Hi everyone, I hope you enjoy this microfiction fantasy story I wrote and submitted as part of NYC Midnight’s 250-word Microfiction Contest. This story made the cut in Round One, and then I had to submit another original story for Round Two, and that’s as far as I got. But I thought the story was fun, so it is now published for all the world to see and enjoy(?).
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“Bookends, or Libromancy”
They say reading is a super power, but I have a different gift. I call it libromancy, an innate sense of how much I’ll enjoy a book. This, of course, assumes I’m going to finish the book. My husband tells me it’s like closing the causality loop. I can’t know how I’ll enjoy a book in the future if I never actually finish it.
But then the other day in the library (well, I assume it was recently), I picked up an interesting-looking book, and…nothing. A ringing in my ears after a loud bang, the blinding glare of the sun on water, the buzzing in a forearm after a funny bone strike. Static. Nothing. Why couldn’t I get a sense of it? Did this mean I would never read it? Or, more worryingly, never finish it?
I’ll admit I couldn’t resist the temptation to read a book without having that ever present spoiler sense. So I checked it out. Walking home, stroking the cover and spine, riffling pages, I sought something, anything my sixth sense would give me. But all I got was a sense of flying.
The beeping I’m hearing now, the apparent inability to open my eyes, the scent of pickles in my husband’s breath from the sandwich he’s evidently eating, the sterile air from my breathing tube, tells me Something Bad happened.
So, on the off chance I’m actually psychic and someone receives this message, please come tell my husband to stop reading That Book to me?
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