The Librarian

The Librarian

It was never meant to be like this, her ambitions thwarted, her life blunted to a compliant daily grind. By now her life should have blossomed into a sensual exploration of existence, full of fascinating ideas and interesting people. Instead she found her self trapped in a small town world. Her mother, though a day's drive away, still riding on her back like a grotesque growth. Her father had left her mother when she was very young and she had to live with her mother's implied conclusion she was responsible. 'He was never cut out for domesticity.' she would say, as her eyes appeared to focus on some romantic vision of a gallant young lover. She took on the weight of the guilt and carried it stoically while through her teenage years she planned her escape. After graduating with a Bachelors degree she felt lucky to get a position in the town's library to help her finance her studies for a Masters. It was then her mother fell ill and not having medical insurance needed support. Anna took the opportunity to work full time at the library when it arose, putting her studies on hold. No doctor could find the cause of her mother's fluctuating symptoms and though she suspected hypochondria and manipulation as the most likely cause of her mother's ailments, she could not bring herself to abandon her.

'Anna, could you sort these books before you leave?' said a whiney voice more as a command than a request. It was Miss Henry, the head librarian, a school ma'am type that had somehow been abducted from a bygone age and thrust into the contemporary world to increase the blight on her life. Anna obeyed, she always obeyed and the resentment always grew. Miss Henry knew she was hoping to be away early tonight and this last command was taken as spite. She glanced through the pile of books and took them along the rows of shelves, disposing of them in the appropriate place. Even the books had become a measurement of her discontent. She would take note of the books withdrawn by students and feel pieces of her future were being secreted away from her between their covers and into someone else's. The philosophers that had once promised her so much had all the time been scheming to condemn to the half-light having once awakened her eager mind. Philosophy was about the preparation for death she was once told but it was never mentioned that it increased the torture that preceded it. The more she analysed her life the more the emptiness at its core grew like a quiet cancer. Having finished her last chore for the day she collected her coat and purse and left, saying goodbye to Miss Henry when she was halfway out of the door and it was too late to be asked to do another task.

She passed the motels that fought for attention with their giant lollipop style signs on the main drag out of town but they simply merged into the anonymity of visual noise between the car lots and fast food restaurants. The motel she was aiming for was simply called Brown's that was about thirty miles out of town, a small rundown privately owned affair. She had noticed it once while driving over to her mother's in Belleville and was surprised that in all the years she had took that route she had never spotted it before. It wasn't long before she was out of town and driving through the scrub before the desert starts proper. Ten minutes later she was pulling off the highway and down a short track to the motel which was set back from the road and the reason why she had missed it for all those years. Being so hard to spot made her wonder how it had remained in business all these years, which intrigued her and was part of the attraction of choosing to stay there for the night. That and across the highway was a bar called Archie's, an establishment Miss Henry had called the Devil's shack. How Miss Henry knew of Archie's she had no idea but she had a habit of pulling names and places out of the air and condemning them. To question Miss Henry about such things would force her to admit she was speaking out of ignorance and provoke a stream of put downs as a way of defence from her spiteful mouth.

Pulling up outside the reception she began to feel apprehensive, the place was more rundown than it appeared from the road. She was considering driving away when a face materialised like an apparition in the office window, she felt caught and once she had hesitated felt unable to pull away. The reception was a dinghy affair with coffee stains on the counter and a yellowing poster saying 'Whoso findeth a wife findeth a good thing and obtaineth favour of the Lord' and written under the last line in thick marker pen 'No Whores!' The face she had seen in the window came through to the reception from the back office, it was pock marked and had a sallow colour like it had never seen the sun.

'D'yer wan' a room?.' Moaned the face as it exposed nicotine stained teeth.

'Oh..er..Yes please.' She forced the words out of her mouth. The registration was done in silence and she was given a key and simply pointed in the direction of the room that was outside to the left. Since all the rooms where to the left outside the reception, the pointing was stating the obvious. She drove the car the short distance to outside the room, parking it immediately in front of the door and went in. The room was sparse, a bed, a chair and a small TV on a shelf. To her relief it was however clean and on inspection the sheets felt fresh as if just they were just changed that morning. She opened the door at the back of the room, which hid a shower, to her relief that was also clean. In the opposite corner was a closet that was locked, she pulled on the door, it was definitely locked. Having investigated she lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling as she thought about what to do next. Shower and change her clothes then read awhile or read awhile and change later? She took a book out of her bag which she had brought to pass the but never got to reading it, falling to sleep while whiling away the time in thought.

The lights outside came on which interrupted her light sleep and prompted her to take a shower and change. She discarded her professional clothes that she wore for work at the library and put on a blue tank top and denim skirt that was just on the side of an acceptable length. Pacing the room, at intervals she admired herself in the three-quarter-length mirror on the back wall. She had just seen her thirtieth birthday disappear into her past but she was pleased that no one would consider her more than her mid twenties. Her figure was young and though she accepted her looks were plain, she was thankful for her mother's mouth, which she considered her best feature. She brushed and readjusted her wig. It was fortunate that despite her being dark haired her skin colouring also suited blond. Along with the expensive quality of the wig it was almost impossible to tell she was wearing one. It was time to leave. Outside Archie's was ablaze like a fairground ride and casting a dome of spectral colours against the navy blue sky.

Inside Archie's a country rock band was warming up on the small stage while a gaggle of customer's shuffled in a circle on the dance floor. The band was playing some country rock music that was vaguely familiar but their arrangement had obscured the original melody. The dimly lit bar was cavernous, made all the more so by the empty tables but it was early and too early to be disappointed thought Anna. She went over and leant on the bar, placing her foot on the foot rail she stuck out her butt like and advertisement.

The barman walked along the a to her while still polishing a glass 'Can I get you anything miss?'

'Barcadi Breezer please.' She said beginning to doubt Miss Henry's assessment of the establishment. 'Do you get any people in here?'

'Hey George!' Shouted the barman along the bar to a regular Roy Rogers sat at the end 'This young lady wants to know if we get any customer's in here!' Roy Rogers laughed and took a swig of his beer and left the barman to answer her 'You'll have so much muscle pushing up against you'll think you're in a fuckery by nine.'

She winced at the implication she was a common whore 'There is no need to be offensive.' She retorted.

'My apologies for being so graphic.' Replied the barman leaning into her face before adding 'But this is Archie's place!'

She felt wounded but reassured. By the time she was asking the barman for a third Breezer the place had substantially filled and the staff behind the bar had multiplied and had no time to socialise with the customer's. The band was rolling with more energy than talent, rendering conversation impossible except at close quarters but the atmosphere was energetic and exciting. It truly was Miss Henry's hell she thought as she laughed to herself. The place was hot, sweaty and physical, with people pushing past as they made their way between the bar and tables, calling out orders while exchanging jokes and gossip.

It wasn't long before she felt a hand on her butt and a sleazeball shouting in her ear 'Boy! Have I got something you want!'

'It's the year of our Lord 2003.' Relishing her rhetoric 'A man can be put behind bars for doing what you are doing to me.' She said without looking to see who was molesting her.

'You wouldn't want the hunk who's going to give you a party arrested would you?'

'Carry on doing what you are doing and you will either have a good time or you will be playing solo with your manhood. Either way your balls will be busted.' She said ambiguously.

'Bitch!' Hissed the stranger in her ear and left.

She didn't look round but simply thought 'Gutless!' He deserved nothing, he was too stupid to realise if he had held his nerve he could have got his party. She sighed and pondered her behaviour and wondered whether it could be described as a form of addiction, habit or a positive life style choice. It is impossible to come to any conclusion she thought. None seemed to be an adequate description but all seemed an appropriate label at various times, depending on how she felt about herself and her feelings towards the world at large. Addiction suggests a slavery to something that is dangerous or has a serious adverse affect on ones life. If the danger of being seriously embarrassed fits the definition of addiction then perhaps she was an addict but it didn't seem serious enough. As for habit, that draws a picture of mindless repetitive behaviour. She was adamant her behaviour wasn't mindless but there was certainly a repetitive nature to it. That left a positive lifestyle choice but she had never really chose to behave like she did, it just sort of happened. This would lead her back over her previous contemplations. All the labels contained a certain element of truth but none really defined the whole. These musings forced her to accept that her behaviour was too fluid to be definitively labelled and left her with intellectual contradictions that couldn't be reconciled. Things felt unresolved, they needed to be specified and categorised, she was after all an archivist and librarian.

She looked round and saw all the singles coupling up and all the couples seemingly exchanging partners. It could end up a lonely evening thanks to that spineless jerk. Her mind wondered under the morbid influence of the alcohol and pictured herself sliding her hand between two books to help ease another into its correct place, it was Sartre's 'Nausea' and she was returning it to its appropriate section. It was the spine of 'Nausea' that she fixated on when she felt a pair of hands take hold of her hips. This she took to be Adam who had been following her round the campus with his tongue hanging out for quite awhile. He had never managed to corner her in such a situation that she would let him simply have her rather than her having to confront the knotty problem of refusing him. Now he had her cornered and to her surprise provoked a physical arousal in her but she was aware she was still mentally cold. She never turned to acknowledge him but simply allowed his hands to hitch up her skirt and pull down her panties, giving him the only outward sign of approval by parting her feet slightly. There she stayed buttressed against the shelves as she felt him fill her and after several minutes of thrusting provoked in her a shallow orgasm. All the time she remained mentally unstimulated while she intellectually explored the physical sensation of the act. It was only after the event that she turned to find her sexual partner was a complete stranger. She was taken aback to find the power of arousal she experienced at discovering this fact where horror seemed to be the more appropriate reaction. Any pretence at being in control of events at that point simply vanished, she had ceased to be a rational being and had turned animal. It amused her to think that her sexual savagery had initially startled her surreptitious lover. Afterwards when they were both sated he simply left. She never saw him again and wondered if he was a fellow student or just some workman who happened to be lost on campus. It left with her an arousing memory without the messy small talk to endure with hidden embarrassment.

She was about to buy her last drink and admit the evening had been a failure when a hand slipped between her legs and pressed its fingers through her panties and into the entrance of her vagina. She took a sharp intake of breath but remained firmly fixed in the position she had assumed. She looked into the mirror behind the bar but the rim of the hat of her assailant hid his face in shadow. The hand kneaded her pudendum and felt her body react favourably to its crude intervention. Her lips parted as if she was going to speak.

'I know.' Said a confident voice 'A man could get arrested for doing what I'm doing to a woman.'

'Then you know what comes next?' Her voice trailed off as she tried to cope with her arousal.

'Yeah.' He gave a small laugh 'You are going to toss a coin and decide whether it's you or the cops that are going to bust my balls.'

'How do you know that?' She asked as she tried to keep her voice steady.

'You've got yourself a reputation as a ball breaker already.'

'Oh.' She said as if she had forgot her previous assailant and had now just remembered him but it came out sounding as much a response to the stranger's stimulation of her 'Your friend?'

'I wouldn't call him that.' Breathed the stranger in her ear as he concentrated more on what he was doing between her legs than on the conversation. 'Do you have anywhere we can go?'

'I'm staying at the motel across the way.'

'Brown's?' He asked as if there was more than the one motel. 'Which room?'

'Twelve.' Freely giving the information.

'Okay.' He increased his stimulation of her. 'I'll see you there in an hour' and then he was gone. She breathed deeply to return a sense of equilibrium to herself and looked round expecting the bar to have noticed her lusting at the stranger's brazen introduction. No one appeared to have noticed her willing participation in such exhibitionism. She took one last drink to kill the last half an hour.

Outside the air had cooled with the night. She was giddy on drink and the prospect of the stranger waiting to have her. Although she enjoyed the physical feel of sex, as an activity it was something she always found embarrassing to discuss or confront. When she was a teenager she always found it easier to allow her boyfriends to have their way with her than to say no and so confront the idea of sex head on. It helped if there was some attraction but even if there wasn't, should she close her eyes and concentrate on the touch of sex she enjoyed it up to a point. Like now she could still feel the stranger's fingers pressing between her legs. She was still savouring his fingers probing her while lamenting the slow melting away of the sensation. It didn't matter who the stranger was, he was a tool, a sex toy, she knew nothing about him and he, nothing about her and she preferred it that way. Tomorrow and for sometime to come or until the next time he would haunt her fantasies and could be whoever and whatever she wanted. She came back to the moment at hand, cars were leaving the parking lot and shooting off each way down the highway. Lovers were hurrying home to indulge in each other's bodies. All those vaginas, she thoughr, that are lustily being filled with violent erections. Sadness fell about her as she began to dwell on what she saw as her social inadequacy, her inability to open up to and confront her fantasies with a partner. It was a truck's blazing light and horn that shocked her out of her morbidity as it blasted past her as she staggered aimlessly across the highway. She became more purposeful and made her way across the highway and down the track to the motel. It was quiet and there was no sign of her stranger who promised her a rendez vous. She looked round, there weren't any shadows where it seemed possible he could be hiding to surprise her and why would he? She was just some flakey easy lay that had the dubious humour of threatening what she offered to potentially be freedom robbing.

Dejectedly she opened the door to her motel room and was just entering the room when she experienced a violent push in the back. She flew forward, diving headfirst onto the bed where a heavy weight immediately fell upon her and held her down. Her arms were forced behind her back and her wrists tied with something sharp which she later she found to be a cable tie. Before she could gather herself and work out what was happening her skirt had been removed and her panties ripped off. Whoever it was that was assailing her grabbed a hold of her hips pulling her ass up so it was in the air and her face was buried in the bed covers. She felt a violent lash across her buttocks that made her shriek into the covers. Forcing her head sidewards she caught her breath as she tried to look behind her. It pained her neck but she caught a glimpse of the stranger wielding a leather belt. He was naked but for his cowboy hat. He had an athletic body but the hat made him look ridiculous and would have broken her spell if it were not for the fact it hid his face. Not being able to see his face and so keeping him anonymous was enough for her to remain captured by the event that was carrying her along. She could show her ass to the world as long as she couldn't see a face staring back at her. Several more lashes cut across her ass as she buried her face once again in the covers to stifle her shrieks of pain and helped her to endure the assault. She was subject to violent thrashing, slaps and penetrations. Though all the violence was measured and calculated not to cause her harm her. It was the symbolism that was the power. Her stranger instinctively knew what she wanted but which she could not articulate until that moment of experience. She wanted to be dominated and her ego totally annihilated. He was orchestrating her escape into some inner space. It was as though she was experiencing the pain by proxy. Her body felt detached from her mind, which inhabited some parallel world in a state of euphoria. Eventually the violence stopped and her wrists were freed. It was impossible to know how long she had been flying or how long she remained prostrate on the bed blanking her mind to delay the inevitable plunge to earth. Hovering on the peripheral of her semi-consciousness was a vague realisation that it only a matter of time before she would come round to experience the depressive aftermath of her flight.

'I knew what you was after as soon as I saw you.' Came a voice behind her.

She turned her head and looked down the length of the bed to see the inverted image of the naked man in the hat sat on the easy chair in the corner of the room 'How come?' she moaned.

'You're a junkie.' He said 'You need kicks.'

'Thanks.' As she returned her head back into what was a more comfortable position.

'No need to thank me.' Said the stranger taking a mouthful of liqueur 'I should be thanking you.'

'You're welcome.' She groaned, feeling the aches and the accompanied fatigue. Even this small talk was too much as she gave up and drifted at first into an inner world and then to sleep.

The dull light of the dawn had started to filter through the drapes but it was the chill of the morning that woke her. Her bones had absorbed the cold of the room, which felt heavy as stone within her. She was still lying on her belly as she had been when she had fallen to sleep and easing herself onto her back made her limbs ache from cramp that had been induced in her by the rigors of what could have only been a few hours earlier. The naked stranger was still sat in the chair in a drunken sleep. His hat pulled over his eyes and his chin resting on his chest. He looked ludicrous with his legs parted and his pathetic little worm nestled between his thighs. She rolled onto her side and pushed herself up into a sitting position, her bladder was bloated which increased her sense of nausea. Silence can be loud when it dominates the atmosphere like a dead weight. She went and emptied her bladder, remaining seated on the toilet as she absorbed the comfort of the relief. If emptiness could be a physical phenomenon that had solid form, it now was in her head and plying pressure on her very being. Returning to the room she studied the naked stranger whose body seemed to encompass pig like qualities. It was snoring and smelt of stale alcohol and tobacco. She went up to him and studied him closer. In the dim light of the dawn his skin was pale and bloodless and his body lacked tone, as though he was a sack that had been dumped in the chair. She picked up the heavy empty whisky bottle at his feet and raising it above her head brought it crashing down on his. The bottle smashed and the stranger slumped in the chair. She immediately lunged at the stranger staking him in the neck with the remains of the bottleneck and jagged glass blade that extended from it. The bottleneck stuck out from the stranger's neck. Blood trickled along the bottleneck, dripping from its rim, giving a bizarre image, like collecting sap from a tree. Only this was blood from pork. In her eyes the stranger was no more than literally a pig. She backed off and sat on the edge of the bed but remained fixated on the pig should he show signs of life. There was a voice within her telling her to remain vigilant of the pig's resurrection but she could see that there was nothing more dead than dead meat.

She considered the incremental steps that had brought her here. The loveless sharing of her body, touch without emotion, actions without morals but what of these things, could they have made a difference? She pulled the wig from her head and exchanged her tank top for the shirt she wore for the library once she had distressed her work shirt enough. Then putting her grey flannel work skirt through the same tribulations as her shirt she flung it on the floor. Gathering up the wig and clothes she had worn at Archie's she stuffed them in her bag. The lack of blood pouring from the pig had surprised her. It simply emptied from him in a neat trickle. All the while she had constantly watched the pig with the same morbid fascination of passing a car crash on the freeway.

She picked up the phone and began to sob as she dialled 'Police?' sniffling before sobbing inconsolably once again 'I want to report a rape……' By the time the call had been made the sun was above the horizon and the day had begun proper. The pig remained slumped and docile in the chair while the unassuming librarian waited on the edge of the bed, listening out for the police siren.