Word Junkies

          Scratch… scratch, scratch. The silence was broken by the gentle sound of the pen as it glided over paper, leaving trails of ebony ink in its wake. The tip of the pen stopped, hovering above the page as the man holding it planned his next words. Just as the pen was about to resume its path, a jagged bolt of lightning flickered across the sky, temporarily illuminating the dark corners of the room which had been hidden from the flickering light of the candle that feebly attempted to push the deepening twilight away. Half an instant later, the deep grumbling of thunder announced the arrival of the storm. The man jerked in surprise, pulling the pen off course, and knocking the candle off balance. He managed to steady the candle with the hand that upset it and muttered a curse. He hated keeping an open flame near his papers and notebooks, but the power was out, and his flashlight was dead. He settled back into his chair, and closed his eyes to think.

          This weather always set him on edge. He supposed it was because of them, the Junkies. No, not supposed. Knew. They spent most of their lives hunched in alleyways, faces hidden by the books they valued more than their lives, and were relatively safe as long as they were left alone. None of them had homes anymore, having long ago given up trying to keep a job. They scavenged what food they needed to survive, and although some resorted to stealing money for black market books, many were satisfied with what they could find in decrepit, abandoned libraries. It was weather like this that caused problems… Storms meant rain, and rain meant finding a place to keep their books dry.

          The sound of something scraping across the pavement outside caused the man to open his eyes. An emaciated figure, slowly dragging a ramshackle sled piled with tattered books, approached the awning over the shop door. Once the sled was safely under cover, the figure slowly slumped to the ground and reached for a book with trembling, skeletal fingers.

          The man suppressed a shudder. He could never figure out why he found the Junkies so repulsive. Their matted hair, sickly pallor, and glazed eyes made them unappealing, certainly—but that wasn’t the cause of his distaste. No, it was the way they made him feel. Seeing them caused something within him to recoil and filled him with unease. Shaking his head, a physical attempt to rid himself of such thoughts, the man bent over his papers and resumed writing. Time passed; the pen scratched, a seismograph recording a magnitude of thoughts, guided by the man’s hand as he hunched over the desk…

 

Magic bloomed, ignited the soul…

 

          …And abruptly sputtered out as the door to the shop opened. The man choked back his anger at being interrupted, lowered his pen, and looked up. A Junkie—not the one who had sought shelter from the storm, but a different one—cautiously approached the desk. Sore-covered hands, the mark of a hardcore junkie, reached into a pocket, withdrawing several crumpled hundred-dollar bills and placing them on the desk. Three books followed the bills, pages yellow with age and bindings almost gone. The man delicately placed the books on a pile of others that needed to be rebound, and opened a drawer, pulling from it three books to replace the ones now in his care. The Junkie accepted them wordlessly and turned to leave the shop. The man watched him go, filled with both relief and satisfaction.

          Though he hated how they made him feel, he had to admit that the Junkies paid well to get their fix. He wondered how many pages it took for them to forget this dismal reality. How many books did they have to read before the sores began to appear? And what did they do when they realized reading the words no longer gave them the escape they craved?

          Once again, the man shook off these uncomfortable thoughts and turned back to his work. Ignoring the blood and pus that oozed from the sores on his fingers, he picked up his pen and began to write.