Made of Library

Mother told me not to go all the way to the end of the garden path. I was to go as far as the big tree on the left, the one that had the big knot in its trunk that looks like a man’s face. When I reached that tree I was to turn around and come back. I didn’t listen to Mother. Aunt Izzy said Mother is just being sensible and it’s for my own good. Aunt Izzy said that next time she visits she would come with me and we would be allowed to go past the tree with the man’s face. She said that maybe we would even find a fairy ring out there. I didn’t wait until Aunt Izzy’s next visit. Now the King is saying I have to complete his quest before I can go home again. That’s why I started to get scared. Then I started crying. I told the King “I don’t want to complete a quest, I just want to go home!” “Then why didn’t you stay at home in the first place, instead of coming bumbling your way into my kingdom, disrupting the peace?” “I’m sorry, I just wanted to see a fairy ring,” I said. “A...

“Do you know what an endling is, Captain?” the creature asked. “No. I haven’t heard that term before. What is an Endling?” the Captain entertained the question. “An endling is the last individual of an entire species.” He let that sink in. “That’s me. I am an endling.” “All species come to an end eventually. Either through an extinction event or evolution, when they become a new, different species. Nothing is stagnant. The universe is ever changing”, the Captain reasoned. “Yes, but how do you think I feel towards you, knowing that you were the ‘extinction event’, as you call it, for my particular species? I can tell you it’s not kindly. I’d rather you just leave me alone to die, Captain. I’m not going to participate in any more of your pointless tests. I think you’ve gathered enough data on my species. There’s little point gathering any more, seeing as how we’re all dead.” The creature crossed its cell, lay down on its narrow bed and turned its back to the transparent wall, w...

Barry Marshall knew that he was dead. He’d been expecting it for some time, and now that he was looking down at his own body he knew with a certainty that it had finally happened. He was disgusted by what he saw in the bed before him. The slack jaw hanging open, chin covered in drool. The fat stomach, the flaky scalp, the skin wrinkled all over like old wrapping paper. He was glad to finally be dead. Death wasn’t what he’d expected though. He wasn’t a religious man, so he hadn’t thought that he’d be off to heaven or hell or that place inbetween. He honestly just thought it would be nothing. He’d die and that would be the end of it. He wouldn’t be aware that he was dead, his consciousness would just blink out of existence. Now that Barry Marshall was dead he didn’t know what to do. Should he stick close to his corporeal body? He didn’t want to go too far in case they moved it and he didn’t know if his ghost, spirit, whatever he was now, was somehow linked to his physical remains...

I don’t know why I’d never noticed the shop before. I was sure it hadn’t been there yesterday. I walk past that row of stores every day and I’d never noticed it. I would have noticed something like that. The glass-fronted windows were empty, waiting for a display to go in. What that display might be, I couldn’t even guess. There was no indication from the outside as to what kind of store it actually was. The words above the door said DISPARATE TIMES in a gothic font. My curiosity got the better of me and I went in. “Ah, good. You made it”. I looked around to try and find where the voice had come from. A small, elderly man shuffled around behind me and locked the door. He peered out through the window as if checking whether I’d been followed. “Take a seat, take a seat,” he said, ushering me to a small, round table near one of the display windows. I sat down and saw a tray of tea laid out before me. A steaming teapot, two fine, porcelain teacups, a sugar bowl and a sm...

“There’s a bridge downstream, just before the next town. Let’s just cross there instead.” “We can’t. There’s people there. Someone will see us and tell the constables. We have to cross here.” “It’s too dangerous, Dani. Look how fast the river is flowing. We’ll be swept out to sea before we get halfway across. And even if we did manage to get to the other side, we’ll be soaking wet, it’ll be dark soon. We’ll freeze to death.” “So what’s your suggestion? Cross at the bridge so that we can be spotted and jailed for theft? I thought we were in this together, Jakob.” Jakob sighed and sat down on a nearby tree stump. “We are in this together. I just didn’t realise that when you asked me to run away with you, you meant right now. I thought you meant, like, in a month, when we’d had a chance to make a plan.” “I saw an opportunity and I took it. The money was there, unattended, no one saw. But I had to take it then, otherwise I’d lose my chance. Now we’ve got enough money to ge...