At Death's Door

Chapter 1: Favourite Places

She was very glad to get out of there. When she had enrolled in the Independent Education program at the beginning of this year, she had expected to find some kind of solace there, or at least be able to work in peace. She sighed heavily thinking of those high hopes... She had just been proven wrong. No one could ever let her be.

But she was free now. She had just handed in the last of her assignments for the term and was officially done—three weeks early no less. That was the one reason she had to like her Distance & Independent Education program. She could work at her own pace, plus the program allowed her freedom from the constrictions of the typical high school education, like the necessity to attend class. Often she didn't have to interact with anyone, except those few uncomfortable brushes with her peers.

Reminded of it again, Elta tried her hardest to shrug the encounter off, to ignore it and bury it in the back of her mind with the rest of her humiliations. She had other things to concentrate on. She was headed to spend an afternoon in her favourite place in the world.

Elta had very few favourite places in this town. She glanced out the window of her car as it sped down the street, racing towards her sanctuary; the library.

Some days, when everything else seemed so uncertain, the library and the books it held were only things that kept her going. Elta didn't have very many things to be excited about. She felt stuck like she could sleepwalk through her daily routine, spend every moment of every day with her eyes closed, and not miss much. Nothing would change. The only time she felt alive when she was reading, standing in for someone else—someone special—someone who had a purpose, a future, in their own story. People seem to bear life better when they didn't have to deal with it, and the escapism that books gave her was just the thing she wanted. And today, Elta was going to spend as much time in the library, immersed in her books, as was humanly possible.

The car was pushing its limits as she drove even faster, the forests blurring into streaks as she blew past them. Her school's building and the library were on the opposite sides of town, and it wasn't quick to cross from one side to the other. The city in which she lived was considered small—because it was, no doubt, population-wise—but it sprawled an inordinate amount of ground, it's layout winding and knotted. Elta's mom often joked that those who had founded the city had been drunk when they planned it. In reality, it was because it had been made of several small towns that had been strung together by a road, like beads on a necklace, and then dubbed a city. In the gaps between each hamlet were wild, tangled forests.

This haphazard layout was not popular with the locals. Most wanted the forests to be cut down and the land developed, but Elta disagreed. She liked the forests that punctuated the drab streets of her hometown. She liked to think peculiar forests seemed to be filled with unknown magic like they had sprung up in the middle of their small town, proudly refusing to be moved, instead of being the brainchild of an unstable municipal planner.

She pulled off the street and into the tiny parking lot reserved for patrons of the library, reversing into her regular spot. As she climbed out of the car, and made her way towards the stone steps, she took notice of how empty the lot was. Even though the lot was a small one, she still had never seen it full. The library didn't hold much interest in the typical person these days. She was happy about that. The library provided more than an escape for the mind; it also allowed her to escape from others.

Inside the walls of the library, it was enforced by rule not to talk and bother another person. Here, she could be left alone, and it would be enforced. She could enjoy peace without fear of having some nosy local thrusting themselves upon her, badgering her with invasive questions under the cover of politeness.

She threw open the doors to the library with giddy force and took it in. The library was unusual for a town like this. In a city of bungalows and single-storey businesses, the library was a monolith by comparison. It was floors-upon-floors of books, a gift from one of the city's wealthy citizens, an eccentric who attempted to unite the collection of towns under one grand library for them to share.