Tuesday, May 24, 2005

Even More Mortimer!

Mortimer left the bar on two feet through the door, which is more than he could say for most of the other patrons. As he walked, one of the guinea pigs flew through the window and would have shattered the glass if there was any left. He made his way to the local library.
Merk Heeliott was not a library town. In fact as far as Mort knew, there was no library to speak of in Merk Heeliott. However, a consultation with his hideously outdated Guide to Merc Heeliott revealed that there was, in fact, a small dingy building marked MHPL. Mortimer wasn't good with maps, but that was why he had Narrin. He quickly kicked off the ground and flew high above the city. It matched his map perfectly from up here!
At least it should. It seemed like none of the buildings were where they were marked. Even the gate which should have been on top was on the...
Realizing his error, Mortimer turned the map right side up. The map still didn't match the view perfectly, but he was able to navigate his way to the library. He tied Narrin around a streetlight (a pointless manuever since no one was capable of stealing her and she was not prone to running away) and went inside. The library was poorly lit as could be expected, and seemed to contain a total of two books, lots of cobwebs, and an old, sleeping man. Mortimer cleared his throat in hopes of attracting his attention. When this failed he tried an "Excuse me." That fell flat, seemingly absorbed by the overwhelming emptiness of the room. Finally he shouted. "EXCUSE ME SIR!"
The small bald man jolted awake. "I paid my rent, I paid it! Stop coming here!"
There was an awkward silence.
"Actually," said Mortimer, "I'm here about a book."
"You mean you're a... a... a customer?" asked the man incredulously, putting on his huge owl-like spectacles.
"I am."
"Do you have a card?"
"Umm, no."
The man looked dejected. "I suppose that was too much to ask. I'd offer you a card, but we had to use the cards to fix the roof after the big storm. The library's been going through some troubles of late. So anyway, you'd like a book. Which one?"
Moertimer looked at the two books. The (In)complete Book of Ferret Recipes did not look promising. Whether the recipes were by, for, or consisting of ferrets, the book was unlikely to mention Franklin Pierce. The other book was A History of the Third Age. He found it unlikely that Franklin Pierce was alive during the third age, but the man was looking so pathetic he decided to do a good deed before heading to a real library.
"This one," he said, lifting the heavy book as a full half of it fell out of the middle, "I'll take this one."
The man painstakingly and slowly wrote the name of the book on a piece of paper, took down Mortimer's name, and filed the paper in a large binder. Then he got out a card, write down the date and gave it to Mortimer.
"Now this is due back in two weeks, but you can renew it as long as no one else asks for it."
Mortimer didn't think anyone would, but he resolved to take the book back within two weeks. It would make that guy's day.

4 comments:

Marten said...

You Did! You left all the action off-panel!

Erin said...

Very Pratchett-esque.

Jonah Comstock said...

Now that you mention it, my library does bare some similarities to Pratchett's post office...

Nathaniel Cornstalk said...

what's the third book?