The Book

• Grace Packer, Grade 12, Brisbane School Distance Education
• Short Story
• 2015

Excellence Award in the 'Beyond Words 2015' competition

You get asked for a lot of things as a librarian, but you have never been asked for anything as many times as you have been asked for The Book.
"What book?" you used to inquire politely.
Now you plead desperately, "What book?!"
No one ever answers, you're beginning to think that no one ever knows. How can everyone want this book, yet no one knows the title?
It haunts you. It's all you think about, but you aren't sure what to think. At night you dream of an endless library, there must be more than a million books, but all you are looking for is one book, The Book. You feel it before you see it, it draws you towards the back of the library. It's telling you what to do.
Every morning you wake up feeling lost, you want to crawl back into that library. The library that doesn't exist.
You feel like you need to find The Book. Does the book even exist?
For years you lived, searching for a book with no title, no author and possibly no place in this world. You've been to over three hundred libraries. None of them have The Book.
This one has The Book.
You feel it before you even step foot inside, it's just like your dream, not in appearance, but it feels like your dream. You feel like you aren't yourself anymore, you are The Book. You live to find The Book. You live to serve The Book.
The Book is small and thin, drowning in the encyclopedias surrounding it. You expected it to be thick and heavy. Why did you expect that?
It's small but it holds more power than you have ever felt. Stepping up the the shelf you suddenly feel like this is wrong. In a moment of clarity you feel like maybe your whole life is wrong, like when someone moves a picture frame on a wall and it never hangs just right again.
It's too late though, you're already touching The Book, pulling it from its place. It has you now.