The book wasn’t much to look at. It was old enough, sure. Brown leather, scuffed, especially at the corners, the face rougher for the wear. Probably hadn’t been opened in decades at minimum, hidden here, deep within the deepest, dankest, moldery nook of the maze-like basement of the Read-More bookstore.
This was David’s favorite pastime, however, digging in these dark corners, finding a lonely, long-forgotten volume, opening it to a random page and giving that one page life again, even if it was only this one moment in the more than a century the place had been around. He loved the randomness of it, jumping into the middle of a story with no connection to anything coming before or after in that book. It was like living a single minute of someone else's lifetime, free of context, stepping into an alien's shoes, so many strange, beautiful, utterly disconnected memories in his brain from these encounters!
The leather felt hard and cracked, though it looked like it had been designed to be puffy and soft - like a virgin’s supple, promising flesh, appearing plaint as crepe paper but discovered, upon first touch, to be weathered and worn into a scaly membrane stretched taut over a crone’s bones.
There was no title. Or, if there had once been lettering, it had long since worn off.
That was fine. Titles were overrated. Dave needed no titles for his collection of single page memory snippets.
Something had, however, been embossed up on the surface once upon a time.
Something other than words.
David let his thumb sweep over the smooth yet resistant cover - it felt like he’d imagined an old person’s bony arm might feel if the skin had psoriasis or shingles.
He found what felt like a vein at the base of the cover and traced its path north, toward the top of the book. About a quarter of the way up the cover it began branching out - so, ah! It was a tree - but none of the branches seemed to devolve into anything smaller like twigs - the branches all remained the same size, so maybe the embosser had been trying to represent some sort of vine.
Dave opened the book, not hearing but definitely feeling the leather creak. The title page was blank. So was the next and the next.
He shut the book and opened it again to a random page in the middle, prepared to immerse himself in whatever text he randomly found there.
He saw, instead, that the page here was also blank.
So it was a thus-far unused journal or diary.
But then he saw the green speck in the fold of the book.
It looked like someone had let a splotch of fir-green paint plop down on the exact center of where the two sides of the book met.
Dave shifted the book so he was holding it by the crook of the pages with his left hand, while he hesitantly lifted his right over the book, his index finger extended, hovering over the green spot.
The spot seemed to protrude more than a mere drop of paint or ink or marker dot might.
He lowered his hand and was mere millimeters away when the green spot suddenly grew up out of the book and bumped into the pad of his index finger. It felt organic, but almost rubbery - plantlike, he realized.
It was a vine.
A vine which was now slowly growing out of the book, spreading over the two open pages, slithering down to wrap around Dave’s wrist.
Oh, he thought. So this is that kind of book. I think I’ve read this story before.
It reminded him of the wine-soaked night all the shrubs and bushes around his house had turned into thorny women of leaf and twig and come knocking on his door, although this had never actually happened and he had no idea from whence the strange memory came. It had been quite a memorable night, however.
He guessed there were three possible endings as the vines spread over his body, poking and probing up his nostrils and into, up and shoving their wooden, leafy way roughly down every orifice, finally wrapping him up in its vegetative tentacles like a green mummy.
This was David’s favorite pastime, however, digging in these dark corners, finding a lonely, long-forgotten volume, opening it to a random page and giving that one page life again, even if it was only this one moment in the more than a century the place had been around. He loved the randomness of it, jumping into the middle of a story with no connection to anything coming before or after in that book. It was like living a single minute of someone else's lifetime, free of context, stepping into an alien's shoes, so many strange, beautiful, utterly disconnected memories in his brain from these encounters!
The leather felt hard and cracked, though it looked like it had been designed to be puffy and soft - like a virgin’s supple, promising flesh, appearing plaint as crepe paper but discovered, upon first touch, to be weathered and worn into a scaly membrane stretched taut over a crone’s bones.
There was no title. Or, if there had once been lettering, it had long since worn off.
That was fine. Titles were overrated. Dave needed no titles for his collection of single page memory snippets.
Something had, however, been embossed up on the surface once upon a time.
Something other than words.
David let his thumb sweep over the smooth yet resistant cover - it felt like he’d imagined an old person’s bony arm might feel if the skin had psoriasis or shingles.
He found what felt like a vein at the base of the cover and traced its path north, toward the top of the book. About a quarter of the way up the cover it began branching out - so, ah! It was a tree - but none of the branches seemed to devolve into anything smaller like twigs - the branches all remained the same size, so maybe the embosser had been trying to represent some sort of vine.
Dave opened the book, not hearing but definitely feeling the leather creak. The title page was blank. So was the next and the next.
He shut the book and opened it again to a random page in the middle, prepared to immerse himself in whatever text he randomly found there.
He saw, instead, that the page here was also blank.
So it was a thus-far unused journal or diary.
But then he saw the green speck in the fold of the book.
It looked like someone had let a splotch of fir-green paint plop down on the exact center of where the two sides of the book met.
Dave shifted the book so he was holding it by the crook of the pages with his left hand, while he hesitantly lifted his right over the book, his index finger extended, hovering over the green spot.
The spot seemed to protrude more than a mere drop of paint or ink or marker dot might.
He lowered his hand and was mere millimeters away when the green spot suddenly grew up out of the book and bumped into the pad of his index finger. It felt organic, but almost rubbery - plantlike, he realized.
It was a vine.
A vine which was now slowly growing out of the book, spreading over the two open pages, slithering down to wrap around Dave’s wrist.
Oh, he thought. So this is that kind of book. I think I’ve read this story before.
It reminded him of the wine-soaked night all the shrubs and bushes around his house had turned into thorny women of leaf and twig and come knocking on his door, although this had never actually happened and he had no idea from whence the strange memory came. It had been quite a memorable night, however.
He guessed there were three possible endings as the vines spread over his body, poking and probing up his nostrils and into, up and shoving their wooden, leafy way roughly down every orifice, finally wrapping him up in its vegetative tentacles like a green mummy.
- His story would become the book’s story.
- The bookstore was the story and he was a chapter - beginning, middle, end, he couldn’t guess.
- the vine is the reader is the story is the book is the vine is the reader is the book is the
