Our First Writing Competition

The building sat at the desolate end of a long deserted street. Ruined structures lined the road like broken teeth in a discarded skull, and rubble littered the cracked pavement. Dead trees reached skeletal fingers up to a bleak grey sky. Everything was grey, coated in layers of dust and grime that had bleached the world of colour.

The old building ached. Vile graffiti and spray-painted profanities marred its once pristine white walls, and inside, its many shelves lay shattered across the marble floors. Grand paintings hung in limp tatters, tables and chairs sat in sundered heaps. Worst of all were the thousands of books strewn carelessly among the debris, their pages ripped and their covers bent.

The damage had been done during the Great Rampage, when rioters had ransacked every inch of the city in a lawless frenzy. An ugly, violent time. The building still remembered the pounding of heavy booted feet on its marble floors, accompanied by the wrenching pain of shelves being torn down as the rioters lay waste to everything in their path.

But that had been long ago. Now, all that remained to disturb the silence were the rats, nibbling on the exposed pages of abandoned books.

Once, the building had been a vibrant place, alive with purpose and meaning. It only dimly recalled those days, when people had come flocking to its brightly lit levels, finding solace among its rows of bookshelves.

The building struggled after the memory, trying to bring it into clearer focus. It had been something important back then. But what?

A cold wind pushed through the broken windows of the west wall, flipping a few faded pages of the books scattered on the floor. It didn’t matter. This was the end of time, and there was no purpose in anything. Not anymore.

The building sank deeper and deeper into a numb stupor, destined to forget and be forgotten. It might have slumbered for all eternity, had not a stirring at the eastern entrance roused it.

Just another rat, no doubt. But no, it was too big for that. The building shifted its attention to the slender form now scrambling over the rubble blocking the entryway.

Surprise flickered through the building’s stone walls as it beheld a boy, maybe nine or ten years old. Grime coated the lad’s unkempt hair and tattered clothes, but the eyes peering out of the dirty face were bright and clear.

The building settled wearily onto its foundation, wondering what new torment this boy would inflict upon it. Would he find the antique reading lamp tucked away on the balcony nook and smash it to pieces? Perhaps he would steal a pack full of books to fuel his fires when the days grew cold. More likely, he would pull out a can of spray paint, determined to leave his mark on this dying world.

The boy navigated the wreckage, bare feet whispering on the dirt-coated marble. He stopped in front of a rotating book stand that lay on its side.

The building waited, wincing in advance. The boy slid his hands under the stand and heaved. Resignation gave way to astonishment as the boy righted the shelf and gave it an experimental spin. The stand squealed, but grudgingly turned. Satisfied, the boy picked a book off the floor. He smoothed the crumpled pages, closing it carefully before dusting off the cover with his threadbare shirt. For a moment, he admired the faded cover art, mouthing the title as his fingers traced the bold letters.

Then he placed the book on the stand.

Relief shuddered through the building, and it observed in awe as the boy returned another book to the shelf, then another, and another.

Hours passed as the boy waded through the wreckage, bringing restoration to the mayhem. A great weight fell from the building, like the sky shedding its heavy burden of rain. The aches and pains faded as its broken interior was put to rights, one battered book at a time.

Then the boy selected one of the books he had salvaged and settled onto a stained, musty sofa with broken springs. Smiling, he opened the book.

And as the boy began to read, the building finally remembered what it had been. What, thanks to this boy, it had become once more.

A library.

I am perhaps misled by old age and fear, but I suspect that the human species—the only species—teeters at the verge of extinction, yet that the library—enlightened, solitary, infinite, perfectly unmoving, armed with precious volumes, pointless, incorruptible, and secret—will endure.
— from The Philosophical Tracates of Mar Del Plata, 1941
(The Library of Babel by Jorge Luis Borges)

Nobody knows how the inferno began. No known books tell of it. Perhaps sanctimonious Purifiers tried to cleanse a floor of its heretical books and lost control of their conflagration. Or perhaps a faulty light merely caught flame. The library is made of dry wood, after all, and filled with flammable books. Perhaps the fire has always been there, endlessly burning. As the library itself is infinite, so fire must be inevitable.

We do know that the inferno burns some twelve hundred floors below us and rises a few floors every day. I have never actually seen it myself, of course. For approximately one hundred floors directly above the inferno, the air is full of smoke, and few librarians survive the smoke long enough to see the flame. The librarians who do not make the sojourn upwards suffocate long before the flames consume their corpses. Why not flee? Some librarians believe themselves to be the possessors of a secret treasure—the books—and are wont to stay with them.

More arrive each day—refugees ascending the staircases from the lower floors. Most of them just continue upward without a word, but of those who stop to rest and converse, many have thick accents. Others do not speak our language at all. They must have travelled a great distance. Some are covered in soot, and their eyes are adorned with a long, blank stare.

One such man was a linguist and spoke our language, having travelled much in his youth. He originated from a floor very near the inferno and told me his story while he rested. He hoped to convince me to travel upwards with him, for the inferno would one day reach here. Looking back on it, I think he merely needed to put things into words so as to cope with the atrocity.

“I was looking over a book that appeared to be a vulgate written in a sub-dialect of Sicilian. A colleague of mine—a scholar of Latin languages—and his young apprentice sat with me. The temperature of the air seemed to be rising. We attributed it to the sweat of hard work. All of a sudden, there was a bellowing of smoke from the stairwell. It was thick and black, and intensely acrid. We ran, panicked, to an adjacent hexagon, and then another, and another, only to find the stairwell of each blasting smoke. My colleague and his apprentice ran back to get the few books they had grown accustomed to reading. Only the boy returned, crawling on his knees to avoid choking. The air quickly became unbreathable, and we resolved to move upward. Josephine, the old woman who lived in the hexagon above, refused to abandon her books, and presumably burned up along with them. Lucas, the librarian thirteen flights higher and a good friend of mine, tried to join us in our ascent, but was weighed down so heavily by his stack of precious tomes that he had, in the panic and unbeknownst to us, stopped to rest on the staircase and was left behind.”

He paused for a long moment, then continued:

“Some time ago, the people some sixty floors above us built trap doors over the stairwells in an attempt to avoid molestation from their neighbors below (who had resorted to banditry during times of famine). Those doors bought us precious time to rest and ascend enough flights to get ahead of the smoke. One gentleman there concluded that if the source of the smoke lies directly below us, travelling a few days in any direction would clear us of it. The fire, he reckoned, would still spread horizontally, but fire spreads much more slowly than smoke, so that we may continue our ascent at a slower pace. Only after travelling for three days diagonally through foreign hexagons did we clear the smoke, and only then did I realize how vast the inferno must be. We continued upwards, and eventually I came here.” He continued with details of the many months he has been ascending, details I cannot bear to repeat.

I have met others who consider themselves not refugees, but pilgrims. They believe the library is finite and has a base floor, below which there is no other floor, and a highest floor, above which there is nothing. They have taken the inferno to be a sign from the library itself, telling them to make this pilgrimage upward. At the top—which they fancy they themselves will one day reach—is a circular room with a circular book (an old esoteric belief, as you probably know). This book is God, and it will quench the fire if only they ask. Others have faith that the top floor is a singular crimson hexagon whose books can withstand flame. They imagine in the center of this crimson hexagon is a stairwell that exits the library.

For myself, I have resolved to stay in my own hexagon. After reading the 1941 philosophical tractates of Mar Del Plata, I have concluded that the library is not infinite. I am unconvinced by the fantasies of the pilgrims, as pleasant as they are. Up is no different than any other direction, and wherever there are books, the inferno will eventually come. The inferno, in fact, will one day consume all the library. It is and has always been inevitable. If the librarians have not already died out by then, due to war, plague, famine, or perhaps mass suicide, they will certainly not survive the hell fire of that final day. Perhaps, when that time comes, whoever built the library in the first place will make something new from the ashes. I will die peacefully with that thought.

Libraries always reminded Brody of cemeteries. Endless rows of indistinguishable books reposed quietly, waiting for visitors. Like headstones, some were fancier than others. Some more frequented. But mostly, they just remained silent, unmoving, and alone.

A few somber patrons were scattered among them, heads bowed, paying their respects to open volumes in their hands—trying to dig out some scrap of knowledge buried within.

Even the air within the Peerson County Library was dead. Still and quiet. Brody could cut the musty pall with a dull knife. Dim light streamed through the high, yellow windows, falling with little effect on the paneled walls and wooden tables.

Wrinkling his nose, he strolled to the large information desk.

“Excuse me,” he said, “I’m looking for maps.”

The elderly gentleman pulled his head back unusually far, peering at Brody through his bifocals.

“Maps of where?” he replied.

Brody brushed aside the question. “All I need is the map section. Is there a computer where I look things up?”

The white-haired librarian pointed. “No computer. The card catalog is over there. If you tell me what you’re looking for, I can probably help you. I know every book in this library.”

Brody sighed.
No computer? Time had clearly passed over this place.

“I need a map of Peerson from 1973.”

The librarian nodded. “You’re looking for the Peerson Survey Journals. Row L. Bottom shelf.”

“Thanks.”

The volume was exactly where the man said. Brody lifted the large gray book and laid it upon a table. From his pocket, he produced a scrap of paper that simply read:
11711 North.

The dying words of Arnold Stowe.

“11711 North where?” Brody had asked.
But the answer never came.

Arnold Stowe lay on his deathbed, fingers grasping at nothing, his final breath sliding from his lungs. Brody’s question of where the dying man left the stolen Hapgood Diamond remained half-answered.

Brody was convinced Stowe was behind the stunning theft. At the care home, Brody had listened to the senile man’s prattling. During the day, Stowe’s gravelly mutterings were undiscernible. But in the dark, early hours, he was a different man. Brody would follow the bent figure down the corridors as he pounded the walls.

“Just a few more feet, Stewart,” he’d cry. “We’re almost there!”

“We’re too low, Stewart! We’ll hit the strap!”

Initially, Brody dismissed it as dementia. But his heart raced as details began to crystallize—aligning perfectly with the unsolved disappearance of the Hapgood Diamond, stolen by tunneling thieves from the depths of the Chancellor Building.

In Stowe’s final moments, Brody pressed him one last time.
“Where’s the diamond?”
“11711 North…”

With sinking spirits, Brody studied the large book of maps. Dozens of streets stretched north of Peerson. Multiple locations bore the number 11711. These maps were a dead end. How could he narrow it down?

He spied the Periodicals section. Perhaps the newspapers held a clue. He hefted his mental shovel.
“Time to dig up some other grave,” he mused.

The newspapers were useless. After scanning numerous sheets of film on the antiquated microfiche projector, the journals and reports contained nothing.

He fell back, disheartened.
What next?

Maybe he should investigate the diamond itself. Surely this library possessed materials about the town’s famous jewel.

Brody approached the information desk again. The old librarian’s back was turned, assisting another visitor.

“Pardon me.”

Without turning, the librarian simply lifted a finger, signaling Brody to wait.

Brody grimaced and glanced at the card catalog. He had never used one before—every library he knew had a computer. He examined the numerous drawers. Author. Title. Subject. That’s all he remembered from elementary school.

He pulled out a drawer labeled “D” and flipped through the cards.

He let out a low whistle and plucked one free:
Subject: Diamonds
Title: Hapgood Treasures, A History
Dewey Decimal: 534.11

His eyes widened.
What if Stowe’s final words weren’t a street address?

He hurried to the Author section, yanked out the “N” drawer, and feverishly slapped through the cards.

There it was:
117.11 North, Jameson – A Comparative Analysis of Footings, Pilings, and Foundations

Bristling with excitement, he rushed back to the desk. Thankfully, the librarian was free.

“I’m looking for this book.” He slid the card to the old man.

The librarian squinted through his thick lenses.
“That’s in the Engineering section. In the Annex. Upper level. I can show you—”

“No need!”

Brody dashed into the depths of the library and up the stairs to the stacks above. The upper level was even more dreary than below, dimly lit with bare incandescent bulbs.

He found the Engineering shelf. Nestled atop was a thick tome:
A Comparative Analysis of Footings, Pilings, and Foundations

Stowe must have referenced it when digging the tunnel, Brody surmised.

He ripped open the dusty book.

And froze.

The pages had been hollowed out, just enough to hold a small object. But the carved-out nook was empty.

The diamond had been there.
Now it was gone.

Brody’s fingers scraped inside the empty space, finding nothing.

His shoulders slumped.
For a tantalizing moment, he had been on the cusp of unearthing the treasure Arnold Stowe had taken to the grave.

He slammed the book shut and slunk defeatedly downstairs. On his way to the exit, he tossed the heavy tome loudly onto the information desk.

“This book is damaged,” he grumbled, not even noticing the woman strolling past him as he left.

The librarian frowned, lifting the abandoned book in dismay.

“Excuse me,” the woman asked. “I’m looking for Covekey’s Guide to Flower Arranging. Do you have it?”

The librarian smiled, sliding the large tome from sight.

“Certainly,” he said with a twinkle in his eye. “I know every book in this library.”

Zoe screamed, her hand moving up to clamp her mouth. The sound was stifled, as if she was mindful of library decorum in spite of her alarmed state. But it was loud enough to have Mike rushing over from the adjacent aisle.

“What happened? Are you o—”

He stopped as soon as he laid eyes on the cause of her distress. The body lay prone at the end of the aisle, eyes set in a vacant stare, back of the head bashed in.

“Oh.” It was all he could muster.

Bolstered by her friend’s presence, Zoe pulled herself out of the shock and took a few tentative steps toward the corpse. She knelt by it, her heart racing, the sight of the blood and gore making her nauseous. For a moment she considered asking Mike to help, but then she reminded herself that she was a capable woman. She didn’t need a man to do the dirty work for her.

The body was still warm as she felt for a pulse with trembling hands, but she couldn’t detect any sign of life, confirming what she had expected.

“Is that what killed him?” Mike pointed to the hardcover of War and Peace lying next to the deceased.

“Mike! This is no time for jokes.”

The book was hefty, but Zoe couldn’t imagine it doing this much damage—not unless it was dropped from atop a skyscraper. She shuddered when another thought took root, instilling fear deep inside her. She stood up and hurried back toward Mike.

“What if the killer’s still here?” she asked as her eyes flitted around the aisle.

“He’s probably long gone. I doubt anyone’s going on a murderous head-bashing spree in the library.”

His response did nothing to calm her anxiety.

“We should call the cops,” she said.

“Or we could just walk away.”

“What? Why?”

“Don’t we know this guy from somewhere?” Mike asked.

Zoe hesitated before forcing herself to peruse the lifeless face.

“Oh no! It’s Rohit, isn’t it?” she replied.

“Yes, yes, it’s him indeed.”

“How awful.” The familiarity with the victim made the tragedy harder to stomach. “I don’t think I’ve seen him since graduation. Not that we spoke much back then either.” She turned to Mike. “But you knew him well, right? Had you been in touch?”

“No, no. He was never a friend, really. We just had a couple of classes together. But he did take the time to email me a few weeks ago, just to detail how ludicrous the plot for The Body in the Library was.”

Until recently, the title would have reminded Zoe of the Agatha Christie classic. But Mike had appropriated the title for his debut novel, self-published months prior.

“What was his beef with it?” she asked, though she could guess.

“For one, he felt it was too far-fetched that anyone could commit a murder in a public library during open hours and get away with it.”

“Well…” She hesitated.

“I know, I know, you had the same opinion.”

“But it’s true.”

He glanced at Rohit before replying. “First of all, it’s fiction — not everything must be realistic. Second — someone just got away with murder right here in the real world, right?”

“Not necessarily. I’m sure he’ll be caught once the cops investigate.” Zoe frowned. “Which reminds me — we should call them.”

He ignored the suggestion. “Caught how? He’s clearly gone. And as far as I can tell, there are no cameras around here. How are they going to identify the killer?”

“They could question other library patrons. Ask them if they saw anyone entering this area, whether anyone seemed to be in a hurry or looked suspicious.”

He shook his head. “It’s summer. School’s out. No university students swarming the place. Only a few locals like us. And how many of those did you see today?”

“Okay. Point taken. Then they’ll interview family, friends. Find out if anyone was out to get him.”

“And what if it was a random attack?”

Zoe shrugged. “Fingerprints from the murder weapon, I guess.”

“And where’s this weapon?”

She scanned the aisle again, her eyes widening in horror.

“What?” asked Mike.

She pointed to the shelf behind him. He turned to look.

“Oh.”

A silver candlestick sat there, with what looked like dried blood caking its base.

“Brilliant, Zoe! You would make a good detective.”

“I wonder why he left it there.”

“Probably panicked and fled when he heard you approaching?”

“Probably.” A pause. “You didn’t see anyone else?”

“Nope. I was busy browsing the shelves. I didn’t even see our friend here until he was dead. Did you?”

“No,” replied Zoe, deflated.

The sense of unease was building up inside her. She fished out her phone and started typing.

“What are you doing?”

“Calling the cops.”

“You sure about that?”

She glared at him. “Of course. Someone’s gotta do it.”

“You realize it means we’ll be stuck here forever.”

“So?”

“What about your flight?”

“Damn! I forgot about that in all this commotion. It’s an opportunity of a lifetime. I’ve got to be there.”

“Exactly.”

“So we just walk away?” she asked, guilt pervading her being.

“I have another idea.”

“What?”

He held up a finger and reached for the candlestick with his other hand.

“Mike! Wait! What are you doing? The fingerprints!” Zoe cautioned.

“Don’t worry. I’ll wipe it down again.”

It took her a couple of seconds to grasp the meaning.

“Again?” she asked, but by then it was too late.

“If only you had loved my novel, Zoe,” Mike replied as he brought the candlestick down on her head.

When you became too ill to leave your bed, we thought it would only last a few days. Then weeks. Then months. You became allergic to everything, or so it seemed, and dropped weight like a candle burning wax. You couldn’t stand the slightest sound, and even a weak light caused you pain. Words on a page blurred before your eyes, and moving images on a screen made you dizzy and nauseous. We learned how to shift and roll you in bed to change the sheets around you and keep bed sores from forming. For two hours each day, someone could talk with you. Otherwise, the room remained dark and silent.

The scent library began with coffee. You couldn’t drink coffee anymore, but you loved the smell of it, so I would bring my cup up in the morning and sit by your bed. The scent reminded you of so many things. You thought of your own father when he was small. You thought of rushing to work with your shirt half buttoned. You thought of lingering at the bakery as you wooed my mother.

Then one hot summer day, after a long stretch without, the sky poured down rain. I ran up the stairs to open your window. It had been so long since it was opened that it stuck, but finally, I peeled it up.

“Smell that! Can you smell it?” I’d asked as the scent of petrichor rolled in.

You remembered splashing in puddles. You remembered your wedding day.

After that, I found the perfume vials. First, it was the bottle that Mom had kept for date nights. You said it smelled so sexy. You said you should’ve learned how to dance, and then you could have taken her dancing every night. Each morning, you asked if I could spray the perfume. I worried it would run out. I knew the bottle would empty before your memories did.

So I looked online for a perfume store. They sold every scent I could think of in tiny vials. I bought coffee and rain. I bought oak tree, cotton candy, and snow. Once per day, so as not to overwhelm your body, I would offer you a spritz.

“Ocean!” I would say, and with the scent, you, who could not leave your bed, would be transported.

For the two hours you could speak, you would tell me of the ocean in a fluid stream of story or a disjointed mess of chaotic memory. Sometimes I was in the story, too, playing on the beach, rolling in the snow, catching fireflies in jars. Every scene felt like magic when it came from your lips.

If I crept into your room any other time of the day, you were silent. The heavy curtains were drawn. Not a single word was whispered.

The scent library, a cornucopia of the mind, fit in a single shoe box. After buying so many scents of everyday life, I decided to go for the exotic. There were perfumes that were supposed to smell like distant cities. We traveled to Bangkok, Santiago, and Rome. Fancy perfumes have more than one scent. As time passes, the aroma transitions from that first bright burst to the heart and then the base. Some perfumes told whole stories. “Night Flyer” by Olympic Orchids is a bat scent that begins in a dank cave and then flies out into the night sky and through a jungle heavy with flowers.

“You’ll never guess where we’re going today!” I told you. Together we flew with the fruit bat.

I knew the scent continued long after I left the room, but I didn’t know when your confusion set in. Without words, were you able to continue the journey?

Years passed. You died long before I was ready. When I visit your grave, I bring the scent library with me. I ask which you’d like today, but you don’t answer. Still, I choose one for you, and I spritz it on your stone and my wrist.

“Butter popcorn,” I say and launch into a narrative of the horror flick I’d watched without you, telling of the couple in front of me who had been deep in a snog-fest the whole film, and the girls beside them who had practiced screaming and tossing popcorn at every jump scare, and how I had tried so hard not to laugh.

People say they’re deeply sorry to hear about you and how you lived for years in that dark, tiny room. I tell them to keep their sorrow. They’ll never understand the adventures we shared there. One day, though, I know I’ll meet the right person who will ask about you, and I’ll take out the scent library, and together we will fly with the bat, dance beneath the stars, and sit here by your grave. Just you wait. I have so many more stories to tell you.