Writing Prompt: Tasty Souls

One day, at your local public library, you are looking around the very back shelves. There is a particularly boring looking book there, but for some reason it catches your interest and you find yourself removing it from the shelf. However, as soon as you move the book, the bookcase opens in like a door, revealing a deep dark tunnel. Write this scene.

Let me just get this out of the way first, since I get the impression that this is going to be some sort of expose interview or some such—I know you humans are rather fond of being the first to reveal something without giving all of the relevant information so right off the bat let me say: if I had the choice to not devour the souls of the living, I’d very well take it. Of course I would! You think that sort of sustenance sits very well on the conscience? You like to write off baddies who need some human part to survive as if we’re all one dimensional evil-doers! It’s not that I don’t feel bad about eating a human soul, but what can I do about it? How bad would you feel if you had to apologize to other members of the species that makes up your diet? I bet the readers of Bovine and Swine Monthly would love all of your excuses about why you don’t eat other things.

But I digress. You don’t want to hear about my never ending hunger for delicious, delicious humanity, you want to hear about the Oak Park Indiana Public Library. That’s where I currently reside, yeah. It’s a nice place, really—last year the city council approved a few hundred thousand dollars for improvements to the place. They bought out an old book store’s collection of regional history to help populate the shelves, and the kids got their wish when the library won a grant for a bunch of new children’s books. All of that is super nice; good for them, but really good for me. Allow me to hop back a few years.

It’s 1871, and I just reached the US by way of possessing some Irish guy. I was getting bored of devouring the eternal souls of people dying from hunger and disease—too easy, not enough mental stimulation. So I figured, “why not? USA: land of opportunity right?” Wrong. The damn Catholics had a bead on me. They tracked me down and performed one of their rituals. Cast me out of my host and into the only thing laying around—a cookbook. A damn cookbook! They then decided the only safe place for me was in the back of the new library in town.

“Who in Indiana reads?” they thought to themselves. There was this whole elaborate system set up wherein if some poor schmuck actually did find his or her way back to me, instead of me being able to easily gobble up their essence, a little secret cubby opened up the moment they moved me. Inside the cubby was a crucifix and a little font of holy water, which kind of gives me a nauseous, wibbly-wobbly feeling for just long enough for my prey to get freaked out and run off. Ingenious, if you ask me.  I would work my ever-so-weakened magic to lure someone back, they would pick me up, get frightened by the secret compartment, and scurry away. It continued like that—lure, touch, scream, run—for years and years. Oh sure, there was the occasional success. Sometimes someone wouldn’t get too scared by the cubby opening and I’d get over my discomfort long enough to suck up their delicious soul, but it was a struggle.

Which brings us to last year. Otherwise known as the greatest year of my life. When they got around to renovating, they found the weird secret passage! There was a big to-do in the local press about it, but it was mostly written off as ghost stories. People joked about it. Sure, the local church raised a big fuss and tried to convince the library officials not to move anything but it was too late! Needless to say, things are much, much easier now. I’ve had to kind of adapt, though—it’s 2010, I can’t outright kill people. I only take bits of their souls, that way no one comes along and, I dunno, calls those Ghost Adventures blokes on me or something like that.

Anywho, if you don’t mind, I’ve managed to get it inside this fella’s mind that he absolutely must come back and inspect the antique sections. Specifically a certain cookbook.

Cheers!