a drug to me ...

      I can’t remember the first time I looked at a book or the first time I could read however, I do remember what it felt like to soak up the words and what the touch or the paper stirred inside my heart. These feelings are still there now.
  As I walked in to WHSmith the strong smell of pulped paper and tangy black ink hit me; I happily breathed it in. I walked slowly to the back of the store, wondering through the rows of shelves that held many different books, whilst my mother lingered at the classics. i loathed that type of book, the pompous way of the old English language grated on my nerves… As I rounded the corner I caught sight of the rows upon rows of glittering paper backs shimmering in the over head lighting like they had an inner glow just for me, I sighed with relief. I dreaded the day when those shelves would be empty. When books would be abandoned and the technology of Earth would swallow up the smell and devour the words I so craved.
  I took my hands out of my pockets and slowly dragged my fingers along the hard spines of the brand new books. I savoured the smooth caress of plastic paper and the feel of paper and hard back books inching past my fingers. I selected a book and bought it down with the utmost care, a light weight that held so much in my hands. The shiny, bold, blood red title sang out to me ‘Angela Carter – The Bloody Chamber’ I smiled a soft smile a, smile that was only for books, as my eyes sunk in to the quote at the bottom of the paper back; ‘Magnificent set pieces of fastidious sensuality!’ – Ian McEwen. Again I smiled that secretive smile and a warmth that started in my heart through my body, tingling through my spine and ending just behind my hungry eyes I could feel it urging me to soak up more of the words.
  I ran my hand over the top of the book and down the spine. books are like a drug to me. I bought my book to the counter and laid it gently down, grabbing a bar of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk to go with it. The sales lady scanned both items and £7.99 flashed up on the till, a small price to pay to feed my addiction. My mother waited at the doors to the shop clutching at a book herself; ‘The Book Thief’ Markus Zusak. We trudged out of the shop together, quiet companions leaving the delicious scent of sweet words behind us.
  The car ride home was long and tiresome, time seemed to slow down as I ran my nail along the edge of the pages of my book in nervous anticipation.
  Home at last, I shut my self in my bed room and locked down my brain to block out any thing that would distract my mind from this wondrous piece of art. I slowly unwrapped my prize from the bag stamped with the WHSmith logo. I flicked through the pages, some of the tangy scent still clung to the creamy paper, I inhaled greedily and turned the first page…
  ‘You read a book to get lost in a world that isn’t your own, you can let your imagination run wild and free and think of things you would never even dream of in reality.’ This is what I feel like reading a book. They are a comfort to me, a place to hide in a vast and brutal world, a place to see sense and somewhere to calm down. A place to escape from life, death, and any thing in between, a place to forgive and forget and a place that you can hold your heart in and keep it safe, because a book will never betray you or keep secrets from you and in return for your heart a book will give you something much more precious in the words it holds.
  The images and pictures flitted through my mind, faster and faster. Chapter after chapter flew by. And as soon as it had started my book came to the end, the words were running out. My high didn’t last long, only a sentence left now but it will never be my last!
  One more moment of the drug I could never abandon, and now, the words have run out, there’s only two left …

THE END