Anti-Body

Every morning before I go to work, I stop at the library.
It’s a beautiful six storied building with high domed ceilings and nice lighting. It has old style brown tables and chairs and the book shelves are arranged in a circular design.
And there are books.
Over a hundred thousand of them arranged by subject in lettered shelves.
I stand at the entrance and take a deep breath of the delightful musty smell.
And I start to count.
I count four hundred books or so on a normal day. More when I feel a crisis brewing. The category or subject does not really matter.
The important thing is that I count. And with reverence.
For books have power. Some more than others.
Like the encyclopedias, these tall, voluminous, ancient and graceful beings packed with great knowledge, serving as the silent keepers of our secrets.
Some days, though, the encyclopedias don’t allow me the privilege of counting. I try not to let that get me down for I believe that the gods want me to devote some time to the other books --- the fictions, and the references; the sciences and religious texts; and the businesses and directories. Some want to be counted horizontally and some ask for the diagonal treatment. I generally devote about 85 minutes each session which is just about what it takes to let me finish and get to work on time.

Sometimes, in the middle of my task, a book may command me to take it down. This is a very special time as this means that whatever I’m asking for is sure to be granted. And so I respectfully follow its instructions and after dusting off the cover, I go through the book, feeling and counting each page as lovingly as I can. I don’t rely too much on the numbers printed on the bottom because, well, they are so unreliable. After all, they are put there by a person who does not understand these books the way that I do.

I sometimes count twice a day. The evening sessions, if necessary, are actually more important. You know how some days are...arguments, quarrels, missed deadlines, family illnesses. And then there’s the bad news on tv...earthquakes, riots, pandemics, beached whales, suicides, landslides, floods and stampedes.

Yes, the second counting...that’s the reason I’m here today.
My aunt is dying. Her son, my cousin, called me an hour ago.

“We are taking off her life support...we feel that it would be the best way, so she can go in peace.”
“You mean you’re giving up?” I asked
“How can you say that? You know we’ve done all we can. Anyway, the reason I’m calling is to give you a heads up in case you need to close your store for a few hours and come for the funeral next week. I will also need to discuss with you the requirements for the funeral flowers.”
He sounded weary. And mechanical. Like some automaton had taken over his body.
“Yes, of course, thank you.” I said.

I leaned back on my chair and stared at the computer screen.
And then she started to move. She coiled and curved and opened her mouth and started to eat my insides. First my intestines and then my liver, my kidneys and my pancreas. The hollowing complete, she proceeded to squeeze my lungs while staring intently at the beating of my heart. She then moved up to my throat causing me to choke, my eyes close to bursting and a loud high pitched sound in my head.

I used every ounce of energy to get up and head for the door. She eased somewhat, but only just enough for me to be able to drive to the library.

And so here I am. I will count all night if necessary but I will make sure that my aunt doesn’t die.
I go up to the third floor and to shelf “ --- Agriculture” and I begin to count. Slowly and with deep focus, I work my way to 500. She has gone back to the nether depths of my soul but I know that she is there ready to pounce if I should stop before I’m done. Respectfully, I read the titles and the author... “Sustainable Agriculture: a Christian ethic of Gratitude” by Graham, Mark E. Cleveland;
“The 20th century transformation of U.S. agriculture and farm resource” by Dimitri, Carolyn.
“Irrigated Agriculture and the Environment” by Cheltenham, UK.
“The Macroeconomics of European Agriculture” by Gylfason, Borvaldur.
“U.S. and Soviet Agriculture: the shifting balance of power” by Brown, Lester Russell.
“Indian agriculture since independence: performance and prospects” by Madhavan Murugappa Chettiar.

“Tiring isn’t it?”

I start and turn to look at the lady standing by my side.

“I mean day in, day out, you’re standing somewhere in this library counting. Almost as if there are lives that depend on it.”

She has smoker’s lips, gray hair, skinny in a brown long skirt and white shirt. Probably around 60 or so, but then again it might be just the smoking making her look that age. How does she know so much about me?
But I don’t have time for this. Not tonight. My mind is a whirlpool of books, and I am surfing round it with a smoothness that tells me that I am in perfect sync with the gods. Soon I might be able to actually receive that command to bring down a book and go through it page by page, thereby making sure that my mission is successful.

I decide to ignore her and continue counting.

“But life is undependable isn’t it?” she says, “Not eternal like books...is that why you count? So that maybe some of that everlastingness may rub off on you?”

I lose track of my counting. That is the worst thing that can happen. It means that I will have to repent by counting each title again just to break even. And then once more to get ahead. Even then there would be no guarantees that I would be able to appease the forces.

I turn to face her. But before I can open my mouth, a man approaches us. He has jet black hair, is wearing a bright yellow shirt and white slacks. His face is painted white. White face, and his lips are bright red. He smiles at me and then walks up to the book shelf...the one that I had been on. He waves white gloved hands over the books for a while, hovering close to them but not touching and then he moves to the start of section “--- Agriculture”. And then he starts to count.

I suppress a shiver and turn back to face the lady.

“Don’t worry” she says. “The Actor knows exactly what to do. How to count, how many times to do so, and how many books are needed tonight.”

The lady takes out a cigarette from her shirt pocket and sits down on at the table close by the shelves. She snaps open a shiny silver lighter and, stares at the flame for a while before lighting the cigarette in her mouth. She squints at me as if deep in thought as she breathes out the smoke.

“Sit down please.” she says.

Although spoken softly, it sounds like a command and I find myself obeying her. We look at the Actor for a while. His hands move gracefully and his entire body language is that of a professional...like he has been doing this all his life.

“Elegant, isn’t he? A true artist in my opinion. I think your counting is in safe hands. And what’s more, he can do this for days at a time.”

I look at the wall clock behind her. The seconds hand moves jerkily as it makes it way around the circuit. How many times will it do this before it slows down? There’s no one around. The section, if not the whole floor, seems deserted. The ticking sound seems to take over the place.

“Who... are you?” I finally manage.

A minute passes by.

“It’s an interesting question, really. Who is anyone? Are we our name? Are we our movement? Or are we, like the Actor there, our function?”

She stubs out her cigarette on the table corner leaving the ashes and remains there, and lights up another one.

“Maybe we are everything, maybe we are nothing. ”
“Maybe we are just vessels for Actors.”

She lets out a puff of smoke through her nose.

“You have been counting since you were ten. You started at the ground level in the children’s section. You counted the books you read. Then you counted your favorite authors. But then you grew up and started counting things you haven’t read, authors and topics you never heard of. You sweated, you strived. You came here once a day and sometimes more than that. You gained experience and you became influential.
“You wanted to be the Librarian. You wanted to be...me”

She smiles then, in a kind, elderly sort of way. I feel a chill and I try to control my shaking legs.

“The Actor will count better than you ever can. All you are is an illustration, one that we have to keep imprinted. Keep in place.”

The Actor stops counting and looks at me.

“No!” I said, “Why did he stop? Tell him to continue!”

The Actor spins in place on one foot and then tap dances his way towards my chair.
She starts to move inside me. I can feel panic...but I am not sure if the feeling is mine or hers.

“Now don’t you worry about the Actor. Try to focus on the point I’m trying to make.” The Librarian says.
“You are done. Not needed anymore. This is as close as you’ll ever get. Your job is complete. You are...discharged.”

I feel steel hands around me. The Actor had pinned me down on the chair from behind. He’s squeezing my mid section so hard that I cannot breathe. My mouth is open, gasping.
The Librarian is suddenly in front, her face close to mine. My mind is getting foggy and I dimly realize that she’s looking into my mouth, squinting.

“And you won’t be needing her anymore, either.” the Librarian says and puts her hand into my mouth and slides it down my throat. She is thrashing around wildly biting and striking everything she can. I feel the Librarian’s hands moving around my insides chasing her.
The Actor puts his white painted cheek against mine whispering “Shh..., shh...” all while squeezing my stomach harder and harder. The pain is unbearable but through it all, I can see his red lips in the corner of my eye.
All of a sudden, he loosens his grip and the Librarian starts to withdraw her arm.

“A stubborn one, this.” She says as she pulls her out of my mouth. “Usually they are too unnerved to fuss.”

I struggle to get up. I must save her... But The Actor is strong. He holds me down almost too easily.

I look at her. She has dark blue skin alternating with cream and small brown spots all over. About a meter long and maybe three inches round. She has her coils around the Librarian’s arms. She’s so beautiful. And her red eyes are fixed on me...pleading.

The Librarian holds her by the neck and takes out a knife with her other hand.

“Please...don’t” I try, as I lose control of my voice.

The knife cuts from the underside of the neck moving upwards and slicing the mouth and the eyes into two separate portions.
The Actor lets me go and slides towards the Librarian. They stand together side by side and look at me. The Actor has his red lips curled downwards and the Librarian has the satisfied, matter of fact air of a world class surgeon.
All in a days work.
She lays on the table like a rubber toy. There is no blood at all. There is a slight twitch of her tail every few seconds. After a couple of minutes she stops.

“You are free from having to count all the time. You don’t have to worry about those cigarette ashes on the table or closing those windows” she says pointing to the wide open glass paneled windows next to the book shelves. “You don’t have to wash yourself after shaking hands or collect loose pieces of paper from the floor of your office. You can now live your life any way you choose. The people you do it for don’t need it anymore...they don’t need you anymore.”

The Actor cocks his head and looks at me. His bright red lips curl upwards into a smile. He spins on his toes and moves to the book shelves and goes back to his counting. The Librarian turns around and walks away.
Everything is silent again except for the ticking of the clock trying to reassert its authority.
The early morning sun streams in through the glass paneled windows. The dust particles move wildly in the beam of light, agitated at being woken up from their slumber. It seems like they are trying to push back the light. They finally give up and settle down. A bird, a sparrow, lands on the window sill.
It’s a brand new day.

I put my face down on the table and for the first time in my adult life, I start to cry.

When I lift my head up, I see that the Actor has made a lot of progress. In fact, he seems to be almost done with the section. He has replaced me. And very efficiently.
I look out the window.
Outside, where there are trees swaying, there are rivers flowing. There are people shopping and children playing. Sheep grazing and dogs fetching. There are gardens with flowers and beaches with conch shells.
I want to flip myself inside out. So I can air myself, my nerves and my organs could get some sun. I wonder how raw and painful that would be.
I read somewhere that if you walk out through a doorway, you enter a different world. That doors are what separates instances and memories of where you were. When we go through them, all that we take with us is the echo.
The Actor has completed his task. He stands there and looks at me. There is no hint of self satisfaction, no aura of superiority. Just a professional who has done his job.
I study his white painted face and bright red lips for a few moments, and then I walk out of the room, down the stairs and out through the massive doorways of the Library.

I go to the parking lot and find my old white Honda Civic. I get inside and sit for a while. I’ve had this car since I was in my last year of university. My home was far away and rather than live on campus like my friends, I had chosen to save money and live with my parents. After I got my Masters in Psychology and I had to leave university, I moved out of my parents house and tried to get a job. However, I didn’t try very hard because by then I didn’t want to have anything to do with psychology. I drifted for a while, until my savings almost ran out. One day, while walking downtown I saw a job opening at a florist. The owner was an old man, probably in his early seventies. A kindly looking quiet sort in a light grey suit and a green bow tie. His delivery person had just quit and he hired me on the spot. I worked for two years going in every morning and collecting the bouquets, the vases and the wreaths and driving to locations around the city. I actually enjoyed it more than I thought. I could listen to the radio, to the music and the news along the way. I also learned a lot during my deliveries. Most people are guarded when they receive the flowers. They don’t want to show too much emotion to a stranger, especially to a delivery person. But when they signed the receipt, I could tell. The way they breathed, or held their breath. The way their hands trembled slightly, or the forced stiffness of the way they held their pen. There is also a psychic transmission of sorts and I would try to interpret and label it every time i made a delivery. When I did this, I tried to duplicate what they felt. I even started to list on my notebook the types of emotions that I came across and copied. If we base the richness of our lives on the experiences and feelings we’ve had, I can say that I have felt more than most. Sadness, anger, happiness, delight, thrill, hope, contentment, certainty, love, compassion, sympathy, empathy, arrogance, concern, worry, disappointment, frustration, discomfort, rudeness, depression, wariness, apprehension, energetic, excitement...and that is only the start. And then there are the combinations. I became so good at this that I could close my eyes and recite the emotions much like a wine taster.
“Disappointment with an aroma of despair and a hint of hope. Tastes of frustration.”
At around the end of my two years as a delivery person, the store owner asked me in to his office for a meeting. There was music playing when I entered the room. It was soft, so much so that I had to almost stop breathing to be able to hear it. The old man was dressed the same as he usually did, in a light grey suit, white shirt and green bow tie.
He asked me to sit down and smiled at me. And then he closed his eyes.
“Simon and Garfunkle’s ‘Sound of Silence.’ I’m sure you know this song, almost everyone knows it. But what they don’t realize is that it is meant to be listened to very softly. You touch the music with your consciousness...just so...like resting delicately on a feather that is swaying in the breeze. And you let it lead you gently to the secluded recesses of your mind.”
He opened his eyes.
“This business I have...this job I do, well, it isn’t something outstanding or noble in any way. I don’t save lives or educate future leaders of our society. I don’t fix complicated machines or harvest food for hungry people. All I do is provide a way for people to give flowers to each other. That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do. Flowers are simple things. Like Paul Simon’s melody and words, they are simple but stirring. I think that’s the way life was meant to be. This music is what goes on in my mind when I am arranging my flowers. In a sense I hope to imbue each bouquet, each vase with some of this simplicity.
I have known you for almost two years. By ‘known’ I don’t mean that I know who you are on the inside. You have that face that is determined to never reveal your emotions. But when I say I know you, I mean that I know you like I know my flowers. You have that certain...unquestioning sense of existence. Like you don’t need a complicated or philosophical reason to be here. You just are. ”

He then closed his eyes again. I waited for a while, unsure if I should stay or leave. The song stopped and there was absolute silence in the office. When he didn’t open his eyes, I quietly got up and left the room.
I went back home and came to work as usual the next day. The old man wasn’t there but the shop was already open, and I was just in time to receive the early morning flower deliveries. Once that was done, the telephones started to ring with people placing their orders. I noted the ones that needed delivery on the same day on the white board and then entered the rest into the schedule on the computer.
Early customers walked in and I sold to some the pre arranged flowers and I asked the ones that needed special arrangements to come back later.
Mid morning came and things quietened down.
Still no sign of the owner.
I looked around the shop. At the roses and lilies, the carnations and the daisies. At the empty vases, baskets and balloons. At the ribbons, knives and scissors.
And that’s when I knew.
That the old man would never come to work again.

It has been five years now and I have tried to learn the intricacies of this business. I often think about leaving but I don’t see how I can ever abandon the flowers.

I take one last look at the library building and then I turn the ignition and drive to the store.
I arrive to find find my assistant inspecting the flowers that have just arrived from the wholesaler. The mornings are the busiest in this business. The delivery trucks arrive, we arrange buckets of fresh water to hydrate the flowers before we put them in our big walk in refrigerator.
I look at the schedule for the day and start on the arrangements. First I pick up some white daisies, some pink and red gerbers, a few stems of lilies and bunch them together. I take out a sharp knife and trim the stems to approximately the same length but leave a few slightly longer. These will go in the center. I cut the stems at an angle so that they will be able to absorb more water when in the vase. I hold the middle flowers straight up and add flowers one by one as I make my way out. When I am done, I put them in a vase, angling the outside flowers. This arrangement done, my assistant goes to the back of the shop and opens the cooler. She goes inside and puts it on a shelf.
I work the whole morning till I am done with all the arrangements that need to go out for the day. My assistant carries them from the cooler to our small delivery van and she drives off so that birthdays can be happy and lovers will remain together. I sit at the counter and wait for the walk ins. And all day there is a steady stream. Shy young men unsure about what to buy, housewives who need floral arrangements for a dinner party, some men in suits with requirements for a corporate meeting. And then, there are the regulars that come and like to hang around and chat. Being a florist, I hear about everything in my town. I know the births, divorces and deaths. I know the secret affairs and the new loves. I also know that a lot of the flowers are bought for reasons other than the stated one. Secrecy is rife in this business.

It is late evening. I look at the list of messages from yesterday. There’s one from my cousin asking me to call him back, a few flower orders, an invitation to a garden show. I crumple the papers and throw them in the bin.
I get up and stretch my legs and I walk to the back and open the walk in refrigerator. It is about 10 ft long, 10 ft wide and 8 ft height. It has floral display shelves around it and right now is quite full with all kinds of flowers. I walk inside and go around to each vase looking at them, and making sure that their fragrance is fresh.

“You have to softly direct your focus, and then wait...wait for them to open their minds to you.”
“I’ve never quite managed that”, I find myself saying, “ Not the way I can with ---”
“With books?”
I turn around.
“Yes, with books.” I say.

He hasn’t aged a day. Light grey suit, white shirt and green bow tie.
He walks around the small cold room, humming softly, as he looks at the flowers closely.
He takes his time with each one while I stand and look at him. And then he turns to me.
“I see that you are taking reasonable care of my flowers.” he says. “But reasonable is not what I wanted. My beauties deserve perfection. I thought that a man like you... no interests, no ambitions, no ties, you would devote your life to them. Not because you love them, but simply because you have nothing else. You seemed to me like a boat, drifting along until someone sets a course for you and you have no choice but to keep going on in that direction.”

“I do love these flowers.” I whisper.

“No you don’t. You love your...books. I entrusted my flowers in your care and instead all you wanted to do was to worship your books.”

His words are like a blow to my stomach. My books...my beautiful, lovely books. Would I ever be able to count again?I feel weak and sit down on the cold damp floor.
The old owner looks down at me.

“Do you know that regret is the only thing in the world that is perfect? The one absolute emotion that is clean and complete. I saw how much time you spent in that temple of yours, the library. I watched you getting better and better at counting. I watched you getting closer and closer to the truth. And I saw that my flowers could have got what you were giving those heaps of paper stapled together.
And I felt regret... perfect regret at what I had done.
So I asked for help. I had to. There simply was no other way. Someone had to step in. I really did not want to go such lengths to get you back on track. I do have a conscience you know.”

He reached into his trouser pocket and pulled her out. She looked...dead.

“You know that you cannot kill these things? Stamp on it, cut it into pieces, burn it, squeeze it, they simply refuse to die. They are forever linked to their owner. In the meantime all we can do is to damage them so much that they go to sleep for a very long time.”

He walks over and hands her to me.
She is shriveled and her colors are faded. I look at her and hold her gently in my hands.

“I do hope you learn from this.” the old man says in a gentle voice as he walks out closing the door behind him. I hear the soft click of the lock from outside.

The room is quiet now except for the soft hum of the refrigeration system. I enclose her soft body in my hands and bring her close to my lips to try and breathe some warmth on to her. It is a struggle because I feel chilled to the bone. I get off the floor and walk around the room trying to create some heat. Everything around me is cold steel. The walls, the shelves, the ceiling. I lay her on a pot of one of the rose arrangements and cover her with some soil to keep her warm. There is a small lamp on the wall that gives out a soft yellow light. There are shadows everywhere. The flowers, the vases, the shelves and I, we are all just raw material for this world of shadows.
“Only a thin line between us, but we act like we’re planes apart.” my Shadow says, “we really ought to get together more often. There might be a lot of...mutual benefit in doing so.”
“Your world is cold and dark. In that respect we are ---”
“Not so different!” it says, chuckling. “Come on, we’re twins, you and I, except that you don’t get to feel what I feel. You know very little about me. If at all. I on the other hand, am you. Well, a darker version maybe... and a fallen one... but I know you, I know your depths, I know your...depravities.”
“You know nothing about me.” I say. “You’re simply the overflow, the part outside of me. I am substantial, I am real, I can do things.”
“ Substantial? I am so heavy with substance that I cannot even get up. And as for reality, waking up, getting ready in the morning, going to work in this flower shop that isn’t yours...how is that real?”
“This is my shop, these are my flowers.”
“So you say. Lies are like us shadows, keep them around long enough and they become real. Let me tell you what is actually yours...the rooms, the caverns you created in your core, the ones you get often get lost in, looking for something, a dog trying to dig out a bone from years ago and puzzled at finding only dirt.”
“What do you mean?” I ask. I feel weak. My eyes want to close. I’m so cold.
“A collection of rooms filled with the echoes of your useless acts, that’s the life you’ve created.”
Useless acts, dogs, dirt, shadows. These words go round in circles in my head. I feel like I’m losing consciousness.
“Listen to me.” its whisper is urgent. “ You cannot go yet. There is still a chance, some hope for you. You can at one stroke substantiate your existence.
You can.
But for that, you must cut me loose. Cut me loose so I can do the things that you cannot.”
Cut it loose, it says. Cut it loose so I can live. Cut it loose so I can make my life worth something. If not, everything will have been for naught.
I fight to open my eyes. It is so hard. Sleep is so sweet, but I know what I need to do.
I reach for her. I cannot live without her. I cannot die without her. I stretch my arms out for the flower pot where she rests. The soil feels cold, but I dig, dirt filling my nails until i feel her soft body. Grasping, clutching hard, I bring her to my chest.
“Hurry up, there’s not much time. Reach for those scissors in your pocket.” the voice is urgent.
“Save her too” I say “I will free you but you must take her. She must be a part of you.”
Hesitation.
And then, “Ok. Anything. Just hurry!”
I reach in my pocket and pull out the flower scissors.
“There you go. It’s easy, you’ll see.”
There is anticipation in the voice. In my voice. I have to hurry. But I don’t know if I have enough in me to do this. The scissors are very heavy. I put my thumb in the upper hole and two fingers in the lower hole, and slowly, very slowly, I reach for the seams.
The first cut pierces. It is a searing of the soul, a tearing away of the flesh from itself. I should do it fast, so it can be over fast. But I have no energy to move and so slowly, very slowly I sever my life away. There is a strange sense of shift with the pain. A migration of sorts. I am flowing from one end to the next, bit by bit until I’m on the other side looking back at me.
At my abandoned body.
An alabaster statue.
The eyes are closed, the face expressionless. I crouch and touch my arm. It is light, an empty shell. If there was a slight breeze, it would probably blow away. I reach for the hand to pry the fist open. The thumb breaks and crumbs fall onto the ground.
I put the broken finger in my shirt pocket and grip her by her neck, pulling her out.
She’s wiggles and wraps her tail around my wrist. Her eyes look at me. Shiny, expectant, and ... alive. I gently unravel her and opening my mouth, slide her, tail first inside me. I then suck her down into my body.
I turn to the door and walk through it. I go to the store in the back and look around among the boxes until I find what I want. A dark brown wooden chest, like the antique pirate treasure chests seen in movies. There are a few left from a few years ago when the flower shop used it for a gift promotion.
I open it and look inside. It is a little dusty. I take a napkin from the side of the flower sink and wipe it clean.
I then walk to the cooler and turn the handle, open the door and I go inside.
I get on my knees and take off the clothes from the body. I take off the light blue striped cotton shirt, and the grey cotton slacks. I pull off the dark blue boxers and put them on. I follow that with the pants and the shirt which I tuck in and I buckle the dark brown belt. I then remove the glasses and put them on.
I pull off the head and hold it over the wooden chest and I crush it so that the crumbs fall into the container.
I snap off the arms, I break off the chest, the mid section and the pelvis. Every few minutes i put my hands in the wooden chest and make sure there are no big particles, I want the bits to be of good consistency. The chest is half full as I finally get to the legs and the feet.
I take a pinch of the crushed essence and I walk over to one of the flower arrangements. It is a bouquet of orange lilies, burgundy asters, blue iris with lemon leaves. The card on it says ‘Get well soon” . For some reason the customer never came to collect it and the it has been in the cooler for a few days. I sprinkle very little of the brown grains on the flowers and the leaves.
The transformation is almost immediate.
The flowers grow brighter, the leaves start to shine. The stems begin to wave and get more erect. The whole arrangement is rejuvenated and alive.
The remaining flowers from the other bouquets, corsages and pots, the wreaths and the garlands start to scream in my ear. They are pleading, crying and begging for some of the...stuff that the bouquet was lucky to have got.
I ignore them while I get back to my work.
I pull out the toes one by one, I break the feet off at the ankles and snap the lower leg at the knees.
The thighs are the last to be crushed and it takes a good deal of time. I just don’t want to spill and waste any of the stuff and want to make sure that it all goes into the wooden chest.
And then, I’m finally done.
I have some crumbs stuck on my hands and fingers and i go around sprinkling a little on the various flowers around the room. The effect on everything is...luminescent. Everything glows and the room is now a multi colored club with flowers, plants and leaves swaying to a music that only they can hear.
I close the lid and lift up the chest. It is almost full to the brim but weighs nothing. I go out of the flower shop towards my car and after putting the chest in the trunk, I go back inside to collect the “Get Well Soon” bouquet, the one that was the first to sample the essence. I place it on the seat next to me and drive to the hospital.
It is still dark as I pull into the hospital parking. I open the glove compartment and take out a ziplock bag, and opening the trunk, I take out a fistful of the contents from the chest and put it into the plastic bag.
I put the bag in my pocket, take the bouquet from the the front seat and walk into the hospital.

“Sorry no visitors before 7 a.m.”
The nurse is young. She is short, her crew cut hair is spray dyed green, almost the same color as her scrubs. She has a silver nose ring that seems a little too big for her face.
I put the flowers on the counter.
“I don’t think she has much time left” I say. “I wonder if you could make an exception? You see, I’m her nephew and I have something important to give her before she...”
The nurse looks at me for a moment. I stare into her eyes. I can see quite deep into them, she is still unburdened.
She sighs, turns to her computer and after tapping for a while says, “Room 703 but wait a few minutes, I’ll have to take you there myself.
I pick up the bouquet and move away from the counter, while I wait for her to finish doing whatever she needs to do.
I look around. Not too many people at this early hour. There is a young man with dark hair on one of the waiting chairs. He’s sitting with his back erect and he has glasses on. His eyes seem to be closed. A couple of ladies are sitting a few seats behind him. One of them is looking closely at a sheet of paper, her forehead wrinkled. The other one is looking in my general direction, though probably not at me. There is an old man asleep in one of the chairs adjacent to them. The fluorescent ceiling light gives each person a darkish hue. I notice their shadows are double layered.
“I actually call this the “between” time. Somehow, no matter how rough the night has been, things quieten down around this time for an hour or so. Like time resting and taking a deep breath before again starting on its long journey to... wherever it’s going.”
She smiles at me.
“Anyway, I’ll take you up to the room but you will have to be quick. It’s lucky that I have a friend working that floor tonight and she won’t ask too many questions.”
She walks ahead and I follow her squeaking shoes to the elevator. The light reflected on the polished sterile tiles make a straight line as if leading the way.
We get into the elevator, she presses the button for the 7th floor and the doors slowly close.
The elevator is quiet, smooth, confident and purposeful but it’s in no hurry. The nurse is silent and keeps her attention on the lighted numbers that prove to us that we are in fact, going up.
A ding announces our arrival.
We step out and she asks me to wait while she goes behind the counter and talks to another nurse. Her friend is quite a bit older with glasses and black hair tied in a ponytail. They speak in hushed tones.
She walks up to me.
“I will have to go with you.” she says, “but I’ll wait outside the room to give you privacy. Please don’t take long.”
“Thank you.” I say.
We follow a sequence of rooms and finally arrive at 703. She turns the handle and opens the door.
“Here you go,” she says, “she’s the bed on the left.”
I nod and step inside.
The room is dark and I notice that there are two beds separated by a curtain. Each one is dimly lit by the light from the monitors. I walk towards the bed on the left and place the flowers on the bed side table. I take out the zip lock bag from my pocket and I look at her face. It seems to have shrunk and her features seem dark and blurry, as if life is trying to erase its decades of work. There are no tubes going into her mouth or her chest. Her lips seem to be closed tight. Her head is covered with a blue cloth. I take a few crumbs out and put the bag back in my pocket. With one hand I pry open her lips and mouth. It is much easier than it looks and I drop the crumbs inside.
There is silence except for the occasional beep of the machines, and I wait for her to open her eyes. It seems longer than I thought.
And then...thunder? I glance out the window but that isn’t where the sound is coming from.
The door opens.
“What is going on? What are you doing?!” the nurse stands behind me. And then I notice the sound is coming from behind the curtain. I pull it aside and see that the bed, the one on the other side of the room, is shaking violently. The sound gets louder and the bed convulses trying to throw off its inhabitant. Somehow this doesn’t happen and the nurse and I try to keep the bed down. It takes some force but we finally manage to get it under control.
Silence again.
I look at the man on the bed. He looks back at me, eyes unblinking.
“He’s been waiting a long time for you”, my aunt says. I turn to look at her. She is sitting up now. There is a halo around her head from the light of the monitors.
“Look into his eyes. So he can look back. So that he knows you’re here.”
I feel a stirring inside me. She is awake and ready. I feel revenge. Not yet, I tell her. Not yet.
“It’s...it is impossible...” the nurse says.
“Not really”, says my aunt, “not impossible, just a little different.”
“But...how?” the nurse asks. “you were almost gone.”
“But I am.” my aunt says. “I am gone and I am here. Our shadows have that power. They go silently with us through life, content not to be noticed. But all that time, they are absorbing and storing, ready to take over at any time. But we never let them. We are that selfish you see. But, he...” she points at me, “ he started something. He figured how to take charge, how to transfer. Yes, his body had to give up its essence, but look how much more valuable it is this way.”

The nurse gets up and hurries for the door.
“Please don’t go.” My aunt says to her.
She stops and leans against the door. She’s pale and breathing heavily. “I don’t know what this is”, she says. “I don’t know what you are” she says looking at me. “But I have to go.”

I get up and take out the plastic bag from my pocket and hold it out to her.
“Try it” I say. “Try it on anyone. Anyone you think that deserves.”

The nurse turns the door handle behind her back and eyes fixed on us, she almost falls backwards as she leaves the room.

I turn to face my aunt.
“Well,” she says. “what about him? You know you have to do it. He has sacrificed so much. He recruited everyone, the Librarian, the Actor. He gave you his flowers. He projected himself so that you could emerge, so you could be.”
Her eyes are wet.
“I worked for him for so many years taking care of the flowers. He taught me everything. How to listen to them, how to put my feelings into every arrangement. He taught me to...love.”
The door opens and the nurse comes back in. She stands at the door. My aunt looks at her. I extend my hand with the zip lock bag and she takes it from me.
“You were both probably too young to remember this” she says,”but there was this...warmth that visited us once. It came suddenly in the middle of winter. The night before that, I was out in our back yard with some children in the neighborhood and we made a snow man. You were there too.” she says, looking at me. “You were a very quiet child but in this situation, you became very stubborn and you insisted that the snowman should look a certain way. He needed to be slightly round in the middle, have black buttons for his eyes, a suit a hat and most important of all...he needed to wear a bow tie. All snow men must have bow ties, was what you said. Do you remember any of this?”
I shake my head.
“Well, we stayed out till late evening and made the snow man which happened to turn out quite well. The children left and I went back indoors. I was pregnant then with my first child and since it was a difficult pregnancy, the doctor had cautioned me against too much activity. I was so tired after the effort that I went straight to bed. I knew my husband wouldn’t come back home till quite late as he was working very hard in those days. I usually tried to get up early so we could have breakfast together as that was the only time we would be able to see each other and have a conversation.
Anyway, I went to sleep and dreamed that I was a giant who lived high up in the sky, and I would amuse myself by blowing out long breaths at the clouds trying to clear them away from the face of the sun. The people on the land below looked up at me and thanked me for allowing the sun to shine on them. I was happy in my dream until a big group of dark and stormy clouds came towards me. They surrounded me and were angry at me for blowing them away from home. I started to panic as they got closer and closer to me. I found it hard to breathe and I screamed. The people below heard me screaming and they all started to scream too. The air was full of screams and roars from the thunder of the angry clouds. I felt myself starting to shrink and I became smaller and smaller. As I lost my size, I began to fall from the sky. I fell for a long time and I knew I was going to die when I crashed onto the ground. Miraculously however, I woke up to find that I had landed on my bed.”
My aunt closes her eyes. The nurse comes to me and places a hand on my shoulder.
“I think she has gone to sleep,” she whispers, “we should let her rest.”
But my aunt starts speaking again, her eyes still closed.

“I was full of sweat and there was a dull ache in my stomach. The pillow next to me was empty. My husband had not come home that night. I got out of bed and drew open the curtains and what I saw shocked my senses. I felt displaced, like I was there but somehow not there. Outside the window I saw green grass and flowers. The trees were swaying gently in the breeze. There were birds chirping and butterflies flying. It was as if a day in the middle of summer had been plucked out and interposed into the present time. I took in the sight and after a while, I realized that strange as it all was, it was also so beautiful. I went downstairs and out of the house. I stood in the warm sunshine and took a deep breath. Everything seemed perfect. But yet, there was a nagging feeling that something was not right about this entire scene. And then I knew. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the snow man. He stood right where we had left him the previous eventing. I walked up to him. The sun was shining on him but he was frozen, just like a snow man should be. He was wearing his suit and hat, but his bow tie was missing. I looked around and saw it in the rose bush behind him. Trying not to tear it, I untangled it from the thorns that had probably stopped it from flying away, and I tied it around his neck. I walked to the front and looked at him. He looked back at me with his button eyes. They were shiny and black. We stood and looked at each other for a while and then out of the corner of his eyes, clear liquid seeped and started to flow down his face.
The snow man was crying.
I wanted to understand what was going on. The warm weather, the frozen snow man, the tears rolling down his plump cheeks. I wanted to comfort him, but even if such a thing was possible, what would I say?
I reached out to touch his face but as I moved my arm, a sharp pain shot through me. I heard the dark and angry clouds from my dream. They were more angry than they had ever been and every time they flashed the lightning from their eyes, I felt pain like a lash of a whip. I sat down at the foot of the snowman. The pain receded and then came back, each successive wave stronger than the previous, until finally, my body decided to shut down.
I woke up in a hospital room full of flowers and my husband in the chair next to me.
He told me that I would be okay but that the doctors had ordered a full bed rest until the delivery which was about a month away. I looked out of the window and saw the silent flakes falling, adding to the thickness of the seemingly endless white carpet on the ground. My husband told me that it was lucky that my distant relative happened to be visiting our house and found me and called for the ambulance. As a matter of fact, that relative had happened to have just moved in to the same city we lived in, and had opened a flower shop. He was the one who had filled up this room with the beautiful arrangements and had been waiting anxiously outside to ask about me.
There was a timid knock on the door and he walked in,” my aunt says pointing at the person on the bed to her left. “I immediately knew who he was, but what could I say to anyone? Who would believe me?”
She removes her bed covers and stands up. She extends her thin arms to the ceiling, stretching.
“From that day on, he came to visit me everyday, making sure my room had colorful, fresh flowers, telling me that their aura was something that would keep me healthy. My husband came when he could, and he didn’t seem to mind the presence of this elderly man with his suit and bow tie. In fact, he seemed to almost welcome it. I followed the doctor’s orders and rested, and after a couple of weeks, my baby was born. I moved back home and devoted the next few years taking care of my son. The elderly man stopped coming around, but I never noticed his absence. To me he was always there.”

My aunt reaches out and takes the ziplock from me.

“I can’t remember exactly when my husband left me. My son must have been about a year old. Or maybe he was two. But I do remember that on that day flowers were delivered to me.”

She opens the small closet near her bed, where her personal effects are kept. There is not much in there, some clothes, a small cream purse and her glasses. She unzips her purse and takes out an envelope.

“When you live this long, you remember certain parts of your life. Memories of a mid-winter summer, tears on a snowman, and flowers that were sent by an angel. You want to keep them alive.”

She opens the envelope and pours out the contents on to her bedside table. She then takes out a small pinch from the ziplock bag and sprinkles it on to the contents from the envelope. I hear the nurse gasp as the flowers reconstitute themselves. The past was coming to life right before her eyes. The flowers are healthy, they are bright and their glow lights up the room. I can see the nurse’s thoughts, they are stuck between reality and rendering.
My aunt places the flowers on the pillow of the man on the bed next to her.

“I went to work in the flower shop with him when my son started school. It was the only truly happy time of my life. I learned about flowers and how to talk to them. I learned that there was a place for love in this world. I found peace.”

She looks at me.

“You have grown up so much since the day we made the snowman. But you remember don’t you? His bow tie, his round face, his gentleness, his silence? Will you help me? Will you help him? All we want is to go back to our store and live among our flowers.”
She hands me the plastic zip lock bag. I take it from her and I look at the nurse.
She is ready.
“Here, take it.” I tell her, handing her the bag. “You have enough in here to last a lifetime. Use it well.”
She takes it and slowly moves towards the bed. She stands there for a few seconds and as if suddenly making up her mind she quickly takes out a few crumbs and sprinkles it on to the man on the bed.

We all wait and watch.

The body slowly changes, the cheeks fill out, then the arms get bigger, the stomach grows.

“The true self, the shadow, is often not what you expect.” I tell the nurse.

Her eyes are big and unblinking as she gasps at what she sees. The body after growing is now turning white. White as snow, as a layer of ice covers the head and starts to grow until the body is covered all the way down to its feet.
I see my aunt smile through her tears. She slowly reaches under the man’s pillow and takes out his green bow tie which she tenderly ties around his neck. She kisses him on his frosty cheek.
“I know it was difficult for you” she says to me. “But thank you for holding back, thank you for sparing him. Thank you.”
She turns away from me and looks at the hard cold piece of ice.
“My snowman.” she whispers. “My beautiful snowman.”

The nurse falls down on her knees. She tries to catch her breath.
The stirring inside me slows and then relaxes.
“There is enough in the ziplock to last you a lifetime.” I tell her.


I am Shadow.
I slip away. Away from the room, away from the hospital with its shiny floors.
Away from the nurse, away from my aunt and her snowman. Away from the flowers.
Away from the life that was never mine.
On my back, I carry the chest containing my self. Containing the crumbs of my life.
I head to the Library.
I head Home.

It is raining. The wind dances to the drumbeat from above, but my Temple of Books stands tall and resolute, secure between the netting of vines on its walls. I walk up the covered stairs and stand outside the door, savoring the moment, anticipating the emotions that always feel new and familiar at the same time, like being reborn but with a shade of a memory from a previous life. He is gone but his memories are mine, his life is mine. I reach for the handle.

The door opens before I touch it. She walks out, gray hair, skinny in a long brown skirt and white shirt. I am forced to take a step back as she moves past me, and stands at the top of the stairs, looking out at the rain. She then turns around, puts the cigarette that she has in her hand into her mouth, takes out her silver lighter from her skirt pocket. She walks to the chest next to me and sits on it, crossing her legs. She snaps open the lighter, puts it to the cigarette and blows smoke out.

“So he’s in here is he?” she says patting the side of the chest. “Probably the best place for him to be, poor boy. Exhausted, trying so hard to save the world. What were his final thoughts? Books uncounted? Feelings unexpressed?”

She taps her finger on the cigarette, dropping ash on the chest.
“Just another life un-lived. And that’s why it is better to leave things to us professionals. We are much more efficient. No feelings, no unnecessary emotion. ” she says, getting up and smoothing her skirt. She turns the handle of the library door and gestures for me to go in.
“But you, you are different I see.” she says, “your understanding of such matters run much deeper.”

I feel her wild thrashing inside me, but I am a hollow cave. The only thing that fills me are echoes of reality with traces of illusion. There is nothing for her to feed on, and this fuels her anger. She wants to come out. She wants expression. She demands retribution. I can still control her, but not for much longer.


“What? Hesitation now?” The librarian asks. “Isn’t this what you came here for? To take over what you think is rightfully yours?” She blows smoke out of her mouth and stamps on the used cigarette on the floor.
“Come on then, go on in. Let’s move this along.”

I feel two hands pull me inside. I stumble, almost fall but am held, the two white gloved hands now around my chest. I struggle to get out of the crushing embrace. His white painted face rests on my shoulder, left cheek crushing the right side of my face. I see red lips out of the corner of my eye.
He lifts me off the floor, my feet dangling, and spins around once moving to the big table near the stairs. He drops me on a chair and tap dances around the table until he reaches a chair next to me. He pulls out the chair and bows low both hands extended smiling at the Librarian.

She walks over carrying my chest, puts it on the table and sits down on the chair that is being offered by him. He gently pushes in the the chair and the Librarian puts both elbows on the table, hands resting under her chin.
Everything is still, I sit facing the entrance and the wall clock above it. The seconds hand moves jerkily around the white face. As I stare at it, the hand slows down, its movement reluctant, like slicing through gel.
I have missed the library, and I take a deep breath. I want the old mustiness, the aroma of yellowing paper, the dust of infiniteness inside me. I want the expectant feeling that I, he, felt. That from here, from these beautifully bound pages, the world could be changed, all mistakes corrected and the future could be bright again.
But there is nothing. No smell. No feeling. Everything is sterile.

“You see,” The librarian says, “when we took over, everything was dirty, the books were unruly, and there was this unbearable odor. It took us a while, but with his expertise” she points to the Actor, “we restored order.”

The Actor smiles, gives me a thumbs up sign, spreads his arms wide going around the room presenting his work proudly.
He then comes to me and bows.

I notice that the books on the shelf are shiny, reflecting light.

The librarian plays with her lighter on the table, spinning it around.

“We took each one out, cleaned them, wrapped them in a protective sheet of plastic. In that way, they are preserved. It also has the benefit of making the counting easier. His gloved hands can just glide over them, barely touching, barely disturbing.”

I feel my chair tremble slightly. The room around me jerks a little. I hear whispers, I see people. There are a lot of them. There is someone reading next to me. A man. He is bald in the middle, his black hair circling the empty area like a caterpillar. He has glasses on his nose, looking for a page he seems to have lost. The books is “The Illustrated Manual of Fluid and Electrolyte Disorders” by R. Douglas Collins. His shirtsleeves are rolled up and he seems a little anxious.
A girl walks past. Cream t shirt and blue denims, she is young, maybe in her teens. She looks intently at the “Violin and Violinists” magazine as she walks and sits on the next table. The man next to me sighs, leans back and looks out into space. He then gets up and goes to the book shelf on our left. I suddenly notice people around me. They are everywhere. I never knew so many people existed. They are all kinds of them. All ages, colors dressed in so many different ways. I don’t remember seeing them there.
My vision jerks again, and I am back. There is silence except for the sound of the lighter that she is spinning on the table.

“You see, things are different stage front. We never get to interact, us stage hands and them. They don’t know what goes on behind the scenes for them to be able to do what they do. But here, look at this.” She takes out a newspaper from her lap and slides it to me.
“Go through this paper. Tell me what you see.”

She lights another cigarette while I look at the headlines and the first page. I turn the pages and scan through and then look at her.

“That’s right” she says, “no disasters, no accidents, no tragedies. Everything is wonderful. Everyone is safe.” She leans back on her chair, blows smoke up towards the ceiling. “ Professionalism at its best.”
She stands up her chair sliding out.
“Come on, get up. Let me show you more of what we have done. You will then realize how much more effective we are than he was, than he could ever be.”

The Actor is behind me, pulling out my chair forcing me to stand up. He links his elbow through mine and we walk together following the Librarian. We go up the stairs, and stand by the long window on the landing between the floors. The rain has stopped and sunlight streams in, making streaks along the cream painted wooden bannister. The Actor looks out the window. His chalk white face is smooth, his cheek bones jut out making his black painted eyes seem even darker. His red lips straighten and he sniffs a few times, closes his eyes and sighs. The sun is bright on his face and I see him clearly for the first time.

“Come on.” The librarian says standing on the top of the stairs.

The Actor opens his eyes, raises his eyebrows and curves his lips into a circle. He spins around and runs up the last set of stairs, dragging me with him.

We walk for a few minutes and stop in front of “Social Sciences.” The Actor lets me go while the Librarian stubs out her cigarette with her shoe heel. He leans against the book shelf and pushes a side of it out. The Librarian turns to her side and walks sideways behind the bookshelf. The Actor nudges me with his shoulder and points to it. I follow her, walking sideways until I see a wide passageway. The three of us walk through it, the Librarian on my right and the Actor on my left. We walk for about a minute, until we arrive at two big glass windows on both sides of us.

“The room on your left,” the Librarian says, “ is what we call the Treatment room. Here, books that are old and sick are treated. We re-stitch pages, bind new covers, remove stains, mold and fungi and anything else that is needed to save them. There are heat treatment devices and freezers to remove bugs and insects. This room is also a place of rest for the books that have gone through all the trauma and price of being popular or useful. We take them out of circulation and keep them here so they can recuperate.”

The Librarian waves her arms in the air.

“Every book is valuable, each one is given a fair chance at survival. I alone can enter this room. I diagnose and decide the treatment to be administered. But in some cases, whatever we do is not enough and we cannot prevent the inevitable. So we put them to rest in this room.”
She turns and gestures to the room on my right. Through the window, I see a large room full of books in various conditions and sizes. They all are laid down on little wooden stools arranged in grids marked by dates. They lie in various forms of repose, some open some closed. There are thousands of them, in different colors and materials.

“These are the fallen ones, the ones that were worlds and stars and universes when they could shine. Once upon a time. And now here they lie for ever and ever, preserved and never forgotten.”

The Actor sobs and I see tears from his eyes. The Librarian pats his shoulders, consoling him, and turns to face me.

“I know why you came,” she says softly, “I expected you to try. But I wanted you to see the work that we are doing. I wanted you to appreciate the fact that even in the unlikely event that you are able to take over, there is no way you can match the beauty and excellence of what we do here. I wanted to save you the trouble, I wanted to save you the embarrassment of failure. I wanted you to understand that we have reached a level of performance that is unmatched. We are now in control of events and nothing is able to get through our filter and appear stage front without our permission or our desire.”

The Actor links his arms with mine again and we turn around and head back out. We go through and out the passageway, I wait for the Actor to push the book shelf back in place and we walk down the stairs to the table near the entrance of the library. He sits me down on the same chair, facing the clock, slides to the chair on my left and holds it out for the Librarian. Once she is seated, he walks with exaggerated slowness and stands on my right, head tilted, eyes blinking looking at me.
He smiles.
The Librarian lights up a cigarette. The green and white box is now empty and she leaves it on the table.

“So”, she says blowing smoke through her nostrils, “now that you know all this, you know the high levels of performance that is now the norm here, how do you want to proceed? Do you still intend to carry out what you came here to do? You know that whatever you’re planning is not going to work. You know you don’t have even the slightest chance of success.”
She picks up the empty cigarette case.
“You are like this box. Full of hopes and promises and air.”
The Actor puts his hand on my shoulder. It is a tight grip.
“But, even so, we are not averse to simply letting you go if that’s your choice. It will be hard for us but considering yours and his hard work,” she points to the chest, “we may be willing to let this one slide. We will pretend all this never happened. But there are a few conditions that I would like to lay out.” She gets up and sits on the table, legs dangling, her shoes half off. She fixes her eyes on mine.
“First, you never come back, second, you destroy the contents of this chest, and last,” she gets up and walks towards me. The Actor pushes down on my shoulder hard with one hand and uses the other to squeeze my cheeks forcing my mouth open. I cannot move, but she is thrashing inside me, different areas of my chest bulging and protruding.
The Librarian comes up close to me and whispers, “lastly, I want to you to make sure that she is gone for ever.”
She takes the lit cigarette out of her mouth. She waves her hand in front of it and it flares up like a freshly ignited brand, and she drops it down my throat.
I feel the cigarette go in, I feel the burn as it makes its slow way down, my center is a hearth sustaining a crackling flame. I feel her flinch, but only for a little while, after which she opens her mouth and absorbs the fire, digesting the heat as she makes it her own.
A sound starts to come out of me. It is a vibration from my depths and moves up my throat making me choke. My eyes close. The Actor lets go of me. The white mask that is his face takes on a confused expression. The Librarian stares at me, afraid to blink.
My head bends down towards my chest and I start to shake. My shoulders first and then my chest. My legs go up and down, my feet making a rhythmic tapping on the floor.
And I begin to laugh.
It is a soundless laugh, painful and breathless, my back is arched, my face towards the ceiling. Successive, silent convulsions like flashes of lightning in a storm.
The Librarian stands up and takes a few steps back. The Actor bares his red mouth showing his shiny white teeth.
I stand up and start to walk towards the Librarian. The Actor is on the other side of the table and crouches low, preparing to launch himself on me. To stop me. I turn towards him, laughing, my mouth open wide.
It happens simultaneously.
The Actor jumps. She shoots out of my mouth growing in size midair as she leaves me, her diameter increasing in thickness until she resembles a rope, the kind used for climbing. And her length, yes, she does elongate, but more than that it is the sense that she can circle the world as many times as she wants. It is that confidence, that strength, that determination that shoots out of me. She has been waiting for this opportunity. She meets The Actor somewhere over the table and wraps herself around him. Round and round she goes until he is a dark blue and cream cocoon from his ankles up to his neck, standing on the table in front of us. Her mouth is close to his face, her eyes fixed on him. His forehead forms a crease, his red lips curve down. She darts her tongue in and out, but does not touch his face.
I and walk towards the librarian.
“Sit”, I tell her.
She obeys, pulling out the chair in front of her. She picks up the empty cigarette box feels inside and finding nothing squeezes it, crumpling the box in her hand.
I reach out unclenching her fist and take the box from her.
“You are right,” I say, “I am this box. Empty and insubstantial. A breeze could blow the next second and it would go straight through me. I am that sort of emptiness. But I am also a different kind of emptiness. The kind that has absorbed and digested every experience, that has taken the overflow, the droppings and the unbearable weight of existence and molded it into a solid void. An equal emptiness, a perfect darkness.”

Her lower lips start to quiver. She starts to rhythmically tap her fingers on the table.
“It’s a little strange maybe” I say, “but I feel a kinship towards both of you. Maybe it has to do with our chosen functions, or maybe it has to do with our common link,” I point to towards the chest. “after all, it is because of him that we share this moment today.”
I unclench the Librarian’s other fist, take the cigarette lighter from her and then climb up the chair and on to the table standing near the bound Actor.
“But he was no professional, was he? Not like you two. You are so elegant, so neat, so efficient. No wasteful emotions like love and empathy. You are focused and determined and industrious. You are single layered and have no time for anything else.”

“But say we take that layer away.” I squat in front of the Librarian, and snap the lighter open in front her. Her eyes are wide, her legs shake violently and she starts to rub her hands on her skirt, wiping the sweat from her palms.
I smile, stand up and walk to the Actor.

“Say we peel that layer away.”

There is comprehension on the Actor’s face and he begins to hiss at me. He closes his eyes as I get closer moving his head moves side to side. I press down on his crown keeping him still and slowly I peel his mask away. I start at the area marked by his black hairline and pull downwards. His forehead first and then his nose, his ears follow and his cheeks, his lips and his chin. I spin his face layer in my hands. There is a gaping black hole where his mask, his face used to be. I let go and his neck starts to move again, his hollowed out back of the head moving side to side.

“We find there is nothing underneath.” I say.

I jump down from the table.

“You think I came here to take over this place. You think I want to count books like he did. You think you would lose your function, your role, your act. You even took me to the most private areas of the library to show me your work. You tried to prove you were better, you were more powerful and that I should stay away.
Well, I would be lying if I said I wasn’t impressed by your dedication to counting and taking care of these beautiful books. That is true expertise and I agree with you that you are doing a wonderful job.”
I walk to the chest and rest both my hands on it.
“I am not here to do what he did. You have proved that you can do it better and faster.”
I open the chest and I roll my hands inside. I feel the crumbs, I feel him, his life, his memories and his emotions. I am a seared shadow, but the tear is superficial. We have never been more intertwined.

“I didn’t come here to take over this temple. Why should I ? It has always been mine. I wanted to make sure it was being run properly. By you, my operators. And I see that is. For the most part. But there is one vital ingredient missing. Depth. The kind that nurtures Life. These books look clean and nice but they are not real. They are suspended in a dream state that chains them to your version of existence. This would not be acceptable to him. They need to live, they need to breathe.”
I toss the Actor’s crumpled mask on the table and nod to her. She loosens her hold on him and starts to unwind slowly, from down moving upwards in a smooth, spiraling, slide. The Librarian and I stare at her graceful, hypnotic dance like motion . The Actor slumps down and struggles to get on his knees. He feels around the table until he finds his face and puts it on. He starts with his chin and lips and moves upwards tucking the sides, making sure that the black space is well covered. Once done, he turns around and gets off the table, walking towards the book shelves. He stops there and turns around, his face enquiring, looking at me, waiting for instructions.

“Now that I have your understanding, this is what I propose. You keep doing what you are doing. Keep up your artistry and your dedication. Count everyday, rehabilitate and repair what you can and lay to rest the remaining. Your daily routine will be exactly the same. The only difference is that you have to do it with an added element. A most vital element, much needed element, a most wanted element. Him.”

I turn to look at the chest. The Librarian stands up, her hands folded. The Actor’s lips curl upwards slightly into a little smile and he closes his eyes.
There is a rustling sound and we see the contents of the chest start to move. The crumbs move over each other, at first only a few pieces, slowly until more are recruited and they move faster as if trying to get the right consistency. All of a sudden the pieces stop and a solid rectangle block begins to rise from the chest. It grows to exactly six feet and stops. Then as if being chiseled by a sculptor, a head is formed, followed by a neck, a torso, arms, hands, legs and feet. The head grows hair, a face with eyes, nose, lips, cheeks, chin and ears appears.
He appears.
He steps out of the chest, stands on the table for a moment and looks around the room. He glances at the books, sees the Actor standing in deference and turns to the table and looks at the Librarian. Her lips quiver and she puts her hand in her pocket looking for something. He walks towards her and opening his palm and hands her a cigarette. She takes it from him and looks at me. I give her the lighter. She lights up her cigarette with shaking hands, blows a puff of smoke. She takes a step backwards, walks around him and up the stairs. She reaches the door, turns the handle, opens it and walks out. The doors swing slowly shut behind her.

We look at each other.

“I have more to learn,” I say. “More than I ever imagined. Counting can prevent bad things from happening from the outside, but what about things caused from the inside? Accidents and pain that are self generated?
A young girl smiles as she is talking to someone, and when the conversation is over and the person leaves, she stops smiling. Why? Where does the smile go?
And the old man sitting down to tie his laces, what wind blows through his heart as he remembers?
That man on the train, eating a sandwich, looking out at the passing fields. What is the wall around him made of?
A boy and his mother. Why does the color of the space between them keep changing?
I want to know. I want to go beyond counting. I want to live among them, so I can work on them from the inside.
I want to read the books.
I want us both to read them. Together.”

He smiles at me.

“Yes,” he says, “I remember you mentioned there would be synergies in working together. I have until now ignored that you existed. I have lived without you. I see now that I was wrong. You were always with me, the one who supported what I did absorbing the excesses of my actions. I agree that if we read these stories together, we may be more effective. Together we can change everything.”

He walks towards me.

“But your methods are different, your needs are different. You are willing to do more to get what you want. I only have my self to offer. You seek to become substantial. I have grown to like my new lighter form. You will never be happy as my shadow, and I am too translucent to give you a home.”

She slides smoothly between us. I look at her dark blue and cream body, her brown spots. She has returned to her normal size. Her red eyes look back at me. There is gratitude and there is satisfaction. But she has to choose. She turns, slides towards him up his legs and arms and hangs around his neck.

“I appreciate your hesitation” he says, “and I know you feel a sense of loyalty towards me. I am also grateful to you for what you did on my behalf. But you have spent too long as my shadow. I am happy to be here, among my books, counting. And I know that he will be a good assistant.” He points to the Actor who nods vigorously his red lips straight, his eyes taking on an earnest look.

I look around the large room, at the books. I look up the stairs and see light streaming in through the windows. I look back at him, at his new form. I look at her. She blinks once at me and slides into his open mouth.

“I have work to do now,” he says, “the counting has stopped for too long already.”

He nods to the Actor who moves towards the books. And then he offers his hand to me. I take it and he starts to break apart. His face, neck, body, legs, arms and his hands. They separate into millions of crumbs and they scatter across the room, throughout the building, across the book shelves, sticking to the books. He, his essence is now everywhere, in different pages of different volumes. Time for him does not exist and he counts every book simultaneously. All the books are one. He and the books are one.

And then I leave. I walk out the door and down the stairs. I want to turn around and look back at the temple. At the netting of ivy on the walls. At the way the sun is reflected off the large windows.
I want to, but I don’t.
For I have work to do.

-----May 2014