Here is what sucks about the
library:
nothing ever happens!
It is a designated non-happening. It is a
lack.
Today I am frustrated by this lack. I want to scream and yell and fight it. I try; it comes out a sneeze. Someone says "bless you" and the whole ordeal is over.
I try a different approach - I will employ my wandering mind to conjure up this happening, and maybe it will even come true, like in Disney movies when kids think things and they happen and they wake up a week later in their bedrooms, and all the adults say "that's nice, dear."
So I am imagining an elephant. Mid-size, grey, African, and hungry. She is outside the library doors, snorting, and suspects there may be peanuts inside.
Suddenly, the sound of breaking glass. Attack! The elephant is inside - but not quite. She gets stuck in the magnetic book alarm thingies, and everyone is like “Noooooooo!” because something is actually happening and they have to look up from their books, but secretly they are all really excited and hope it continues to happen. So the alarm is going “eep! eep! eep!” and the elephant is going “pfffaaaaaaa!” with her great trumpet. Suddenly my paper is not the most important thing, because I can tell my prof “But there was a fucking elephant in the library!” which automatically erases all deadlines. This is a rule.
In her rage, the elephant (let’s call her “Bessy”) flexes her great muscles, leaving the alarm thingy in shambles, which is probably for the best anyway. Bessy starts careening through the periodicals and we are all like “Holy shit! there’s an elephant careening through the periodicals!” but we don’t actually move. Bessy is hungry so she eats a stack of American Ethnography and, obviously unsatisfied, heads for the study tables. Amid chaos and screams, Bessy upturns a table and chomps down on the scattered squirming bodies, which, unfortunately, all smell like peanuts, having survived mostly on diets of PB&J for the last two weeks. I watch with appropriate horror, awaiting my own grisly end. After everyone else is maimed or dead, she approaches my study carrel.
Bessy has student on her face. She is tired. In fact, I would say she is a little confused. What’s that bessy? Why am I not like the others? I can tell, you sense I am different. It’s because I don’t eat peanuts, Bessy; I am allergic and they make me throw up. You don’t want to eat me. We can be friends.
“shnrrrt,” says Bessie, suddenly defused.
I pat her on the trunk, careful to avoid a drippy patch of goo. Let’s go, Bessie, this place is lame.
“shnrrrrrrrt!” she says, agreeing, and I lead her over the wreckage to go get some beer and nachos.
The end.