He had had never meant to become a killer.
It started, as so many things do, as an accident, a chance encounter in the Library of Masterworks. There were only heavy books in that library, tomes of literature. Most were old, bound in leather, engraved titles burnished with gold plate.
The man had dirty fingers. He’d smuggled a sugar-frosted, glazed donut into the library, even though food was strictly forbidden. His fingers were slick with greasy. Crumbs dropped onto the pages and squashed between the fine parchment obscuring important passages, obliterating words and images.
The librarian acted without thought or volition. It was self-defense.
He picked up “Darke Phantastique.” It was a new book, one of the few on the shelves but weighty. Over fifty stories, of horror, mayhem, and monsters, filled with weapons and the heavy artillery of words. He swung.
The man dropped, hitting the ground with a satisfying thunk like the slaming shut of a large book. It had closed permanently. The librarian filed the body behind the shelf marked M for murder.
It was only the beginning there was a whole alphabet to fill.
