Disappearing Fire and Secret's Captive (Two Novels)
an excerpt

Secret's Captive

My mind was still wandering when something caught my eye. Looking at the shelf I noticed that there was a trail on it. It wasn’t like a trail in dust however, we always kept the shelves very well dusted. There was what looked like a trail of dust. Quickly shelving the last book I had in my hand I found the trail once again and started following it with my eyes. I saw that it turned and disappeared near the end of the shelf where there was a place for another book. I looked over to the counter quickly to make sure that Raoul wasn’t watching me and crawled on the floor over to where the dust trail curved. When I reached the spot I had to rub my eyes to make sure that I wasn’t just seeing things.

Sitting in the space where a book should be there was a small, silver and gold looking worm that had arms and hands. For a moment I thought that it was just a little figurine but then it moved. It sat there looking content and flipped the page of the small book that was in its hands. It was staring intently at the pages and almost looked like it was reading.

“Oh my,” I whispered to myself.

I couldn’t believe that there was an actual creature sitting there on the shelf. It made me have no doubt about its intelligence when it suddenly looked up at me and spoke.

“It is quite rude to stare you know,” it said. “How would you like it if I were just sitting here staring at you?”

“I’m sorry,” I said, and was immediately surprised that it had came out of my mouth, I hadn’t made the conscious decision to say anything to this small creature. “But, what are you?”

“I am a bookworm, what do you think I am?” it asked, looking at me like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

“Okay, and if you are a bookworm, what are you doing?” I asked, trying to convince myself that I wasn’t just hallucinating.

“I am reading, duh,” it said, gesturing toward me with the book in its hands. “What else would I do with one of these? Eat it?”

“Well, maybe,” I said, thinking about how it would make sense. Earthworms ate earth, it would be logical for bookworms to eat books.

“How would anybody be able to eat book?” the bookworm asked. “Books are sacred. Bookworms may eat paper and ink but it would be sacrilege to eat a book. Ink and paper can both be used for other products, besides books but to eat a book that was made to spread the wondrous stories of the author’s mind…”

The bookworm trailed off, shaking its head as it did so. I almost felt told off as I looked at the bookworm.

“I am sorry, I didn’t know,” I said, trying to make up with the little creature. “What is your name?”

“My name is Oliver,” the worm said. “I suppose I can’t expect for you to know about bookworms yet. I mean, it is only your first day on the job.”

I was confused and I am quite sure that my face was showing it. I was about to ask Oliver what he meant but at that moment Raoul noticed that I wasn’t working and yelled at me about it.

“I am not paying you to look at the empty spaces on the shelves,” he said. “Fill it and the other ones in the other sections.”

“Yes Raoul,” I said, glancing as quickly as I could at Raoul but by the time that I looked back there was just an empty space on the shelf. There was a trail of dust going off into the science fiction section and I was sure that the worm had gone off into a corner where he might be able to get some peace and quiet to read his book without having to listen to me talk.