Defend the Fortress of Words and Other-worlds

From my room, as I sat with my eyes a blear streaking through the words of Dan Brown, I could hear my youngest brother and his friends squealing gaily; an ode to their childhood and general lack of stress and pressure in the living room. In the room adjacent to mine was my brother’s. His electric guitar whined and wailed; he told me he was performing for his school in their upcoming Teacher’s Day celebrations and needed all the time in the world to hone his, in my unbiased opinion as his brother, non-existent skills. My house was as noisy as a construction site; yet it was here that the suspense the author was building was destroyed by the deafening ruckus.

I could bear the din no longer. There was no talking to them. They were my brothers and they shared my stubborn streak. In addition, it was the two of them against me. Being a firm believer in democracy, I had to give way. Unceremoniously, I stuffed my dog-eared and tattered copy of the book and escaped from my room; my supposed escape in the first place.

Reading has always been my passion. It gave me a sense of escape, and in the expanse of time I took in the words, I could become a wizard, a ninja or even a dragon, depending on the book, of course. It was only logical that I headed to the library, as I have done so many times before with its shelves of knowledge, to be sucked into another world once more.

The neighborhood library was crowded when I reached there, that Saturday afternoon. Amazingly however, the noise-level was at it’s minimum. If the floor was not carpeted, you could literally hear a pin drop. Occasionally, a cough would shatter the silence, yet, after a hurried and shameful “Excuse me,” from the source, the silence would descend again. It was quite a sight to see so many people together yet hardly making any sound. They were all too engrossed in their material. I smiled to myself. I was “home”.

I found a sofa to sit on inside the library’s hallowed halls. I reclined, crossed my legs and flopped my book open. That, to me, was heaven on Earth. The air-conditioning was just right, and the sofa was so comfortable, it could be mistaken for a death bed. Silence was indeed golden.

The protagonist, Jack, scurried down the corridors of the chapel as his albino pursuer gave chase. Jack held in his erudite hands the key to decoding the “Lost Gospel” and there were many who wanted it, for many more dastardly reasons. Just as the albino cocked a pistol, with the barrel’s echo reverberating down the pews of the chapel, and Jack’s heart pumped twice as fast and twice as intensely, a cry cut the leash the author had me on.

Near me was a young couple with a child in a stroller. The child was crying; the parents desperately tried to sate him. They employed the carrot-and-stick-methods. They made “funny faces”, sang nursery rhymes, made hushed scolding, gave a light slap, shut him up with a pacifier but none worked.

I tried my best to ignore the situation at hand. My eyes darted back to my novel. In the background, the child’s cries still rang. In the book, the albino had fired a shot. However, alas, a twist. The shot was not aimed at Jack, but at another dark figure. My mind was rocked by the shift in power, but in a similar fashion the gun of the Albino went off, the baby’s cries became shrieks.

I tore my eyes from my book. The father had now carried the child in his arms and was rocking him back and forth while the mother made even more ridiculous faces, contorting her facial features to the least attractive yet most humorous shapes. With the exception of this magnificent trinity of irritation, the library was silent, as in silently cursing them to go away.

I could take it no longer. They were irking me, and in my opinion, they were irking everybody else as well. Who were they to think they could destroy the precious reading time we had? Who were they to invade our fortress of words and other-worlds? Perhaps it was because my patience was already pushed to the limit earlier in my house, but at that moment, I was perturbed and disturbed. Everybody else pretended not to notice, so I tasked it upon myself to be the “defender” of the sanctity of the library.

I understood that it was up to me to stand to take a stand.

“Excuse me,” I said as cheerily yet quietly as possible. “Would you be so kind as to leave if you can’t silence your child?”

The couple looked at me as if I had insulted them. The wife pointed an accusing finger at me and said in a raised voice, “Who are you to tell us what to do? You’re only fourteen yet you dare mock us like that?”

The audacity of these people! I was sixteen at that time!

“Please madam, this is a library. I only wish to read in peace, and so does the rest of the people here”, I replied in a diplomatic manner.

“You arrogant boy, mind your own business!” shouted the father.

We were causing a commotion, and it had attracted the attention of half the readers. I never spoke in an arrogant manner, or perhaps my accent had given the impression. After shouting at me, I could hide my feelings no longer. Most insulting of all, he called me a “boy”.

“Excuse me for wanting my right to read! Have you seen the sings saying ‘Silence Please’? Or maybe you can’t read, but then again, what the hell are you doing here?” In my head, I heard applause. “Do you think you have the right to interrupt all of our precious time? Is your baby so important that you have to disrupt the whole peace of the library?” In my head, a crowd was cheering me on. “If you can’t control your own child, please leave because you are ruining our afternoon” By now, the crowd in my head was having a riot.

Or maybe it’s just the blood-rush.

All of a sudden, both of them screamed their heads off. I only heard bits and pieces, snippets of their rambling. “Who do you think you are?”, “…don’t understand…”, “…to young…”, “…respect your elders…”, “….just a boy…”

I read in a magazine once that when you stand up for what’s right, the whole world stands with you to back you up. Yet, no one did. We were a freak-show.

In the background, someone mumbled, “Did you bring the popcorn?”.

I felt a phone camera boring a hole into me; God, I was so going to be on YouTube.

I was about to explode, but a librarian pulled me away. I glared at the couple and their child, who had sickening leers, staring daggers at me. I hated them, even the child who was innocent. The librarian told me that I should understand the difficulties of having a baby. We must exercise patience with them. Shaking my head, I left wordlessly, shocked that I was, in her eyes, “wrong”.

My fortress was demolished; I could not bear to return to the library, for the way I had been treated. Worse of all, no one had supported me when I was fighting for them. At home, in my room, I plugged in my music player. My brother offered me reading music. I listened to it, and dived into the book once again.

Libraries: Expect noise.

1285 words. I have got to write shorter compositions.