today i figured it was finally the day i should get my library card, because every day before now was also the day i should get my library card, but i had a super intense premonition of going to the library and reading books like i normally do, but not being able to finish one, and still wanting to read it, and having to wait anxiously through the one hour per twenty-four hour cycle that the library is closed while i’m just thinking about it. what if i accidentally figure out what happens in the book before i read it and i don’t get to be surprised? i think i’d just have to ask for my money back.

so anyways so the library was just right there, right? and so was i, cause i was outside it. so i figured i might as well go inside because that’s where all the library cards are. then i tripped and falled right on my face, which was an utter surprise to me, as i am usually standing, and almost never falling, especially not when i’m still standing. i picked up the thing that i had tripped on, and as an utter surprise to me, it was a library card! maybe i didn’t have to go inside today to read after all.

i examined the library card closer, as my mom always taught me. the name on it was Smalkey Perdition and there was a cool skull and crossbones and also toxic gas symbol on it, like a beaker but with a red circle around it and a line through the circle that was red. i could tell this was an awesome library card just by looking at it. And whomsoever Smalkey Perdition was probably was finished with it, otherwise he wouldn’t have left it on the floor outside. So anyways I

took it inside and saw a cool green book and blue book were just new in stock, so i prepared to check out my green book and blue book that I wanted to read (later) and i handed them to the librarician, and she swiped my fresh new library card, and what would happen but that both my books started smoking and turned red. i almost couldn’t believe my eyes but honestly it was still pretty normal so i just took them home. the librarician was busy talking with other beautiful libraricians so i don’t think she even noticed.

i got my two red books home and got ready to read at home for the first time. i opened them up and they were just about stuff like toxoplasmosis and definitions for the word “putrid” and also communism. i didn’t want to upset anyone by accidentally forming an opinion (something i’ve been avoiding for years), so i figured i should probably just return them, but they were too hot for me to pick them up without burning my hands. i don’t know why this happened to me, but i guess you could consider it a cautionary tale, if that’s the kind of thing you’re interested in doing with regular tales. i’ll let you know if anything else happens but i don’t really expect it to.

Smalkey Perdition showed up at my door. he was wearing a massive top-hat and had a long white beard, and was a little bit crungled. he told me that he needed his library card back because it had approximately 65% of his soul stored in it and he hadn’t had a passion for piracy or foodborne illnesses or green sludgey rivers lately and that it’s been rough for him to get out of bed in the morning without his life’s “driving force”. i gave him his card back because it seemed like it had his name on it, and i didn’t want to ask how he figured out i had it because he kind of smelled like scrambled eggs. not rotten ones, it’s just like, how do you smell that much like breakfast? it was creepy. anyways i also asked if he could do anything about the books, and he produced metal tongs from his pocket (as i silently cursed myself for not thinking of that) and just deposited them into a wastebasket, where they were like, still smoking and probably the text inside them didn’t even change either. he laughed a hearty laugh that indicated he believed his job here to be finished. i thanked him as genuinely as i could muster while also being incredibly confused and not really happy with him or the situation in the slightest. i guess i’ll have to go try to get a library card tomorrow.