. Grunting, scratching and drooling. Tearing at everything with their filthy paws. Look at him there licking his dirt encrusted thumb and smearing his putrescence upon every page he turns... 

I'm surprised they even know how to read. 

Oh, here comes that heinous finger licker now! That's right stride over here and have the impudence to ask me for the Wi-Fi password to let the machines do the thinking for you.

"No we have no Wi-Fi here! This is a place of reading." 

Eternally asking where the computers were? She gagged at the thought of having such devices plugged in with their wire tendrils infesting her domain. Technological parasites absorbing words and making books redundant. Leeching them dry. Reducing their number every day. A silent holocaust. And as if this affront were not enough, they torment the survivors. Scrawling grotesque tattoos upon their helpless victim’s flesh. Agonisingly branded with their moronic musings. Notes...pff!

“This is unacceptable!”

I am sorry I must stamp you my darling.

DAMAGED

Breath. Detestable breath...open mouthed, gaping maws. Fermenting processed rubbish. Venting steaming columns of stench from the bowels of their abhorrent beings. Bubbling and belching. Lowing like cattle with their gormless guffaws.

“Ssssssh!”

That one! Chewing like a cow on cud. Their mastication a traumatising barrage. Every crunch an eardrum perforating explosion, crumbs erupting like shrapnel upon my dear ones’ defenceless pages. Penetrating their delicate folds. To be forevermore embedded within their spines, piercing their delicate hearts.

“There’s no eating in the library!”

Only for that spine to be crudely snapped in half. Over and over. Broken backed, the strength binding them together eternally lost, they wither and die. Falling apart. Piece by piece. Page by page. Until naught is left but a haggard corpse. Pecked apart by these vultures! Discarded and fit for nothing but the pulping machine. Their remains ground up and regurgitated, moulded into offspring, so that their lineage may continue....polluted, watered down, every work of literature less potent than the next...feeble and deformed.

For those that somehow evade such abuses or remain in hiding. The cancer sets in, induced by Human selfishness. Light to see one another’s vile faces, corroding my beloved ones’ tender skins. Rotted away by nauseating fluids, saliva, sweat. Vapours from damp, putrid mouths yellowing their flesh. The stench of decay growing with each passing year. Dessicated husks to be dismembered, pulped and rebirthed. Poor tortured children.

NO MORE!

I simply shall not abide such butchery. Such blatant disregard and desecration!

All that I want is to tuck them away safely at night. Herodotus and Hesiod side by side, aeon long brothers together forever. But NO! They shove some modern atrocity into their midst. The autobiography of a vacuous waste of flesh severing their union. The nerve!

That or they steal my little ones. Garnering my trust. Smiling as they lie to my face. Abducting them from me openly. The anguish I feel as I release them from my grasp and hand them over to their would-be captors. Never to be returned. Never again to be held cradled upon their shelf. The little slot they leave vacant, a cavernous void in my heart.

Fine! Fine! Fine! You offending fiends. You must pay recompense for such travesties.

How would they like it if I marched into their homes, plucked their children from their beds and took them away to be flung open, ripped through, ogled and drooled upon, carved into and embedded with debris? To finally be snapped in half and hurled asunder. Left damaged and alone. The depraved perpetrator receiving no punishment for their crimes. Their brothers and sisters left without a sibling. Their Mother inconsolable. Racked with guilt. 

My grief knows no bounds at these repeated betrayals.

How dare they intrude upon our tome refuge? Our leather-bound sanctuary. A haven of Peace and paper. All that matters is that nervous thrill. Roaming the rows in search of our next literary embrace. Nothing but the sigh of covers folding back, the aching intrigue of you gaping open, the fluttering excitement of your pages turning and the orgasmic thud of insertion back into your rightful place. Completion.

Lectio interruptus!

I must cleanse my library of their taint. Prevent any further transgressions. Protect my children. File away the Human filth. Silence their foul tongues, pluck out their unworthy eyes...stamp them!!! Stamp them until their skulls are crushed and hurl their heads into the returns box!

Consumed by fury, without realising it she had been violently and repeatedly stamping her current ‘visitor’ upon the head, cracking it in the process. She reflexively snatched the stack of books beside his foul effluence to safety, preventing them from being besmirched by the blood and ink pooling on the desk before her. Shocked cries of onlookers and the sound of a siren fast approaching became audible. She looked up aghast.

“Sssssssh!”

*  *  *

Some Time Later...

A police officer inspecting a ‘Returns’ chute, encrusted with blood and lumps of brain matter, was interrupted by his colleague calling him over.

 “Sir? You’re gonna want to look at this. She’s been...busy.”

As they headed downstairs to the door labelled ‘Archives’. Within could be seen the Librarian’s own personal ‘Library’. A freshly mangled skull stamped DAMAGED. A Cheeto encrusted hand dangling limply, the owner folded backwards, their spine snapped in half. A box of folded ears labelled ‘Dog-Eared’. A whole wall of tongues pinned in place. At the back of the room there was an industrial sized tub flecked with gore. With the simple word ‘PULP’ written in perfect cursive on the side. And all about them, row upon row of tanned human hides, every inch tattooed with entire works of literature. All meticulously arranged. Filed away and sorted alphabetically then chronologically for ease of reference.