Once, There was A Library in my Closet

A Tree in the Closet

     I once met a girl in the closet who knew her way through the walls and wood.

     She giggled, once upon a time, and caught my attention.

     To the closet I peeked, from inside a house I never remember, and she disappeared into the dark.

     One night, she returned, giggling just the same. I saw her face and she looked to be the secluded type, for when I spoke an unheard syllable she scurried back in the darkness of the closet with a faint scowl.

     I could not remember her face. Her skin was pale and dark all at once, she was happy and scared at the same time.

     It was a fateful cold night when I followed her, taking a single step into the closet before seeing that it stretched far the the right, for the dim light in the room did not reach the right wall, and it was met only with black. 

     Only through a faint golden glow from the bottom side did I see that there was a door, leading to somewhere so peculiar.

     My curiosity opened the door for me, and I was immediately greeted again with black. The golden light was gone. Where did it go?

     Once upon a day I was in the icy cold, where snow was abundant. I ran after the girl on a black horse. I chased after her with such a blank mind that I hardly noticed nor cared that she was leading me far from the house I could never remember. 

     Into a valley I was led, to where my horse vanished into thin air. It did not want to go where I sought. But I ran after her, up a mound of snow and to where the lifeless pine trees seemed to flaunt their fake dark green needles.

     I could not see the girl after that.

     Once upon a night, I roamed around the living room in the house I could never remember, with the strangers I never knew. Through some unspoken gestures, I felt like they were in search of the hidden door, but I couldn't hear their words clearly enough through my ears to know for certain, even through they were right in front of me with the fire place noiselessly crackling. 

     It was odd how silent the fire was. Perhaps it, too, did not want to usher a peep for fear of revealing the secret door.

     Back into the room I go, where I take another daring step into the closet and to the right. The same sliver of light peeked through the bottom side of the wall, and I used it to guide me through the junk piled in the closet.

     When I open the door, I again see only black, but walk inside. Or outside. Or parallel. 

     The girl appears, as well as some plot of life that fades from the nothingness. She hides behind a wide, yet rather short tree, and I see her face with that same scowl.

     She starts to speak. I hear her words, but cannot understand. What was she trying to tell me? 

     Though I did not fully understand, I took the girl's words to heart, and soon found myself next to the tree.

     She smiled, and said nothing else.

     I no longer saw the girl from the secret door in my closet. She had vanished from the secret black world as fate would tell it.

     

     I returned to the tree a few times after the strange girl had left. But the first time I did return, the tree was dead. I had watched it wither away, and its trunk collapse to the ground. All it left was its stump.

     The strangers in the house I could barely remember had been inside the closet with the secret door. They say they were looking for something they had put in the closet years before. For the first time, I could feel a slight tremble of worry.

     Once upon a day, I found another secret passage to the strange world. Back through the snowy field I ran, and I climbed to the top of the hill where the dead trees were and to where I had lost the girl.

     I saw nothing, in the most literal sense. I walked straight ahead, and there I was, on the other side of the secret world. In the farthest distance, I saw the sliver of golden light where the hidden door leading to my closet was, and the dead tree stump right in the center.

     

     When I returned to the house, the people I barely knew were in the closet again. They were again looking for something, and this time I pretended to help.

     I slowly made my way to the far right of the closet, where the golden sliver of light was shining just the same as always, and tucked a towel across it to hide the glow. The strangers made their way to the far right, baffled by the space they never noticed.

     As if to guard the door, I sat curled up next to it, watching terrified as the strangers looked around, but never saw the door. Even when one had picked up the towel covering the light, they could not find it. The glow was gone. 

     The strangers left the room, left the house, and I never saw them again.

     Once upon a night, I roamed back into the closet where the secret door was hiding. The glow was no longer golden, but an ashy grey. I pushed it open and stepped inside.

     I was immediately greeted by the slick movements of a scaled beast. It's color was almost like a dulled red, but its voice was the clearest I had ever heard.

     "Welcome to my library," the scaled beast said, crawling around where the tree once stood proud and sat on its stump. "Here you may seek the greatest knowledge and find answers to whatever you desire to know."

     He gestured to the impossible library, aisles stretching as far as the eye could see. Then he fluttered his wings and leaned toward me, the smallest hint of a serious warning spread across his teeth and foul grin.

     "You may never take anything out of the library, though. If you do, you are never to return."

     I find my place among the aisles. To much surprise, there were quite a few people roaming the library, but they never spoke a word or made a noise. There was never more than two in an aisle.

     I pick up three books and put them back before I finally find a book that somehow intrigues me to the upmost extent.

     The book was a dusty blue with marbleized grey swirls, and a simple title written in a ragged yet gracefully attempted font. It read ---- , and it had no author.

     I spent hours reading the first few sentences before the scaled beast grazed past me with books in his talons.

     "Can I come back tomorrow?" I asked him. He replied with a hurried yes, and rushed through the aisles.

     Once upon a day, in the house I can barely remember, new strangers appeared, and broke down the walls of my closet.

     I asked them what they were doing, and they plainly said they were making improvements to the house. 

     I watched, motionless, as the secret door to the secret world and the old tree where the secret girl once lived, was destroyed. 

     I closed my eyes as I stood there, and saw nothing but black.

End--