Places To Read, An Unintentional Multipart Short Story Series – Part 9

 

 

In the library

Sometimes, there is no other place to go. The books you have at home have become boring, and you don't want to read any of them, even if some of them are your favourite books. So, you drag yourself out of the house, and make your way down to the library. The only downside? You have to change out of pyjamas.

The library isn't a place many people visit anymore. Why borrow books when you can just download them onto an ereader, or illegally obtain them online? When you walk in, an older woman looks up at you and smiles, before turning back to the books she is sorting.

You find the section you want and scan the shelves. Despite the fact that you don't want to read books you know, books you own, you find yourself looking for them. You look for the books you've read before, the authors you recognise, the covers you're familiar with. Despite coming to find new books, to broaden your horizons and to read something new, you pick up a copy of a book you have read before. You have a copy on your shelf at home. But here, the book seems so much more inviting.

At home, you sit in bed to read, or on the sofa, curled up with a blanket, maybe some pillows, a hot drink. Here, you find yourself sinking into an oversized beanbag, a faded red colour that you don't trust to be clean. By the looks of the chocolate on a nearby child's hands, the mess could easily have already spread. 

The beanbag is uncomfortable, and no matter how much you squirm, you can't get comfy, but you don't want to go home. Why bother going through the effort of checking a book out and having to remember when to bring it back? Why deal with a deadline to read it by and panic about finding the time to read it before returning it when you could simply read it here?

A little child falls over, and you pretend not to be watching as they screw up their face and burst into tears. They didn't seem to be hurt at all, but simply wanting the fuss of their mother, picking them up and shushing them, kissing it better. In the end, you're not sure who's being louder, the child who has since stopped crying, or the mother who is still shushing and kissing, offering and opening sweets. The mother's phone rings and the child wanders off again as she answers it, a lollipop in their hand, ready to stick sweets to more things.

You spend more time peering over the top of the book than actually reading it. You've read it before anyway, several times. There was no point in coming, you never found a new book to read, you simply spent the whole time people watching. Watching the mother and child, the old lady sorting books, the family that just walked through the door, two older children running for the beanbags...

You get out of the way in time, and place the book back on the shelf. The library is small, and the loud chatter of the children immediately fills the building, making it impossible to read. You can return home and pick the book off your own shelf, pick up where you left off, but you know you won't. There's something different about reading in a library that makes every book seem somewhat more special.

Part nine, we're almost at ten now!

I ran out of ideas for this series very quickly, so I don't think I'll go past ten. It'll be nice to start a new series, even though I haven't figured out what that might be yet...

That's all I have for now, but don't leave! Check out some of my other posts!

Okay...

Bye!

A Review – The Edge of Sleep

The Edge of Sleep

By QCODE & Wood Elf

A Review

Watching a movie takes about 2 hours of undivided attention.

Reading a book takes longer, and you must give it even more attention as, if your mind drifts, you must reread parts to understand what is happening.

Recently, I've been getting into podcasts, and I found something out that I never knew before – podcasts are not all simply people talking. They can be stories.

Since I'm familiar with the lead voice actor, and have heard this podcast mentioned many times before, I decided that I would start listening to it one evening when I was cooking dinner...

Let me introduce the podcast, and then I'll get into my review!

When a night watchman finishes his shift at work, he is terrified to discover that everyone in the world who went to sleep the previous night has died. Now he and a band of survivors must stay awake and uncover the secret of this global epidemic, before they fall asleep.

Apple Podcasts • Spotify

My Review...!

The cover for this is amazing, once you've listened to the whole story you can understand every aspect of the cover, and it all makes sense. The intro music is even better, and by episode 5 I was banging my head along with it.

David has always had trouble with sleep, ever since he was a child, being plagued with nightmares and suffering from the physical effects of exhaustion. After recently breaking up with his girlfriend, Katie, Dave is still struggling to get over her, despite his coworker and friend, Matteo, trying to sign him up to dating sites. Dave's night goes from bad to worse, with a suspicious van trespassing on the property and then leaving work to try and find Katie...

When Dave arrives at the party Katie was at, he finds the party finished and an unresponsive man. Rushing him to the hospital, Dave quickly finds that the man in his car is not the only person to die that night.

Joining up with Linda, who was working at the hospital when all of the patients mysteriously died, Dave desperately tries to figure out what happened. Both Dave and Linda come to the same conclusion – not under any circumstances must they fall asleep.

The whole premise of the story is intense enough, but the way the story is told is even better. You get a first person narrative from Dave, along with listening to conversations as if you are there with the characters. There is backstory, flashbacks, you learn about Dave's dreams and why Katie broke up with him. As you progress through the story, more information is revealed and things start to slowly piece themselves, albeit not everything makes sense immediately.

The way this story is told, forcing you to live the story alongside the characters by giving you the story through sounds instead of words made it all the more dramatic and gripping. You don't get told that people are walking around, or that someone is panicking, you hear footsteps and heavy breathing. You live the story, and you can almost feel the panic alongside the characters – you must not fall asleep, or you will die.

The story tackles many different themes, such as mental health, and the struggles that Dave already has are amplified with the epidemic that he finds himself trapped in. The longer everyone is awake, the more they slowly lose their sanity, and some of these changes are so small and happen so slowly, you almost don't notice them. The progression of the story has been created so incredibly well that such changes, with you already feeling a part of the story, embeds you so much deeper in the narrative.

I listened to this entire podcast in one evening. I think it's about four hours of story, and I finished it at about midnight. If you want to listen to, and live, a thriller story that will stay with you and genuinely make you slightly nervous about laying down and closing your eyes, this is definitely worth a listen.

And done!

I ended up colouring in the evening, which is something I haven't done in a very long time. In case anyone is curious, it was one of those nature adult colouring books, and I was colouring trees. I made it autumn, so half of the leaves were reds and oranges!

I really want to do more of these podcast reviews, now I have discovered the world of these stories that I never knew existed. Better still? There are tons free on Spotify! I can put up with the ads to get stories like this. Also, I don't have premium because I can't be bothered to spend money to simply get rid of ads and let me choose what songs I actually want to hear. I'm fine with shuffling and being interrupted!

That's all I have to say for today...

Bye!

Writing Prompt Stories, Mini Stories That My Mind Cooked Up – Part 5

 

His voice brought back memories of dark rooms and broken bones.

I felt my breathing hitch as he approached, slowly, disbelieving. Although I generally tried my best to ignore it, I became very aware of the ache in my ankle, the break that never healed quite right.

I had only ever caught a glimpse of him before, after. It had been late at night, bright lights and torches, the blue sweep of the police cars and busy with people everywhere. Cars coming and going, people asking me questions and other people saying that it could wait, that I needed medical care first.

I was on a stretcher when I saw him, turning my head to look at the big, old house, the flashing lights, the tall trees that would cast dark shadows over the house during the day and hide it during the night. There was movement all around, but this particular motion had caught my eye because it was different from all the others. It was another stretcher, being carried through the door of the house. All I could see was a mop of dirty, greasy and blood stained, blond hair, until he looked around, his head whipping back and forth, terror in his eyes as he tried to figure out what was going on. Squinting in the light, so different from the pitch black we were used to.

He caught sight of me, silently staring at him, the shock that had settled in my chest preventing my brain from doing anything but laying still and quiet, the calm to his storm as he panicked – he had been there longer than me, God knows how long it had been since he had experienced human touch that didn't want to hurt him.

We had been in separate rooms, thin walls separating us, but separate none-the-less. We talked, but we had never seen each other. I had curled up with my hands over my ears, rocking back and forth with tears running down my dirty cheeks when I heard the blows and the cries in the next room.

The first blows, we had both experienced and told each other, had been to our legs. He seemed to think it had something to do with preventing us from trying to run, but I think it was more to do with the terror – if you can run, you can convince yourself that you can get away. If you can't, you're helpless and know it, as you sit in the damp and dark, hunger gnawing at your insides and the cold biting at your skin.

I had been taken to an ambulance, police hovering around and doctors forcing them to leave, blocking my sight of him. I had wanted to call out, to yell to him, tell him we were safe now and that he didn't need to worry; but my voice wouldn't work and all I could do was to turn my head to the side and moan.

And now, here he was. Standing in front of me, in the middle of the street. He favoured his left leg, it seems he hadn't physically recovered either, but the dirty hair was now clean, cut shorter, and his eyes, a deep brown, like hot chocolate on a crisp winter morning, were filled with nervousness, not terror. This was the same man who had spent months on the other side of a wall, had spent seconds within eyesight, who had bared his soul to me and listened as I bared mine. Yet, this man was different and, in a way, I was different. We weren't there anymore, we were free, warm and safe.

Neither of us seemed to know what to say as we stared at each other. If he hadn't been on the phone, we might've walked straight past each other. We didn't know each other from sight, but his voice, I would recognise his voice anywhere. And he had seen me staring, and he had frowned before it clicked in his mind and he mumbled something into his phone before sliding it into his pocket and walking numbly across to me.

"Tammy?" he had said my name so many times when we talked through the walls, as if he was afraid one of the times would be the last time I heard him say it.

My eyes watered as I stared up at him and he held his arms out, shuffling his weight to be more comfortable as I collapsed against him, my hands grabbing fistfuls of his jumper.

"Liam," I sobbed his name as his hand came up to the back of me head, holding me closer as he rested his face against mine, the drip of his tears on my shoulder.

"Tammy."

I wrote this story ages ago... This was meant to be the second part to my Writing Prompt Stories series, but for some reason I seemed to think that I would expand the story into an actual book. Ha, like that would ever happen.

After many months, I realised I was never going to get around to writing the story, so I figured I would just publish this post. If I eventually do write it... some people got a little preview!

Okay, that's all.

Bye!