AJ is about to find himself trapped in the magical library of the Unseen University of wizards. This library is full of magical books that (like all great collections of books do) distort time and space and cause horirble creatures to be born among the bookshelves such as wild thesauruses and lost students...
7: THE LIBRARY AJ groaned as he realised that he was awake. Worst of all he realised, was that he had a headache as well. A painful headache at that.
Damn, what had he drank last night? He remembered a dream about a bunch of old men and a monkey… whatever he had drank, he sure as hell didn’t intend to touch it again if those were the kind of dreams that followed.
He opened his eyes and the world was revealed to him through the hazy shade of darkness. He pulled his sunglasses away from his eyes and blinked a few times in the bright light as he sated above him.
Towering high above him was shelf upon shelf of books. Hundreds of books, thousands of books!
He frowned and slowly clambered to his feet, rubbing his sore head as he did so. He glanced all around him but there was nothing but the long aisle of books. He turned again but still there was nothing else. He shuddered slightly, unused to being around so many books. The mount of education gathered here was unnerving.
Books… he truly did not remembering anything about books or bookshops or libraries. He hadn’t even set foot in a library since leaving high school!
“Hello?” he called.
His voice seemed to almost be sucked out of the air before it had the chance to travel to any ears and there was no reply except for the unsettled rustling of pages.
Hold on… why was there rustling pages?
AJ spun around and suddenly noticed that a book had fallen down from it’s shelf… but the thing that intrigued him most was the chains that bound it together.
Suddenly with a great effort, the book sprang open and AJ’s eyes widened as he saw clusters of teeth. It snapped at him and then began to bark.
“Nasty! Bad! Beastly! Difficult! Dangerous!” it barked, sprouting synonyms.
“Wow!” AJ turned and immediately began to run down the aisle, but behind him he could hear the book on his trail.
“Lousy! Sickening! Disgusting!”
AJ’s eyes noticed the gap in the aisle and he turned and almost collided with the shelf as he rounded the corner. He gasped and then turned to see how far the rampant book was behind him, but the gap had closed with another shelf of books.
‘Okay, now it’s getting freaky! Where am I? Wonderland?’
Only this time there was no fluffy white bunny but books with sharp teeth it seemed.
Carefully he took a few steps forward, his eyes suspiciously darting about the shelves of books as some of them rattled their chains. He glanced up the aisle, but there seemed to be no exit. Typical library… you could never find the bloody exit when you wanted to…
One book rattled its chains more vigorously than the others and its pages rustled madly. AJ smiled at it, like he would do to a dog as he willed it not to bite him and slowly began to back away…
And then he backed into another person.
“Aargh!” he screamed.
There was a similar shriek from behind him and he spun around, bearing the banana in his hand as a feeble weapon as he found himself face to face with a man with long dark hair and a … dress?!
The dark haired man’s big, googly eyes bulged out of his head in surprise but then his mouth curled up into an insane smile. “Oh my, oh my! Another person!” he cried as he eagerly shook AJ’s hand.
“Um, hi,” AJ said uncertainly staring at the hand that now gripped his own, distrustful of where it had been.
“Yes! Yes! Hello! Hello!” He continued, not just to shake his hand, but his entire arm as well.
“Say, do you know why there’s mad books running about the place? One of them back there almost took my arm off!”
“Oh you must mean the Wild Thesaurus! Oh poor you! Poor you! They are very violent but you are lucky because there is so much worse books out there! Too many words for nasty in them!”
“Oh okay…” AJ said. ‘Wild Thesaurus? Where the hell am I?’ “Do you know the way outta here?”
“Alas, if I knew that then I would be out, out I say! I am lost here!”
“Where is ‘here’ exactly?”
“This is the Unseen University!” he cried. “The magic twists the library and turns it into a maze! We were warned this but I was too careless and wandered away. Now I am lost, lost, LOST! I am lost forever in magic!”
“Magic? This is a magic library?” What the hell? Magic library? He really had had some odd stuff last night!
“Yes! Yes! Magic! Magic leaks from the books and creates magical fields of mysteries and inter special portals to far away and strange lands were hot dogs are edible!”
AJ thought for a moment… Unseen University… Wasn’t that what those old men had talked about? Was he somehow trapped in their world? But where were the others?
“There are so many portals created by magic that can whisk one away to a strange world beyond your comprehension!”
“Uh whatever…. Can you please stop shaking my hand?”
“Oh yes! Yes!” he cried, still shaking his arm.
“Let go you idiot!”
He wrenched his hand away from the man and automatically wiped it on the sleeve of his jersey. He took another look at the strange man. If this was a university, then this was a student…
“I’m sorry! So sorry!” the student warbled and he tried to clasp AJ’s hands again but he held them safely above his head.
“Look, I don’t think I’m from around here. I was sent here by some weird men, but I had some friends with me. Do you know where they are?”
“I’ve seen nobody but you! Nobody!”
AJ sighed. Damn it, why was he always the one who found himself in these bizarre situations? Where was Howie and Brian with their smart brains to get him out of this one? It could be worse though… he could be stuck with Nick.
“I guess we better find a way out of here,” AJ said. “I need to find my friends and get home.”
“Ah, but I have been wandering these aisles for so long and I know not the way out!”
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Anything, dear friend!”
“Why are you wearing a dress?”
The student looked down at his red dress. “Ah, this is my robe!” he said, smiling at AJ and nodding his head eagerly.
“Okay… just so long as we clear that up.”
“All wizards wear robes and I am a wizard!” He looked very proud at this simple statement.
To AJ, he looked more like an incompetent, irritating man with no style.
“Hey, if you’re a wizard, then can’t you magic us both out of here?” AJ asked curiously.
“What? What? Magic? But I have not graduated! Besides, if I use magic in a magic library who knows what may happen? There is already too much magic in the air! The air is so densely packed with magic that it changes the library and creates different realities within it! I could blow us both up!”
AJ slowly inched away from the student and then the thought suddenly hit him. Wiz – ards… “Hey… you’re one of those freaks who sent us here!” he cried. He remembered, all the men he’d seen had worn similar dresses… or robes or whatever…
“Huh?”
“Yeah, you were one of those guys in the mirror! Where are my friends?” he demanded.
The student gasped and placed a hand to his mouth. “You have been corrupted by the magic!” he cried. He fell to his knees and seized hold of AJ’s legs. “Spare him books! Spare his soul! Do not alter him with your wicked spells!”
“What the hell are you talking about?” AJ said as he kicked the student away from him, remembering too often the number of dogs that had tried to hump his legs and liking this no better.
“The magic has consumed you!!”
AJ looked down at himself. He didn’t feel consumed or even look consumed. “You’re nuts buddy. You’ve been in libraries too long. They fill your head with weird ideas.”
The student suddenly began to wail. “Too long have I wandered in here! And I’ll bet nobody even knows my name!”
“What is your name?”
“You see! You don’t even know my name!” He fell to his knees again and began to wail. “I am doomed to wander the library forever!”
AJ began to back away, thinking he was better to walk alone then follow this estrange student, but he was stopped when the man latched onto his leg.
“Get off of me!” AJ began to scream as he shook his leg to try and dislodge the student, but it proved to be a bad mood as the student began to scream back in a high pitched voice that cut through walls.
AJ sprang away from him and then held the banana out in front of him. “I’m armed!” he screeched. “Stay away!”
The student gasped and leapt to his feet as he began to back away. “Beware my friend! Beware the books and their magic! They’ll trap you here forever! Forever, I say!”
“No I won’t!” AJ said.
The student gave a high pitched maniacal laugh and then he began to skip away down the aisle. “Eight years! I’ve been lost for eight years?”
“Eight years?” AJ echoed as he watched the student skip into the distance.
“Eight yeeeeeeaaaars!”
AJ could feel his stomach beginning to churn with sickness. Lost in a library for eight years? What if he never found his way out? How would he live with only one hat? How could he live with just books and insane students for company? Eight years and no sex??? How could he live in a world like this?????????
“Nooooooo!” he said as he stared about the world of books. “I’m doomed!”
“Ook?”
AJ turned and suddenly saw that the aisle had opened out into a wider space which looked almost like an… entrance, or more importantly an exit. He was saved!
His eyes suddenly; fell upon the orange ape sitting on the floor watching him. The same ape he had seen in his dream… or wasn’t it a dream?
“Ook.”
“Um, hello….” How does one greet a monkey?
“Ook?” He pointed at the banana in AJ’s hand.
AJ looked down at it and shrugged. “Well, Brian was too ungrateful to accept it so I guess you can have it.” A rubbery hand was stretched out and AJ handed over the banana. He hesitated for a moment as he saw the intelligent look in the ape’s eyes. Maybe he could help… “Can you take me to someone who can help me find my friends?”
“Ook.”
Still holding the banana in one hand, the ape took AJ’s hand in his other and began to lead him out of the library. For a brief second AJ turned and shuddered at all of the books there. He wondered if that student would ever find his way out…
The ape pushed open a door and then they were in a wide corridor where the ceiling towered high above them. The ape suddenly spotted a man in an orange robe coming towards them quickly.
“Ook,” he said pointing to the man and releasing AJ’s hand.
AJ’s eyes narrowed. “I swear if you try and hump my leg as well, I’ll smack you one!” he threatened.
The wizard stopped and looked at him puzzlement. “I assure you, I have absolutely no intention of doing that.”
“Who are you?”
“I am Ponder Stibbons, one of the wizards that brought you here. You have to come with me before someone else finds you. You’re in trouble.”
“Where are my friends?”
“We’ll find them. We must find them and send you all home. Your presence is already beginning to damage this world. You must leave soon. I can help you there, I think.”