Charlie stared blankly ahead, absently twirling a pencil in his right hand. His mind replayed the strange incident with the shower on an inescapable, continuous loop. It was only by some astronomically sized miracle and more than one occasion of a frustrated teacher repeating his name at least half a dozen times when he was asked a question that Charlie had somehow made it through a school day. Because his life had been filled with too many bizarre occurrences as of late for him to ignore the most recent of such events.
"Charlie? Are you even listening to me?" Sophie huffed from her seat beside him. Charlie abruptly turned to face her, flinging his head around so quickly that he nearly gave himself whiplash. He'd completely forgotten that she was even there. Sophie was attempting to help him study for an upcoming French quiz, but Charlie was so far gone in that class, he didn't think any amount of cramming could save him.
Sophie was glowering at him, her right hand clenching her pink mechanical pencil as if she were debating chucking it at him. He immediately felt guilty. Sophie had graciously agreed to spend her Thursday evening wasting away in their high school's musty library to help him study and there he was, ignoring her.
"Sorry, what were you saying?" he asked, an apologetic look on his face. Sophie rolled her milk chocolate colored eyes good naturedly, sliding her French textbook closer to him so that he had no choice but to look at it. "I asked you if you've memorized how to conjugate these irregular verbs yet?" Charlie peered at the page, squinting in concentration. "Should I have?" he wondered.
He honestly had no idea what the words on the page even meant. Sophie heaved a long suffering sigh, flicking her sleek blonde hair behind her shoulder. "Well, seeing as we only went over them, and I'm just throwing out numbers here, about a thousand times in class and they're going to be on the test tomorrow, I'd say the answer to your question is a resounding yes." Charlie only shrugged, resigned to failing. Even Sophie's mediocre knowledge of the subject would be lost on him.
He gave the library a cursory glance, noting that it seemed to be devoid of any other students. There was a lone pair of boys engrossed in what appeared to be some pretty heavy duty textbooks. He shuddered at the fact that those must have been AP textbooks. Which meant lots of reading. Reading did not simply frighten Charlie. No, it horrified him in its ability to send him into a spiral of despair after only a few words from any book.
The ancient librarian sighed heavily from his post behind his scarred oak desk as if he could hear Charlie's thoughts, absently clicking around on his desktop computer. He was a wiry man, his thin face overshadowed by thick glasses and an epic frown. His sweater vest was wrinkled, tie drooping, his longer hair haphazardly pushed behind his ears.
Charlie shivered as the temperature in the room dropped a couple of degrees within seconds, goosebumps rising along his bare arms. Sophie instinctively shuffled her chair closer, leaning against him to soak up what was left of his warmth.
The librarian, Mr. Webber, suddenly wrenched his roller chair away from his desk and pushed his black framed glasses farther up his nose with a shaky hand. He swiftly exited the room with a barely mumbled excuse of what Charlie assumed was the word restroom. The man's thin voice had been trembling, hardly more than a shaky whisper. Charlie frowned. Mr. Webber practically lived in the library. He typically refused to exit the place if students were anywhere near its vicinity. Coupled with his grumpy disposition, those two facts were enough to ensure that the library was nearly always empty. Even the bookworms were too afraid of Mr. Webber's hawk-like glare to enter. The heavy double doors swung shut behind him with a clang, a ring of finality drifting through the air. And that was when it happened.
The edges of the room shimmered and at first, Charlie was afraid he was about to pass out from how unreasonably cold it was. Then Sophie gasped, her clammy hands grasping his upper arm in a vise-like grip. He had a feeling he wasn't the only one the whole world had just shifted on. The room grew colder still, if that were even possible, and Charlie was shocked to find that his teeth were chattering. Before he could make a move to gather his things and get the hell out of dodge with Sophie, a startled shout sounded from behind him.
He turned around just in time to witness a thesaurus that was thicker than a book had any right to be smack into the head of one of the two other boys in the library with such force that he was knocked right over the back of his chair. His friend yelped in surprise, vaulting out of his seat so fast that his chair flung to the ground. He tensed, as if he were about to move to check on the other student, but drew up short when his own textbook came sailing like a missile straight at him.
He ducked, growling a string of words that would have sent Mr. Webber into a fit, when Sophie gave Charlie's arm a sharp tug. She began to drag him towards the doors with a surprising amount of strength. Whatever practical joke was being played right now was not worth the severe scolding that Mr. Webber was sure to dole out. And the kid who'd been whacked by the thesaurus did not look okay. Charlie, and apparently Sophie as well, were both of sound enough mind to escape.
Out of sheer luck, they arrived without so much as a hitch to the one and only exit. Unfortunately, the stupid doors were locked. They wouldn't even so much as budge. "What in the hell?" he muttered. He knew for a fact that the doors in the dilapidated building didn't lock from the outside. It was a school, for god's sake.
They were interrupted in their endeavor to escape when the round table they'd just vacated rammed into them. Both Charlie and Sophie's legs were trapped in between the immovable table and the double doors. The force of it knocked his knees together so hard that he could hear the resulting crack. Across the room, the boy who'd been assaulted by an oversized dictionary was unsteadily getting to his feet. When that shimmer that had lingered in the room throughout the entire ordeal intensified, the boy stumbled backward as if he'd been pushed. His arms pin wheeled at his sides, at which point he latched onto his friend's shoulder for balance.
In what could only be described as an extreme case of rotten luck, a book that covered world maps the size of planet Jupiter chose that moment to launch itself from its perch on a nearby table and whack directly into his friend's solar plexus. The guy let out a strangled breath, disoriented, and they both went down in a tangle of limbs straight into the bookshelf behind them.
It went down with a loud thump that sounded like a gunshot in the otherwise silent room. They were all too shocked at that point to make a sound. The table pinning him retreated without warning and Charlie nearly fell over, straining against the offensive object as he had been. Sophie zipped away from the doors and Charlie followed, his only thought to get away. And then he was tripping over what felt like a foot, though the space in front of him was entirely empty. He went down, hard, his forehead smacking against the the floor with such force that he was momentarily blinded. He felt something warm and slightly sticky dripping into his eyes but couldn't summon the strength to make his arm move to wipe it away. His head stung something fierce and he knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that he was bleeding. He was still too stunned and in pain to so much as twitch when a shelf that was filled to the brim with novels came careening towards Sophie.
It teetered for only a second, tipping uncertainly this way and that, as if deciding if it wanted to change course and finish Charlie off instead. Then it was falling rapidly and Sophie froze like a deer in the headlights, her arms flinching upwards to protect her vulnerable head. An unfamiliar figure came dive bombing out of nowhere, pushing Sophie out of the shelf's destructive path and onto her ass a few feet away. The newcomer, however, was not quite so lucky. The shelf kept up with its downward trajectory and took the girl right along with it. Charlie caught the echo of a sickening crunch as her right arm twisted unnaturally beneath it. Simultaneously, she used her good hand to rip something free from the pocket of her jeans, an oddly shaped glass bottle, and smashed it against the hard carpeted floor.
The world flared with that shimmer once again, more brightly this time. It was as if the light from the very sun itself was bottled up and released into that singular room, blinding in its intensity. A kaleidoscope of colors and shapes flashed across his vision, spots of green and flashes of yellow etched behind Charlie's eyelids. Books from every shelf in the room soared through the air, pages fluttering and spines cracking. Everything suddenly smelled so green. Like freshly mowed grass or newly tilled soil. A sense of peace overwhelmed Charlie's senses. He was drowning in it, unable to keep ahold of his earlier panic and all consuming fear.
The colors and the lights and the onslaught of books simply ceased to be. The space was quiet except for the harsh rasp of Charlie's ragged breathing. He flinched when a loud thud pierced the stillness, the vindictive shelf now no longer pinning the daredevil girl down. "I certainly did not expect a demon to attack the school's library. I suppose this is what they mean when they say it is dangerous to make assumptions." she said, voice monotone.
And Charlie laughed. He laughed and laughed at the absurdity of the situation. He'd been attacked by books. Books of all things. And some crazy ass chick was blaming it on demons. How utterly ridiculous. And yet not surprising in the least.