CHAPTER SIX: STAFF

Administration. It’s an uncomfortable topic. But it’s okay, because with me, you’re safe. Shhh, just look at my pages. Nobody is reading over your shoulder. You won’t get in trouble for reading this. You’ll be fine, so long as you read.

You hear a lot about the administration, like scary shadows in the dark. They aren’t. They’re just people. A council of thirteen ridiculously powerful people -- but people nonetheless.

I’ll let you in on a secret: almost all administration members are former students. That’s right, just like you and I. Your peers. As it should be. Sure, they’re basically all powerful and their justice is swift and often disturbing, but that’s because they’re keeping our school safe for both of us. And if you try very hard, get on Honor Roll, graduate, and apply, then maybe you too can one day be elected for High Council.

...Okay, I lied. Someone was indeed reading over your shoulder. But they’re gone now.

So here’s the truth:

“Love the new look, Twelve. Do you really think that’s going to score you any pity points today?” smugly stated a man in a suit. He had wire-rimmed glasses on, and the combination of his perpetually slightly upturned nose and nearly-high-pitched voice made him extremely punchable.

“No need to be petty, Vox-- although that’s never stopped you before.” Cardona unthinkingly lifted a hand to the white ball of cotton taped up against where her eye would have been. “Besides, you got the Float last week, we all know it’s mine today.”

“If you make it to the vote today. Seems you’re falling apart.”

Cardona relieved her stress by clamping her jaw shut and imagining Vox in various states of death and despair. Considering the intensity with which she projected these visions, it was a miracle they didn’t spontaeneously come into being. Vox grinned.

“Settle down now, friends,” came a smooth voice, lingering in the air like dripping honey. “We ought to begin the meeting now, lest we never get anything done.”

The source of the voice was a man nestled casually in chair at the head of the table, stretched out like a cat. He was wearing an oxford shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and a pair of round sunglasses. Across his otherwise handsome face were tracks of scars like a jigsaw puzzle, and in his hand was a flashing motion of silver. He flourished and caught the glinting metal, observing a scalpel in the light before continuing.

The others around the table certainly felt strongly about this man, but the emotion was always mutable. Reverence, fear, love, legitimate hatred. Mixed in the expressions of the other twelve was nearly the entire spectrum of emotion.

He settled for casual enjoyment.

“Firstly, I’d like to bestow the Float to Twelve this week. Any against?”

The room was dead silent.

“Wonderful, then the motion passes. First order of business,” he paused and giggled as though remembering a joke, “Six, how is our new hire settling in?”

Vox raised an eyebrow. He looked around the table uncertainly before leaning forward to speak.

“Uhm, settling in well, I’d suppose,” he meekly said. In response, the man at the head of the table smiled and nodded, absentmindedly watching the light.

“I see. We want our new friend to feel welcome to our family, now, don’t we?” he asked. A general chorus of nods followed. “Besides, he seems quite interesting, really. I spoke… briefly with our old friend Mr. Hendrick regarding him. Apparently, he’s quite a rare fellow.” Something churned at his feet. He looked down and chidingly shushed whatever resided there.

He watched the rest of the council as though expecting something, and then a thin disappointment, a sour distaste barely leaked through his face before he twisted it into a grin and watched the ceiling again. The others uncomfortably waited.

“So, here’s the deal--” he began, shifting in his seat and pulling himself upright before earnestly addressing the others.

“Where did he come from?”

The library of Kingsly is challenging to describe in a meaningful way. The human mind has a natural self-defense mechanism against large numbers and large quantities: not processing them. So when I tell you that the library is big, I’m at a bit of a loss to describe just how big. Picture the biggest room you can.

It’s bigger than that. Probably, assuming you aren’t some freak of nature with the ability to mentally process very large spaces.

Thus the problem with the Kingsly library, at least in writing: I can’t actually put the picture in your head. It’s too big.

Instead of comparing it to arbitrary numbers of large objects, instead envision the Kingsly library as another planet. It’s not that big, but that’s closer than whatever you were picturing. Unfortunately, you’re also not great at picturing how big a planet is. Baby steps.

Now imagine this planet is a jungle, but the trees are bookshelves. The jungle is in perpetual twilight, a darkness drifting from the debatably existent ceiling. The soft orange light is provided by countless tealights in the sky like stars, perched and floating, feasting on the general energy of a library -- both subduing the library-goers and providing them with light. Swarm feedings were rare in the library, as the lights had grown lazy. Even the lights only dared venture so far into the “sky”, lest they be lost in the dark forever. In the center of the library, from which the books sprawled, was a spire reaching into the eternity above.

At the base of this spire, Baker -- poor Baker -- emerged.

His brain short-circuited for a moment, and Romov was forced to intervene to prevent him from falling flat on his face. From that point, Baker made a concerted effort not to look up.

Anna was a more seasoned human being than Baker, tactfully averting her gaze from the infinite abyss above them. A few students crowded near the entrance, taking shelter by the spire from the void it pierced.

A dog approached the pair, panting happily with a sort of prancing stride. The dog was large and rather wolf-like, but the friendly disposition and goofy expression clearly gave it away as merely wearing wolf’s clothing.

“Well, hello there,” said Baker, leaning down to pet the newcomer. The dog callously ignored him and trotted to the feet of Anna, where it sat and emitted some sort of dog-noise, halfway between a whine and a contented yawn.

“Hey, Seraph,” said Anna. The dog opened and closed its mouth several times while making more dog noises. Baker burst into giggles at the spectacle. Both the dog and Anna paused to glare at him. Baker stopped but his grin did not fade; it only became confused. His eyes darted around, trying to figure out what was happening, and certainly failing.

The dog continued “talking” as Anna occasionally interjected nonverbal input, like a nod or a hand… thing.

“Do you know what’s happening?” whispered Baker in awe.

“Apparently? A conversation. Practically? Not a clue,” came Romov’s reply. For once, the pair seemed to be on equal footing.

“Here for--... a friend today, actually,” said Anna. “We’re looking forrr,” she trailed off, turning to Baker and raising an eyebrow.

“A book,” said Romov.

“A book,” repeated Baker.

“A book,” finally said Anna, thus completing the world’s most unnecessary game of telephone.

The dog barked once, quietly and politely, then continued in the open doors of the spire. Anna remained stationary, patting a rhythm against her legs with her hands and avoiding looking up while still looking for something to look at.

“So…?” attempted Baker. Anna lifted her gaze to meet his face. Her eyes flicked to the left briefly, as though looking for someone else he could be talking to.

“So,” carefully continued Anna, “Seraph is going to go grab the librarian for us.”

“Spelk?” alarmedy asked Romov, commandeering Baker’s lips and eyebrows to properly communicate surprise.

“Uhm, I presume.”

“Shit.” And then Baker’s eyes slammed shut.

“Romov?” worriedly chimed Baker.

“Keep these eyes closed. Mr. Spelk is… unique. If he sees into your eyes, he’ll see me. Then I’ll kill you, we’ll walk into this library again, and that asshole will still remember that I’m up here. Best not to risk--”

“CHILDREN,” cried Mr. Spelk. “HOW LOVELY TO SEE CHILDREN IN THE LIBRARY.” He towered over them with a comically disturbing tight-lipped smile on his face that seemed to stretch from one end of his face to the other with no regard for the skin in between -- skin with a rubbery, coarse texture. He looked like a potato sack full of sticks painted to look like a human. His hair had apparently escaped years ago, and what was left of it clung around or in his ears. And his nose… wasn’t present at all. It was just more smooth skin.

His bushy eyebrows hung on for dear life atop the most dead voids imaginable, not even tangentially related to eyes; just black holes like punctures in a balloon. He wriggled further towards the group, standing tall with his gloved hands clasped behind his back.

Baker could feel every inch of this man’s stare clambering on his face, clumsily grabbing at his eyelids and attempting to force them open.

“I SEE WE HAVE AN AUTHOR AMONG US,” continued Spelk, with nobody asking him to do so. Romov’s panic increased.

If you ever want to feel exactly what Baker and Romov were feeling in this moment, imagine someone standing directly behind you, but you aren’t completely sure they’re present. Without looking, you rely on your spine to inform you of their existence. You can feel them there, as though the displaced air and warmth from their body were radio signals and the back of your neck is an antenna. Now, for someone as uncomfortable as Spelk, you need to focus very intensely on the back of your neck. So go on, take one second to very thoroughly visualize it. Feel every inch of skin grafted onto your back, every neuron within this area. Tense any muscles surrounding, and relax them. Really become invested in the status of this patch.

Now envision a tongue slowly, slowly lowering over your neck, licking the air above it without touching you.

I apologize for this image, but it’s the only effective way to understand his particular aura.

Seraph trotted back towards Anna with a mildly worried look on her face. She woofed a phrase softly at Anna, and Anna put a hand over her mouth to stifle a giggle. Spelk’s head rotated on his body with a grating, gristling scrape, and his eyebrows pulled down. The smile became a frown. They hung like this for what felt like hours; certainly for longer than a conversational pause, and certainly longer than an acceptable uncomfortable pause, rocketing past awkward pause into “art installation” status. Every party involved remained completely silent for a full minute. A real, actual minute.

Go! Get a stopwatch! This book is interactive now! Go ahead! Feel that minute! Live it! There’s nothing there! Stare in silence at the flickering numbers, and see if you can hold this scene in your head for that entire time. If you can, film it, and send this to me. I would like to witness this.

By the end of what barely felt like a silence anymore, Baker’s eyelids had quite enough. They wrenched themselves open and drank in Spelk’s appearance like poison wine. Baker spontaneously muttered a ghastly “eugh” before Spelk pivoted and stared deep, deep into his eyes.

As though the goosebumps from Spelk’s gaze weren’t enough, Baker also had to deal with the crackling static of Romov’s goosebumps as well. It felt like his skin was on fire.

Spelk’s incredibly fake grin faded, and his eyebrows dipped. The black punctures in his face closed, and he was wracked with an emotion that could have been spite, regret, or ecstasy -- it was difficult to tell. Then the punctures rammed open again and his grin returned with even more ferocity than before. His voice dropped to a slightly less grating register.

“Ahhh, Mr. Day. Romov. The prodigal child. Glad to see you’re getting out more often. I presume you’re here for the third volume?” He chuckled, and his stick-like limbs writhed under his dusty clothing. He adjusted his collar with bony claws, then skittered away with a tiny stride; he moved faster than such a stride had any right to take him.

Seraph half-jogged to keep up with him, panting contentedly, and the others remained frozen in various expressions of surprise and disgust.

After creating some distance between them, Spelk wheeled around and tilted his head.

“WELL? COME ON THEN,” he bellowed enthusiastically. Baker found his legs moving him forward, and he indignantly frowned at this act of rebellion. He pivoted his head to watch Anna, only to realize that she was facing a similar problem. And so, resigned, he allowed his legs to take him wherever Mr. Spelk was leading them.

Wherever Mr. Spelk was leading them happened to be a massive glass cage tucked inside a bookshelf. Spelk pivoted abruptly to faced the shelves, and gestured dramatically forward while bowing.

“ENJOY!” screeched Mr. Spelk before vanishing into the aether. In the bookshelf was a writhing mass of glass and gears as large as a house, evershifting in a tumultuous ocean surface. Baker, somewhat lost, glanced towards Anna. She shrugged nonchalantly, looking in turn at Seraph, who was lying on the floor attentively in front of the glasswork. Seraph looked up at Baker with... well, it was hard to tell what kind of expression the dog was making, because she was a dog.

“Go on then,” said Romov. “We haven’t got all day.”

Baker touched the glass.

In the instant his skin contacted the glass, time momentarily stood still as the narrative fixed itself. Tiny, minute tears in the fabric of itself bulged with sinew and knit cleanly back together. The ridges of his finger had sunken into the glass, and moments later, a ripple would travel across the glass before Baker was absorbed into a new continuity. Moments before this happened, Seraph stood and started walking towards the spire, while Anna sat down next to the bookshelf, contemplating the various states of anguish she would force Persephone through.

Max--... Steve, sorry -- would stare deep into a shard of broken mirror, marvelling at the shiny black, hoping that someone would come by and unlock the closet that the others had shoved him into.

Spelk’s rotating masses of limb would come to a stop before the venerable Vox, looking more punchable than ever. And accompanying Vox would be Persephone, her eyes red and her mouth twisted downwards, but her eyebrows still smiling.

On the outskirts of the ripple, Djymm would go about his business, whatever that business happened to be. Pepper would perch near him, ruffling her hinges contentedly.

Lastly, Kingsly, humming with life, would fold itself neatly into a reflection on the hinged glass before falling flat as ink on a page.

A man with the memories of Baker would awake next to a journal containing these fevered dreams, glance down at a series of pill bottles, and see the name “MENDOZA, EVAN”.