49: That'll Pigging Do, Bob.

Garry is striding through the dark. He can hear Rosalyn keening somewhere over to his left, but something is telling him he must carry straight on. His hands outstretched, they finally come into contact with the wall.

But it isn't just the wall, and the noise isn't just Rosalyn.

Garry stops, and sniffs.

He can smell Brut. And he can hear panting and shuffling.

'Just a little bit more!' someone says. There's a groan, and the noise of something soft and large falling. A torrent of swearing, and then a laugh.

'I'm in!' Bob says, 'for the love of pig!' It worked!

Garry freezes. He can hear Bob picking himself up off the floor. Garry hurries, feeling the strange boxes and levers on the wall in front of him. He will not be robbed of his glory. Today, he thinks, is Garry Day. Garry holds his breath and pulls the levers down.

There is a crackle, a fizz, a pop, and then the electricity hums into life and the basement is flooded with light.

Garry is standing in front of the fuse-boxes. Bob is in front of the lift. There are a couple of borrowers lying on the floor as if they are asleep, scattered at his feet like fallen skittles.

Rosalyn is on her knees. She has her hands over her eyes. The lights haven't been on down here in years, perhaps decades.

'Garry!' Bob says, 'you beauty!'

Garry blinks, his hand still on the levers. He feels something. A strange feeling. It is swelling in his chest. His heart is expanding, getting bigger and bigger. It is making him spread his legs and stand up straighter. He lifts his chin, feeling like a Roman Emperor. He lets go of the levers and puts his hands on his hips.

'That'll do, Bob,' he says, with great dignity. 'I've got everything in hand now.'

Rosalyn stands up, shakes out her hair and walks shakily towards Garry. Garry doesn't notice her. He is too busy Making Eye Contact with Bob.

Bob seems to shrink and crumple. Katerina is shouting down the lift shaft.

'The lights! The lights are back on! The tills are working!' she says. She sounds delirious with happiness, but neither Bob or Garry answer.

Rosalyn leaps towards Garry. She curls her arms around his neck and kisses his cheekbone. She stands on tip-toe and lets her hair tickle his neck.

There are no words to describe Garry's heart now. He has never, ever been kissed before. He thinks about The Staff Manual. Wasn't there something in there about Relationships Between Staff? Some dire consequences?

Rosalyn smells like a grove of citrus trees and he turns and pushes her hair out of her eyes. Garry puts his hand around her waist. In the light, Rosalyn is a very beautiful woman. Rosalyn puts her head in the space between Garry's chin and his chest. She kind of burrows in, as if she doesn't want to look at Bob.

'Garry, you plumb. She's bad news! Leave it alone!' Bob says.

Garry places one arm around Rosalyn's shoulders and points at Bob with the other.

'Oi,' he says. The kiss has made his voice deeper, more manly somehow. Bob shrinks some more, and then nods.

'Lets get back upstairs,' Garry says, and presses the button on the lift, 'come on Bob. This lady,' he lifts Rosalyn and carries her into the lift, 'needs a hot drink, and something to eat.'

'Are you coming up now?' Katerina's voice bounces down the metal tube and booms around them, 'come quick! John's gone mad!'

48: A Genius, A Superhero, And A Dream Of Keyboard Shortcuts

The journey to The Office is taking a long time. Mike is sure Linda is stalling on purpose. She seems to need a Little Rest every seven steps. She is having another one now, and this time, Mike has decided to join her, rather than stand and waste his energy, or his Maglite battery.

In the darkness, he can hear the quiet sound of her breathing. She is far less annoying like this - quiet, and invisible. Mike pretends he’s in Call Of Duty 4, and Linda is a beautiful survivor he’s saved from some blast or attack. She comes from a place where technology is not freely available, so she thinks he is a genius, a wizard. No, not a wizard, he doesn’t want to go down that road. Mike tuts as he thinks of role-players, and of how the moronic general public lump anyone with one iota of IT knowledge into the same pigeon-hole. He can feel his knuckles tensing in the dark.

‘Okay, I’m ready for the next flight,’ says Linda.

‘Yes, M’am,’ drawls Mike as he gets to his feet. He is being ironic, but is not sure it will be taken that way. His experience of Linda in the past has always had him biting his fist in exasperation at her ability to take everything literally. But she doesn’t reply. Mike senses her proximity in the enclosed space. She is at his shoulder, she is following him. Mike can feel the gentle pressure of her against his hip. In the dark, he is free to imagine her out of her regulation dungarees. He thinks of all the things he will teach her; click-and-drag, the right-mouse button, and all those keyboard shortcuts. He is excited.

One step at a time, they advance upwards. He can smell something citrusy and potent. It is seeping out of Linda’s pores. He feels a little high. And then he hears the sobs.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Um...then why are you crying?’

‘I’m not .....(sniff)....crying.’

The air around Mike is empty again. Linda is much lower, now. She is sitting down. Mike joins her on the step, sitting close enough to feel her body flinch then resettle against him. She feels warm. Mike is aware of all the hairs on his arms standing up, prickling with static electricity. It’s been a while since Mike felt anything like this. It’s been exactly eleven months and three days to be precise. When it gets to a year, Mike tells himself, then I’ll be over her. Not a day before. But this, he thinks now, is sort of a practise run. It’s me getting used to how things can be for me again.

Linda is still sobbing. Mike wonders if he should put his arm around her. It’s usually what women want when they cry. We don’t want fixes, we just want to be listened to, and held. This mantra is carved into his hard-wiring now. His reply of ‘but it’s not logical’ always made the crying worse, so he has learned better of it. He lifts his arm and lets it hover a fraction of a centimetre above Linda’s shoulders. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, he lowers it until he hits body, prompting a series of large breathless sobs which slowly peter out to nothing.

‘There there,’ he offers, a bit woodenly.

‘I thought I’d checked the batteries...’

‘Eh?’

‘The Emergency Lighting...it’s my responsibility to check it’s working. But it’s not working. It’s dark.’

‘Not with this it isn’t,’ Mike says, turning his Maglite on full beam. He shines it into Linda’s face, illuminating her red eyes and the mascara streaks on her red cheeks. Linda squints under the glare, clearly uncomfortable, so Mike turns it off again.

‘I don’t know what else I might’ve just Let Slide. There’s so much for me to do, maybe I can’t do it all. Maybe I’m not the Superhero I think I am?’

Mike has never, not once, thought of Linda as a superhero. He is about to laugh, but thinks better of it. Instead he pats her shoulder.

‘Things just go wrong sometimes,’ he finds himself saying. ‘And no-one’s to blame, it’s just the way things are. The Emergency Lights might’ve blown when everything else did - who knows what’s going on in this place today? So don’t be so hard on yourself. Okay?’

Mike gets to his feet and he feels Linda do the same.

‘Onwards and upwards?’ he asks.

‘Onwards and upwards.’

They race up the last flight of stairs and spill out into the corridor. Linda pushes back a memory of tribal drumming as Mike bangs hard on the door of The Office. Without waiting for an answer, he barges inside.

47: An Orphaned Ice Skater

The Boss has been standing very still for a long time. She can see through a tiny crack in the stationery cupboard door. No-one seems to be coming, although she can hear noises on the stairs. She isn't sure if they are getting closer or not. The reams of paper are pressing into her back. She thinks about an alternative career.

The Boss wouldn't mind being an Ice Skater, actually. It's a secret she's never told anyone before, not since she was a child. And then, it was all she talked about. She made costumes from tin foil and cling film, tinsel and milk-bottle tops. She practised twirling on her own, in a quiet corner of the playground. She never got dizzy. She practised, and while she was practising she waited for a man with a side parting and tight trousers to throw her upside down and whirl her through the air until her teeth rattled.

Her father told her she had thick ankles, and her mother thought the flesh coloured tights and glittering mini-skirts were 'inappropriate'. In cold weather The Boss used to pour water on the patio and practice sliding and twirling as soon as it hardened. There was an accident. The Boss frowns. It wasn't her fault, although everyone blamed her.

An orphan doesn't have too many career options.

When the door opens the Boss leaps up quickly and clambers onto the top shelf of the cupboard. There isn't enough room for her here. She hooks her knees over the top of the shelf and lets the top part of her body dangle downwards. Her neat skirt ruffles gently downwards and the hem brushes her chin. Her careful curls uncoil downwards and then spring back up again. She can feel the blood rushing to her head. She can feel her pulse hammering hard in her eyeballs. It has been a very long time since she has been completely upside down.

audience participation

Sh asked you have someone killed.

Now Sh would like someone to be kissed.

Vote in the comments. You can also say a little bit about what kind of kiss it should be, if you like. But you are not allowed to specify who does the kissing.

That bit is up to Sh.

46: Today Is Not A Good Day To Die

Garry can’t see anything. All he can do is feel his way along the walls, trying to get away from the banshee. He ran at first, but now he’s shuffling along, hoping there is another Way Out. It took him a while to realise the walls were not walls. It took him longer than it would probably take anyone else to realise, because his antibacterial hand gel is upstairs somewhere, and he didn’t want to come into contact with anything for very long if he could help it. In the end, it wasn’t the lack of uniform shapes or the feel of the things that revealed their true nature. No, it was the smell, that musty old scent of years and years of knowledge and age old ink that told Garry that these walls were made of books, and lots of them.

Garry is 91% anxiety now. He would feel better if he knew the books were covered in cling-film, if there was only some kind of barrier between him and them. He tries to convince himself they have been stored in a protective covering, but when he reaches out his hand, there is only paper.

There have been so many twists and turns on his run that he imagines he’s in some kind of maze. He has no sense of where he is at all. He wishes the music would start again. He knows he would be okay if the music was there. The music made him invincible. Now, he thinks, he is going to die down there. He wonders will he ever be found, or will he just be another name in a list of missing persons? He can’t go on. He doesn’t know which way is forward, which way is back. He can’t even see his own hand in front of his face. The darkness settles on him and pushes him further into himself, into his despair.

Garry thinks about the baked potato he was going to eat by the side of the river, on the bench he was going to cover with cling-film. He thinks about his heart. Today, his heart has been all sizes. He thinks how it started out this morning as a withered thing, something that was beyond all hope. And then it swelled when the music came, and nearly burst out of his chest. Garry imagines all the white blood cells doing a repair job inside him, inside the chambers of his heart. He knows they were there. He knows his heart is a stronger heart than the one that entered the library earlier that day. Thinking these thoughts brings his anxiety down to 73%.

Garry decides that he will not die today. He decides he will face his fears and try to find his way out of the book-maze. He feels his heart bumping quickly in his chest. By just thinking about the music, Garry has harnessed its power and made himself brave again. All that matters to him now is finding his way back to the monitors and getting the power back on. He has never been part of a team before, but he likes it a lot. He likes the feeling of working for the greater good. He will fix the power for the greater good of all his new workmates. Even though he had no intention of changing jobs when he awoke that morning. He only went to the library to do research on his ailing heart. But now Garry feels that working in this library is something he was born to do. He doesn’t even mind that he has to be called Garry from now on. He didn’t like his old name much anyway. Reaching his hands out to touch both walls of books, he shakes his head like a lion and strides back in the direction he came. He is 51% pure adrenaline.

45: Not Green but Puce: A Story of The Incredible Hulk and the Zombie Borrowers

'You stupid bint!' says Bob, struggling with the doors of the lift. He has them open now, and is holding them apart. There are large sweat patches on his shirt in the shape of continents. Katerina fumbles with the string.

'What?'

'Go and tie it to the edge of the counter. Bring the end over here. Tie it to...' Bob looks around, 'tie it to the edge of that shelf, will you?' he shakes his head. His muscles are trembling. Bob looks like the Incredible Hunk just before he bursts out of his clothes, except not green, but puce.

Katerina knows better than to ask questions. She runs back out into the library and ties the edge of the string to the counter. She nearly slips in the paint and she can hear the sound of something being dragged over the carpet towards the back of the library, but before she can wonder what it is, she hurries to unroll the string behind her. Before she is back near the lift, before she has tied it to the edge of the metal shelving unit, she can hear shuffling.

'The borrowers are coming!' Bob says jubilantly. And he is right.

The borrowers are following the string, holding into it with their hands and shuffling blindly where it leads. Katerina ties the knot quickly.

'Line them up, sugar-breeches,' Bob says, 'think, The Enormous Turnip.'

Katerina pauses. It's getting late, and the sun is going in. The heating in the library isn't working. She's feeling chilly and she wonders about her cardigan, forgets to remember John, and watches the borrowers come edging forwards, wobbling slightly but finally taking their place behind Bob.

'Get a couple on these doors,' Bob grunts, 'and tell the one behind me to hold onto my feet. Lower me down. Human rope. Pigging fantastic!'

44: Dead Zone

Back when John first started working at the library, The Boss gave him a little lecture about 'Dead Zones'. These are the places where, for one reason or another, the borrowers don't seem to loiter. Perhaps they are dark and the air smells differently there. Perhaps it's something to do with a draft. 'Dead Zones' need special attention. They need displays and face-out stock. They need racks of community information and other delights to tempt borrowers to browse them.

This library's Dead Zone is far away from the issues desk and the front door. The books are always very tidy because no-one looks at them. The Borrower Who Takes Books Out and Puts Them Back In the Wrong Place never ventures into the puzzles and games section. Masturbating Borrower used to come here a lot, but Linda had him banned from the library and he hangs out in the Samaritans' Office now.

Puzzles and games? John lets Complaining Borrower's Legs flop to the floor and stops to think. It is hard. He is tired. Complaining Borrower isn't what you'd call a light load, and John is well aware his Manual Handling Training Certificate is out of date. On top of that, he is absolutely starving.

John likes to frown when he thinks, but the skin on the side of his face is hot and tight. Thinking takes a long time. There is something about puzzles and games, about the books in the Dead-Zone, the 793s in particular, that he needs to remember. He isn't sure what. His files have been zapped. All the pages are in the wrong order. All his knows is that The Complaining Borrower belongs here, in this quiet, little-visited part of the library.

John bends and props him up against the shelves. The soft part of his face is troubling to look at, so he takes a book down and props it open over the area.

It's fine. Borrowers sleep like this in the library all the time, their faces hidden under books like masks. John takes one last look at him, his brown coat with the pockets stuffed with carrier bags, 101 Games For One resting over his face. John feels better. He turns away to find Katerina. For some reason, he is wearing her cardigan and he can't remember why.