The Library, Submission 10 by Ryan Wrenn

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         "What if there really are ghosts?" she says and tip toes down the mystery section, her hand lightly brushing along the spines of the books.

         "It's a brand new building," I respond and watch her darkening outline reach the end of the aisle, peering around the edge into the main hall. We would've brought flashlights


         "That doesn't mean anything."


         "Doesn't it?"


         "No, it doesn't."


         "Seems like someone would've had to die here for there to be ghosts."


         "That's not how it works," she says and turns to face me as I slowly walk toward her. She's a shadow, slim and tall and somehow still seeming as pale as she is in the light. She practically glows.


         "Well how does it work then?" I say as I reach my hand out as if trying to feel my way through the blackness, brushing against her breast in so doing. She laughs and pushes my arms away, turning again to the hall.


         "The building isn't what's haunted, it's the area of space that's haunted," she begins, a whisper now that she's facing the wideness of the hall in front of her. It stretches down another twenty aisles to a set of windows that look out into the night. "So a princess could've lived in a castle that was once where this library is now, but she'd haunt the library instead of just going away with the castle."


         I walk out ahead of her into the hall. She follows me out, her slippers making a soft thud with each step. "What if they had built a KFC here instead?"


         "Then she'd haunt the KFC."


         "Seems kind of inglorious for the likes of a princess."


         "Well she still thinks it's the castle though."


         "So her haunting is confined to the area of the building she died in?" I ask and turn to face her in the dark. She stops just short of running into me.


         "Yes."


         "So in theory she could haunt both the KFC and the Radioshack next door."


         "Well there is no KFC, or Radioshack. It's just the library," she whispers. Through the light of the emergency fluorescents I can see the unblinking stare she's deployed, the utter sincerity in her face. I pretend not to notice.


         "So where will we find this princess?"


         "Not here. There wasn't a castle here."


         "Not all princesses die in castles though," I reach around her waist and pull her closer.


         She sighs but doesn't push away. "You don't get it."


         "I think I get it pretty well," I say and kiss the area where her neck and shoulder meet.



         "Well you think it's a joke."


         "I promise that if there were a ghost princess I'd be terribly concerned for her," I say, raising my head and meeting her eyes. More like looking through them. They sink into shadow beneath the pale luminescence of her skin.


         "You wouldn't be."


         "And you would?"


         "No. No, I guess I wouldn't be. I mean she's not really a person. Just a spectral instant replay on infinite loop. An echo. Walking the halls of her castle night after night. Why that night in particular was singled out of all the ones she lived through I can't be sure. Maybe she died before she got to where was she going and that's why she's condemned to walk the same uncompleted path again and again and again."


         I kiss her softly. "And where was she going?"


         "To meet her lover? To get a cup of water? To go to the bathroom? Who knows?


         "Jesus I don't know what I would do if I was not only condemned to haunt the deep fryer at a KFC but also to spend eternity not being able to find the pisser."


         "My sweet, eloquent knight," she smiles and leans into me, raising her mouth to meet mine.

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When the World Was New, Submission 10 by Lee Martin

It took her almost a half hour to climb through the debris and decay of years of neglect. The city had been build so quickly, so efficiently. Obsolete locations sat buried, partitioned, sequestered. Relics lay hidden behind walls and under streets, most never to be seen again.

She was familiar with the Corridors from her days of hiding after The Breakdown. A discarded fallout shelter acted as her home for a month following it. Running from Hunters she became very adept at finding somewhere to go when the time came. The time always came.

After crawling through the trash and time she came to a great void space. She felt the palms of silence press gently against the sides of her head and imagined what the vaulted ceiling looked like now. Her flashlight beam fell sharply on the word “RECORDS” carved in marble high above where she stood. Large columns held up the word, which was flanked by a frieze of people or animals, deteriorated to form a marble mass of man and beast, neither identifiable from the other. She climbed the stairs and found the doors missing; the opening was guarded by a lazy shopping cart on it’s side.

Inside. Thousands of rows of bookshelves, some empty, some burned, all covered in several inches of dust. Her flashlight beam sparkled as every step she took kicked up flakes of dust.

She spent several minutes just walking around, looking up at the shelves. Occasionally she wiped a spine with her small hand to reveal the title. “CENSUS DATA 3DE101,” “BUILDING PLANS-AREAS 13-15A,” “Poèmes saturniens.”

About 20 of the bookcases had fallen over, and corpses of books were piled on top of each other. She walked by downed stacks and saw a map cabinet and opened the doors; a tall roll of paper sat in the corner. She took it out and spread it on the floor, placing a book on each corner. On the paper was printed a map of a very large city. Buildings and streets were labeled. Her eyes slowly traced a line that represented a long bridge over water, but could not tell where it led, for a large corner of the map had been ripped away.

The Last Period, Submission 10 by Charlie Arnold

"All the world's a stage, And all the men and women merely players." A slim book is closed and gently slid onto the shelf in Dewey order. "If it were only as simple and beautiful as that. Tybalt fading proudly, a love known at first sight." Henry pushed his cart down the aisle to his next stop. The decades of yarns gathered here are just as strong as his favorite childhood memories. When Henry came in the next morning he saw the glances. He wished this day would never come but knew it was inescapable.

"Could I get everyone's attention?" voiced Vaughn. "I have to break one of my most sacred rules speaking in this loud of a voice but today is an event worthy of such a rare occasion." The few gathered work a smile at the tried joke. "In my time I have never met someone who has appreciated the written word more than my friend Henry. I'd be surprised if any here have walked in without seeing him heading somewhere with a book in his hand. And with this last day I would like to present you with this watch to commemorate all those years of diligence. Congratulations Henry." Vaughns' extended hand was accepted by Henry. This is the most time he has ever spent with his boss on any day. Maybe even the first hand shake. Neither can recall the events of the first day they met. Probably the second thinks Henry. Helen and Lela also give their congratulations. They at least had pleasant conversations in the morning or would mention unusual occurrences after a busy day. To them he will be missed. "

"What are you going to do with your time now?" asked Helen. Henry looked down at his hands. The right empty, left clutching the watch. "I don't know."

The Library Mouse, Submission 10 by Brian Zook

The mouse had always wondered why the humans insisted on keeping that light on all night. He saw that the light served no practical purpose because nobody ever came into the cavernous interior of the library a few hours after it became dark, and it was well light outside before people would start coming in again the next day.

Still, it did mean he didn’t have to strain his already perfectly good eyes to scour the floor for crumbs and scraps of food that people had dropped during the day. His nightly routine of crisscrossing the library floor for something to nibble on had served him well over the years. Every now and then he would strike it rich: an entire Oreo cookie wedged between a desk and a bookshelf; a sandwich crust that had missed the garbage can and landed on the floor; a piece of cheese, nearly dry but still perfectly edible, fallen under a chair.

It struck him as funny that, on the few occasions that he saw humans eating in the library during the day, they seemed to do so furtively, glancing this way and that, as if to make sure nobody was watching. Were they afraid other humans would eat their food? Were they watching out for predators? He couldn’t imagine predators big enough to eat humans.

On this particular night, the food selection was not as abundant as other nights. The cleaning staff was less haphazard about their duties: perhaps there were complaints about their unthorough performance. All the mouse could find were a few crumbs of tortilla chips and several small fragments of pretzels.

He paused as he finished the last piece of pretzel, pointed his nose in the air and sniffed for any remaining morsel of food in that vicinity. He then scurried off to his hole in the wall, where he had saved part of the Oreo cookie for a slow night.