Flash Fiction Anthology

Aliens

They double checked the old  windows offering both light to the readers and protection to the many well-used, dog-eared volumes filling the tall shelves. One of the women then set the alarm, before the three of them walked out of the building together.

Sophie followed her two friends closely down the narrow, gravel path, then pushed past them as they stopped by the library's gate, chatting.

Another long day was over, she mused, looking up into the intricately interlaced branches of the only, huge, ancient tree, taking up most of the tiny square of garden which belonged to the library.  But was it... Oh, no! It was... Friday.

"Bye girls, see you on Monday." She mumbled hastily, trying to disappear before they would notice her escape.

"Oh, why are you rushing so much? What about our night out, you haven't forgotten, have you?"

She... actually had. It had been a busy, tiring week, during which Sophie, a daytime librarian and a nighttime secret writer, spent every single free minute by polishing her first novel.

A project, which had been sitting shyly at the bottom of her drawer for months, until a few days ago, when she took it out, resolved to publish somewhere. Anywhere, even on that site where she usually posted her short stories and poems. Just to give her book, the characters she had created and fell in love with, a chance to live in someone else's imagination but hers. She suddenly felt bad for having kept them hidden under her pyjamas and lingerie for so long.

But as she reread the pages and pages typed hastily on her smartphone now, she spotted an infinity of typos, a few grammar mistakes, and even a tiny plot hole. She wanted to fix them all before copying the whole manuscript to the aspiring writers' site, for people she had never met to see, read, and criticize.

No one would probably like it, anyway, but still, she wanted to make it as good as it could get, then publish it, fast, before she would lose the courage... And she really needed to finish it tonight, before her boyfriend would come home from his five days long business trip.

There was just no way to concentrate on writing when he was around, life had a completely different rhythm then. There was always something to clean and tidy, dinners to cook, friends and family to meet... Once she used to laugh at all those professional writers declaring when interviewed that they preferred to close themselves alone, in secluded, inspiring places to write, or at least to polish their books. Now, when she tried writing herself, she came to understand them. She also understood the importance of the first reader, someone who would see the story with a fresh pair of eyes and an unbiased mind.

Surprisingly, when she had mentioned it to Liam before he left, he, who had never read a line of hers before, offered himself to be the first reader of her novel. He would go through her book over this week of their forced separation and provide some feedback, he promised.

So, Sophie printed all those pages for him and packed them to the luggage he was carrying for his journey, asking him to underline any mistakes he would come across and comment any ideas he might have while reading. He said he would, and she was excited about it.

At first she was, at least. But as she reread the story during the week herself, she started to regret that idea. A... different Sophie than the one Liam knew rose like a phoenix from the strings of words scattered like ashes over those pages. The timid, secret part of her which shied away from real life and preferred to keep quiet and hidden in her own, fantastical world... Sophie, whom Liam had never really met, despite all those years they lived together.

What would he say, how would he look at her now, after having visited the world into which she escaped every time she wrote, the faraway, fantasy land she preferred so much to reality? She shouldn't have given it to him, she thought now. He wasn't much of a reader, anyway, Liam told her so more than once. And after the years of living together she saw that even that was a huge exaggeration... He just didn't do books, fullstop.