What Will You Find at Your Local Library?

by Kate McIntyre

There are a million adventures, and a million and one adventurers. Each one has a journey to tell with magic, wonder, and awe. For some the story is on the inside, and for others the story is in a different dimension. All of these stories are found in one place. At this archive of journeys, books scream on their shelves, awaiting someone to live their voyage again.

The freezing water raged all around her. In the murky deep she could see creatures of colossal mass and tiny fish so slender and frail you could see their spinal cord. She sat perched atop drift wood cruelly strung together and red paint chipping off. The reader looks closer, and is sucked in.

An old man sits, quietly awaiting fate and infusing the environment around him into his mind so that it never can or will be forgotten. Under him is a rocking chair that squeaks in happy pleasure of the life it has led. Leaned against a pole is a rusty bike. The patches of glistening chrome and polished, long banana seat are small hints of a loving owner. For the more the man observes, the more the reader is pulled in.

In a small suburb, two children meet. When they find something in common, their lives take a drastic turn. To new New Yorks they travel and meet a lone darkness that wants their bodies ghostly pale and icy cold. When reading the final battle, the reader is pressed on, like a blood thirsty leech that must have a meal. When that battle is won, the reader experiences the same calm and satisfaction as the character that just fought for their life.

In a book where the reader is willing, they are lulled in by swaying of weeds in a long overgrown field, or hurdled in like being pulled through a vortex. The very reason of books is to remember. Remember how the Earth was so long ago, or that nice man that worked on a small rice farm in Tokyo. The point of remembering is this: Something is only truly dead when no one remembers the life it has led or the lives it has helped lead.

So, we have reached the final point. Just remember that the end of a book is just the beginning of your story. And now, at the end of all stories, for it is always there, visible or not, are these two last words of closure;

The End