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Malicious Use of Prawns III - The Labyrinth
[Continued from last week and the one before that...]
The hooded figure looked considerably less menacing, lying on the floor with a look on his face peeking out of the hood that would melt butter, should butter be quite sensitive to that sort of thing. He was also decidedly prawn-less, which until now had been his primary weapon. He didn't think it was a terrible thing that he was missing it at all, and he was thinking of working on his pouty look (which he was practising on as he worked his rotund figure around to sit back against the shelves) and developing that into a weapon. The hood might have to go, in that case, but he figured if he couldn't adapt then he couldn't very well call himself... well, he could call himself a Librarian still, it's not like Librarians were renowned for their adaptability, or hoods, for that matter, so he could probably go on calling himself whatever he liked and wasn't going to get so much flak for any of it.
She had softened somewhat, and had given him back his shoe, and he had managed to pick himself up and wandered over, by commodious vicus (so he thought) to where she was standing. He liked to think he was offering support, at least in the moral sense, to herself, who, though no longer holding a shoe, was quite menacing herself. He made a quick mental note to not get on her bad side. He made a quick complementary mental note to try and notice which situations might incur her wrath and set her off like she'd been set off on the poor hooded figure who was claiming he was the Librarian, as that'd help considerably anticipating when he might be on the floor facing a rather irate looking herself. He liked that by just standing there, putting his shoe back on with one hand against a book shelf while she stood over the roly-poly hooded figure he could be giving moral support. It made him feel good, and it took his mind off the feel of her leg in the tweed skirt and nylons against his leg and how working out however many times a week it was she said she'd been working out was really making her legs quite firm, sexily so. He smiled, and then quickly stopped, as he wasn't quite sure what sort of message he might be giving by standing there, giving moral support with a grin on his face, he was afraid he might be weakening her own moral stance (or indeed whatever kind of stance it was she was taking, moral or otherwise) by appearing less than serious in his support. In the end, he alternated between leaning against the bookshelf to their right and standing with his hands in his pockets behind her once his shoe was on with as blank a look as he could possibly muster on his face while he thought of moral support and back to the typewriter again, about which he found it delightfully soothing to think.
The Librarian sat back against the shelves, and pulled back his hood.
"It all began," he said, "back in... say..." he put his hand to his chin, which was shockingly sharp for such an otherwise roly-poly person. The man and the woman looked at each other... well, the woman looked at the man, who was still looking blankly ahead, with the smallest of grins on his face, and in time he noticed her staring, and looked back at her, so that they were looking at each other, her with the look of infinite patience women have mastered over the years and he with the look of a person desperately trying to avoid the wrath of another at all costs by appearing alert and attentive, and they made to sit leaning against one of the shelves to their right to get themselves comfortable for what surely was starting out with all the hallmarks of a long story... which is when the shelves, which aren't made for sitting, as you may have found out yourself, as a young person visiting the library at some point, began to tip backwards, away from the two attempted sittees. "Urp!" finished the Librarian and he leapt up from his position against the shelf housing, somewhat higher up than where his head had reached on them, the bowl of terrible smelling prawns, and at the shelves against which they'd recently been leaning and which were slowly, inexorably making their way towards the floor by way of a graceful arc. His leap was somewhat less elegant than he'd hoped or been able to execute, and he wound up sprawled halfway between the back shelf against which he'd rested and the shelves which toppled into one another around the basement of the library, stacks echoing off into the darkness and the gloom, and the man and the woman flung themselves, by virtue of their intended seat having disappeared in a feat of force and momentum and all that, on top of the undulating stacks and wood pulp debris that was already scattering around the floor. The minutes and the hours passed as the world came tumbling, Tetris-like down, if Tetris had levels that consisted of blocks falling in hectic concurrent streams, like time-lapse videos of plate tectonics and if one looked closely they'd have seen one book flutter past with what looked like nary a thing written on any of it's pages.
The bowl of prawns squished somewhere amidst the rubble, buried down in with the man and the woman, herself thinking about making a career change and himself thinking he might have retied his other shoe while he'd been putting his other one back on, as his non-retied one appeared to have come off his foot in the fall of the stacks.
"It was The Name of the Rose that did it. Little did I know. It all leads to ruin, doesn't it?" The Librarian had gotten up, and slunk back off into the shadows, now swirling with the dust of the collapsed shelves. And the wreckage thundered to a slow close.
disclaimer:
I had divine inspiration from some sort of songbird for this one. Thanks. And no cages involved anywhere.
As this one started with the two mere girls, a run-down flat, and a nasty smell of prawns, this one ends with one mere girl, a nice-ish enough office, and a view of the lights of the Albert Bridge in the distance... dusk, a symphony.
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Yer Weekly Horoscopes. Slice and dice.