The fall into the book knocks Lizzie
unconscious as she hits the ground.
“She awakens to see herself in a
library that looks similar to the one she was in.”
“Hello?”
“The girl asks herself. She’s confused
as to what happened to her and where she is.”
“Who’s narrating everything I do?”
“Questions race through her mind as
to who it could be. She came to a mysterious library for answers and even after
that, she has more questions than answers. The girl walks through the library
and follows the sound of the voice to its source, but she opens the wrong door
and comes across a ghastly sight.”
“What the?”
“She says in disbelief at looking
at Harold who is still struggling to put himself together, but can you blame
him? He has three head, four and a half arms, and three legs.”
“Sorry for my mess, miss, he says.
I just need to find my heads to put myself back together. Not wanting to deal
with him, the girl walks off to another room and opens it to see another sad
sight.”
“Be careful. My eyes are all over
the place. The slippery things just won’t stay in me. This is Ms. Madness as we
call her here because of all her knowledge and her eyes, but because of all her
knowledge, her burst from it and has a hard time keeping her head together. The
girl closes the door and goes to check another one but stops and thinks before
she opens another one. She walks around tuning her ears until she has a good
idea of which door to open and would you look at that, she opens the right one!
The mannequin who was narrating her events is a fine gentleman with a black
tuxedo and black pants with eyes on it as if he didn’t already have enough eyes
on his head.”
“Please, stop it.”
“And enough mouths on his head too.”
“Who are you and why are you narrating
everything I’m doing?”
“I’m the author of this book you’re
in. May I get your name? It can be repetitive for my readers to keep hearing
you referred to as a girl.”
“Lizzie.”
“Lizzie. What a wonderful name!”
“How did I get here?”
“You got thrown in here by that librarian.
What was her name again?”
“Ms. Ebrietas.”
“Ah, yes. That’s it. That woman is
a lunatic. She thinks that filling your soul and body with deeper knowledge
will ascend your mind to a higher plane of knowledge so you can become smarter.
It’s vanity as I have learned. I was a librarian before.”
“You were a librarian like her?”
“Similar, but not as crazy. What’s
the good of all the knowledge in the universe if you aren’t going to use it properly
or even use it at all. There’s a reason why it is said that the poet only asks
to get his head into the heavens while the logician seeks to get the heavens
into his head. The poet knows his limits and that his head will split if he tries
to get the infinite into the finite.”
“But isn’t there any knowledge we
don’t know that will be useful? There has to be.”
“That’s the same kind of thinking
she had. Trust me when I saw that we were made with limits for a reason. You’ve
seen what happens to people when they ‘ascend’. Ebrietas will end up the same
way or worse in no time. That library needs to burn.”
“I guess there really isn’t any
other choice,” Lizzie says as she sits down.
“There isn’t and you better get it
through your head. If you were designed to handle deeper truths, then you
wouldn’t fall apart and go insane when you had it.”
After a few moments of consideration,
Lizzie says, “Fine. I understand now. Will you help me escape and destroy the
library?”
“Nah, you can do that yourself. You
shouldn’t really leave either.”
“Why?”
“When you leave here, you’ll be in
a place where your mind will be constantly assaulted by deeper knowledge. You’ll
hear all kinds of things including the secrets of the past, present, and
future. They’ll sing sweetly to you and either drive you insane, turn you into eye-filled
black sludge, or make you like Ebrietas and that’s when you have eyes within
you. You don’t have any. That was a smart move, but you’re more likely to turn
into eye-filled black sludge or go insane now.”
“I’m not going to stay here for the
rest of my life.”
“Oh, my dear, if only that could
happen. You can’t die here. Trust me, I’ve tried.”
“Then that gives me even more of a
reason to get out of here. Didn’t you say that the library should burn?”
“I did, but it could do that
without our help. If the book we’re in burns, then we’ll all burn and be freed.”
“Well, I’m going to escape and burn
it myself.”
“Hold on there. If you’re serious
about this, leaving the book isn’t going to be easy because there’s a lock on
it.”
“How do I unlock it from here?”
“It’s a lock on a magical book. What
makes you think it can be unlocked from the inside?”
“Come on, you’re a knowledgeable librarian.
Don’t you have any ideas?”
“…you know there actually might be
one thing you have to do, but you’re not going to like it.”
“If it means I’ll be able to get
out of here, then I’ll do it. What am I supposed to do?”
“Disassemble yourself and roll your
head all the way down there.”
“Down where?”
“Have you looked down at the lower
floors of the library yet?’
Lizzie looks over the railings of
the library and sees that the rest of the library is a mess of other places
such as forests, houses, churches, cities, and much more. Above her is much of
the same in what seems like an endless series of places that don’t mesh
together with crazy mannequins with deformed bodies.
“This is a place for crazies and
lunatics of all kinds,” the man explains, “The minds of the mad mannequins in
here create what you see around you. The reason why the library around here
seems so big is because I’m probably one of the only people in here who
still has some sanity left in them.”
“I can’t even see the bottom. What
about the rest of my body?”
“What about it?”
“I need it! What do you think?”
“I’ll send it down with you. Your
mind is your most important instrument, right?”
Lizzie is still as she looks down
and imagines falling down into the madness.
“If this is the only way…”
As Lizzie stands on top of the
railing, she takes a deep breath before dissembling herself and falling into
the madness below. Her head falls into a cone filled with eyes on its sides
that is actually the head of a person. She exits the person’s head via his
mouth and is spat out to a pinball-like area where other people’s heads are
being bounced around by people who are playing the pinball game. A flipper
misses her, and she goes down a hole into a mountain. The mountain rumbles as
an avalanche of mannequin parts fall down the mountain. Lizzie is caught up in the
avalanche as she then falls into a place filled with desserts.
The mannequins combine and eat ice
cream, chocolates, and even the heads and body parts of the other mannequins
that are covered in sweets. In the chaos, Lizzie manages to roll her head to a
hole in the room that makes her fall into a golf course where she is hit into
the mouth of a giant mannequin that is somewhat alive. The throat of this mannequin
leads her to an ocean of black sludge. She sinks to the bottom of this ocean as
mannequins who have made themselves into mermaids and other forms of aquatic
life that swim around. At the bottom of the ocean, Lizzie is taken by the claw of a
bird that brings her deeper down.
As the claw of the bird tears her away
from the ocean, it tears a hole in the sky of the next place as a flood falls
from the sky of a fantasy battlefield with mannequins who have made themselves
into dragons, unicorns, elves, dwarves, knights, kings, and queens. A barrage
of arrows flies into the air and hits the bird that lets go of Lizzie. She
falls into a lake that ends in a waterfall that makes her fall further into the
darkness. The fall isn’t too far, and she lands on total darkness.
“Whew. Is it finally over?” Lizzie says
to herself.
A flash of light illuminates the
area to reveal a single hole to escape from it. Lizzie begins rolling her head
to it as another flash of light shines as several figures start approaching
her.
“Oh, come on,” Lizzie complains.
Another flash happens seconds
latter to reveal the monstrous mannequins with deformations in their body and
eyes on their bodies and faces. Before the next flash, Lizzie is able to get to the
hole just in time as the mannequins almost snatch her. This next place she lands
in looks to be the bottom floor of the library she was in where she entered
from. The man from before lands on the floor with the rest of Lizzie’s body.
He lays it on the ground and says, “Your
body, madame.”
“I hope nothing bad happened to it,”
Lizzie says as she reassembles herself.
“It wasn’t anything bad I couldn’t
fix.”
“Ugh. What do I do now? Is there
some kind of exit here or secret lock I need to break?”
“You don’t have to do anything. I’ll
just send you through the lock.”
“What? Are you kidding me?”
“Nope! This isn’t even the bottom of this madness. I just created it here before you arrived.”
“You made me go through that
nightmarish obstacle course for nothing then?!”
“It wasn’t for nothing. What you
were feeling was similar to what you’re going to feel when you get out of here.
I was preparing you for it and seeing if you are truly serious about what you
say you’re going to do.”
“Thanks then, I guess.”
“You’re most welcome. Oh, and when
you see Ebrietas and a man by the name of Laurence, tell them to remember
Master Willem’s advice.”
“Okay, I will.”
“Thank you. I’ll be praying for
your success.”
Light generates from the fingertips
of the man as he sends Lizzie out of the book. Even as she is exiting the book,
she can feel the mental pressure of the outside heavily weighing on her, but
she bears it and holds onto the hope that she can succeed despite it.
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