Z District: Part I

Today was like every morning. Anne strode in with no fanfare, no notice. It was the early hours of the morning, the sun peeking out from amoung the former high rise buildings in the city. She wore her usual blood red ankle boots, her long skirt was tied and tucked into her waist courtesy of the slit she intentionally made for practical reasons. She wore her beloved wool lined black leggings and a black tank with a white button down shirt. Across her chest was a strap to her backpack that not only held her lunch, water bottle, and library books, but an array of weapons she brought with her for her commute to and from work. She never imagined being a librarian who was trained in an array of lethal weapons, but this was the world as it was right now.

She walked down the narrow hallway, piles of accounting boxes filled with used books that used to be collected for book sale fundraisers. At one point, they became barriers to keep the monsters out. Eventually, they went back to the walls and became resting places for the changed ones. The changed ones weren’t like the other monsters out on the streets. Something happened to the monsters when they entered the library that no one could really understand. She had her theories, not that anyone else believed her.

She took each step up to the main floor one at a time. An old friend once mentioned in her twenties that everyone should walk mindfully, bringing awareness to each foot as it touched the ground. Jim was a former alcoholic who found meditation late in life and would yell at us “kids,” as he liked to call us, when we ran up the steps of the front porch or up the steps in the house where he rented a room at. I think the calm that the nearby river wrapped around the house gave him a place to settle each day for his recovery.

At the top of the stairs, Anne opened the heavy fire door into complete darkness. She didn’t need the overhead lights to know where everything was. She had started volunteering here when she was sixteen years old, and began working here in her late twenties after earning her PhD in Women’s Studies from Brown. She reached to her left, flicking up all but one switch on the wall panel, bringing the library to life. It didn’t startle her when her arm lightly grazed a changed one as she walked to the circulation desk. She turned on the computers and laughed at the absurdity of still using passwords to log into the computer, Sierra (the checkout program), and SmartMoney (the cash app). Other librarians she spoke with at other libraries laughed at her for even bothering to use SmartMoney, but she knew what a little familiarity did. It created a pause. A pause long enough to make the monsters brains glitch and remember something familiar. Whether it was capitalism or a fear of having library fines, she wasn’t sure. She saw though, enough of a reaction that would make even the most reserved monster scientists take note, if one would ever return her calls or emails.

As the computers fired up, she picked up the only newspaper that was still being printed from the magazine drop. She massaged down its crinkles and taped the ripped front page. Anne wondered if the delivery guy, Jude, survived the evening drop. He was the 87th newspaper delivery driver she knew about since the monsters arrived three years ago. Some drivers made it a night, some only hours. Jude had been on the job for six months now and she swears he must have some super power to survive his seven-day a week route. She’s only seen him a handful of times over the months when he came back after his drops to checkout a book or deliver a homemade birthday cupcake made with his monthly flour rations. Like her, he kept a sack around his long torso filled with weapons, but added to the lot with knives and pistols tucked into the arms of his sleeves, his hips, down the legs of his pants, and tucked into his steel-toed chucks. She shook her head and sent him a good thought in her mind. She needed to refocus on the task at hand. Befriending someone in this day and age was a liability.

Anne printed out the holds and lapsed lists, and got to work. The holds list was requests of books for patrons to be pulled from the shelf for pick-up. The lapsed list was a list of holds on the holds shelf that had not been picked up within the past week. Both lists had grown exponentially over the years. For those who desperately missed reading, a day excursion to the library was worth the risk. However, the dangers, despite the daylight, meant a lot of patrons never made it to the library (thus the long lapsed lists). Anne treasured walking the stacks during these early mornings where the library was mostly empty (save those dozen changed ones who stayed overnight wandering the library). She pulled the books carefully, placed them onto the remaining squeaky black library cart, and began with clearing the lapsed books.

Before Anne could get to processing the holds, the chimes in the library rang signaling it was time to “open the doors.” She grabbed a large brass ring filled with keys and walked down the corridor. To her right and left were worn cherry-stained desks and chairs. Stacks filled in past the desks, fiction to her left, non-fiction and media to her right. The ceilings above her were etched, painted, and carved with angels and demons, gargoyles and fairies. At the center of the building was a dome-shaped skylight pouring in sunlight to further illuminate the library with it’s deep wood furnishings, shelves, and moulding. She made it to the main door and unlocked the door. Next, she walked into a long hallway lit by a single light hanging above her head, pulled the string which barely illuminated the space, and typed her password into the security panel. She opened the bar set across the front double doors made of heavy oak. Anyone who wanted to come into the library would run up to the facial recognition panel in the recess outside the library and, pending confirmation of a human face, the door would unlock and let them in.

Occasionally, the facial recognition wouldn’t work which would either lead to a patron being denied access (which could lead to loss of life or limb), or a monster who somehow still showed enough humanity in their face or eyes to pass the security’s human test. Either way, other measures were in place. If a human was unable to enter, a trove of weapons were available to them. In the recess outside where an umbrella lending bin used to be, now sat a “Take as needed” weapons bin complete with axes, swords, kitchen knives, rope, baseball bats, rifles, and bullets. Pretty much anything folks dropped off or were found on the ground near the library. If, however, a monster did enter, our security guard, a granny named Auntie Em, who sat in the rocking chair she used for 9 A.M. and 2 P.M. storytime, would combat any monsters who entered with a reading of Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? Auntie Em had a high success rate of monsters becoming confused long enough that she could tell them to sit down, be quiet, and then she’d finish the rest of the book, and maybe even follow it with a reading of Click, Clack, Moo. The times that it didn’t work, well, let’s just say that Auntie Em was a great shot. When she was at storytime, or if one slipped past her, that’s when Anne’s years of having those uncomfortable conversations with patrons about their overdue books, missing puzzle pieces, and DVD’s and CD’s missing from their cases, along with their overdue fines, came in handy. All she had to do was talk to them in her quiet, direct, unemotional tone about their overdue library fines, or even give a simple “Shhh!,” to surprise them. As they froze, she ordered them to go pick out a CD or head down to children’s to play with the soft blocks and dinosaurs. At that point, they became docile, though they did not share toys well with human children which could lead to tantrums on both sides. Fortunately, Auntie Em’s daughter Viola, who drove her mother to the library every day, worked downstairs in children’s and was always on tantrum alert. Her super power was stickers. All it took was one Berenstain Bears, Care bears, Paw Patrol, or star sticker to get everyone to calm down.