Read The Library of Borrowed Lives — Part 1
No one I had ever met had ever learned to read.
And yet here they were, books by their hundreds, being shelved day after day after day by dozens of unquestioning workers happy only to have a temporary job and a roof and a meal. The shelves never got full. Someone was checking them out, someone was bringing them back, but all we ever did was wheel those creaky carts up and down the shelf-lined aisles, sliding volumes into place. Each book had coloured symbols on the bottom of their spine that signified the section, row, and shelf. The system was easy enough to learn, and once I had it memorized, I could find a book’s home faster than nobody’s business. I worked so hard at increasing my speed, full of the hope that the overseers would notice and grant me permanent status, but the question wouldn’t stop spinning round my mind. Who was reading all these books?
The closest I ever got to the door without a handle at the back of the library was about halfway through my six-month job ticket. I spotted a thick book at the bottom of one of the stacks that had a symbol I’d never shelved before. I started shoving the cart away before anyone else could claim it. The symbols directed me to a row of shelves in the furthest corner of the library, the darkest, musty corner nearest the door. I practically held my breath the closer I got, shelving books along the way until the last book at the bottom of the stack was all that remained on my cart. It was thicker than most and surprised me with its heft when I stooped to pick it up.
A crash sounded that echoed across the entire library and startled me out of my wits. In my alarm, I fumbled the book, and it dropped to the floor with a heavy thud. Peering around the end of the row of shelves, I saw that one of the newest temporaries had tumbled from a ladder and lay unmoving on the floor. I cringed at the circle of crimson spreading on the hardwood around their head. We’re conditioned not to react, conditioned to keep our heads down and our mouths shut, so that is what I did. Even before a trio of permanents surrounded my fallen co-worker and started to drag them away, I had turned back to my cart.
The last book lay where I had dropped it on the floor. It must have landed directly on its spine because the covers had fallen open, and there it was, pages wide, beckoning me to have a look. Now, this was an explicit rule in the library. We never opened the books. I mean, why would we? We never went to school, we never learned to read, what would be the point? But as I found myself gazing down at this open volume on the floor, I realized it didn’t matter anymore.
It was blank.
Come back on the first Tuesday of June to read the next instalment of this new dystopian series: The Library of Borrowed Lives
Aly Writes 
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