Checked Out

Bad Condition

Author's Note:

The last installment of the fifth condition books can be found in.

Note the song to the side is an acoustic version and contains two swear words. There is a clean version if you want to find it.

__________

Bad Condition:

        The book sat on the shelf as it had done for the past several years. A little forgotten. A little unused. A little neglected because no one took the care to pick it up once in a while to walk it or at least dust its shell. And a little bent from years of loving.

        It endured until the day when it was finally uprooted from its home permanently. Its final goodbye was lost to patrons who skimmed past it countless times on their way to more important places.

        There were always new faces coming in, lined with new stories trying to make their own claim to fame in this strange big world by building a nest in the fleeting hearts of faceless strangers. Only time could tell whether the birds were flying back.

        The book had done its job well, and now it was time step aside for younger and brighter stars.

        In other words, it was time for retirement.

        Piled up under stacks of hardbacks and softbacks as it was carted to its temporary home before it left the world for good. Still hoping that someone would adopt it and allowed it to satiate its hunger one final goodbye.

        It was a huge task, but the person in charge of it couldn’t have care less. Money signs raked his eyes. The thrill and prospect of making a couple of cheap bucks here and there made it hard to look at the true beauty contained inside.

        “Five dollars! Okay three! Will you look at that thing? It’s in mint condition. That’s a great story right there. My favorite as a kid! Ten dollars! I’m trying to raise money for the poor here. Give a little! It could mean a lot! Do your share! Careful there! Hold it steady! This pile? Twenty and no less. I’m being generous here, people! Look around you! Do you smell that? That’s the smell of hope. Just from the kindness of your pockets! You can make a difference! Thank you for coming and doing your part, folks! Have a great day!”

        Plastic bags, cardboard boxes, crumpled slips of paper exchanging hands like snakes slithering across strands of sand.

        Hand sanitizer washing out remnants of human skin in the form of dust stuck between pages of those who had once stumbled on the real works inside.

        It all meant well. Only fulfilling the circle of life, and who would know better than books themselves? Words that had uncovered the secrets of long ago and had taken the time to imprint themselves indefinitely onto paper, but forgotten and lost among the chaos of reality, making them ephemeral as if written with chalk on the sidewalk for all to see, but waiting to be washed away so that old ideas in the shape of new could take their place.

        The book was forgotten and lost among the disarray of disgruntled feet. It was marked on and labeled on, then thrown in with the lot of other greats who had fallen. Everybody’s destined fate, it seemed to say. There were no exceptions.

        There laid a mountain of burials, each with distinctive lives screaming to be heard one last time. Their voices were lost among the splendor of the sell.

        Wherever money was evolved, people tended to add and calculated, and hang onto every measly dollar bill. Only buying what they deemed was worth the rate. It was a heavy price to pay for those sitting at the pit of the fire, for they never had a chance in the first place. Their one last stand was drowned out by the sea of people that led their own lives.