Books: An Abridged Existence (excerpt)

After a long nap, Sid begins to wonder what happened the other night, and what happened to his roommate. He sits with his face pressed into the large book he was pretending to be reading, pondering instead. He is sure that he had one other roommate. Sid and his roommate lived in a two bedroom apartment, and they would often talk about forming a band. However, none of their band ideas ever turned into any tangible product, and they were usually left to sit around and think of a name for a band, and who would play what instruments. They even debated for quite some time on bringing a third person into their idea for a band. However, they never got around to contacting anyone about that, and they were left a two man nameless, song less, instrument less band.

Unfortunately, Sid cannot remember his roommate’s name. This will make finding him somewhat difficult. So Sid decides to wander around the library for a time. Perhaps somewhere among the shelves of books he shall find his answer, although that is rather unlikely. It is, however, something to do, for Sid has grown rather bored with trying to sleep with his face buried in a large book. Especially since he has discovered that it was a rather large popup book.

Sid stands up and closes the book, and leaves it on the table where he tried to take a nap. He chooses to walk down the nearest isle of bookshelves, which coincidentally has many books on music, and instruments, and bands filling the shelves. He becomes rather bored with this isle and quickly moved on.

The next isle he walks down has sports books, which he finds to be rather boring and not to his liking. Even the pictures he finds to be repetitive and unimaginative. He does not stop long at this isle, although the isle he walks down next contains subject matter that is simply too confusing for him to understand. It holds books such as technical manuals for micro computing appliances, computers, circuit theory, and even books on windows. Being no architect, he finds the book on windows to be the most stifling and useless book he has ever run into in his entire lifetime.

He decides to wander deeper and deeper into the library. Somehow he finds himself in a dark room, with a black granite floor, and stone bookshelves. A scone holds an illuminating burning flame at the end of each of the isles of stone bookshelves. He thinks this might at least be interesting. He walks down one isle, and finds a book bound in leather, or what appears to be leather. He opens it up, and a viscous dark red liquid flows from the pages onto the stone floor. When he brings the book closer to the light at the end of the isle, it appears to be bleeding profusely from the pages. He quickly shuts the book and notices a phrase in dark lettering burned onto the front. Luckily he knows ancient Latin and can translate the title of the book. “The Book of Blood” is roughly what it says.