We’re Closing in Ten Minutes

Eileen had reached the stage of academic failure where panic stopped being useful and turned into personality.

Not peace—nothing that dignified. More like resignation with opinions. The kind that said, Yes, the ship is sinking, but I’d like to complain about the chairs first.

Across the street, the university library crouched beneath a sky that couldn’t decide if it was July or October. Stone walls. Ivy-like veins. Windows dark enough to feel judgmental.

Oksana stood beside her, coat zipped to her chin despite the heat, staring at the building like it might suddenly apologize.

“It smells like home,” Oksana said.

Eileen frowned. “Your home smells like despair and overdue book fines?”

Oksana considered. “Yes.”

Eileen merely nodded.

They were ten minutes from closing. Light spilled from the entrance in a way that suggested invitation and threat in equal measure.

Eileen adjusted her top-knot and backpack. “Right. Options. One: we go in, steal forbidden knowledge, graduate. Two: we don’t, fail, and I become a lifestyle influencer.”

“You would be good influencer,” Oksana said.

“That’s actually terrifying.”

Oksana’s mouth twitched—not quite a smile. A rehearsal for one.

They were both screwed, and they’d accepted it the way people accepted weather. You didn’t argue with a storm. You just complained loudly and hoped it passed quickly.

Eileen’s laptop haunted her with the project title:

A Study on the Relationship Between Shifting Celestial Bodies and Their Effects on Earth-Bound Phenomena.

Academic for: Please let us submit astrology with footnotes.

Four weeks. No breakthrough. Their professor wanted models that predicted things, not prose that sounded clever. Eileen could sell anything with confidence and formatting. The math, unfortunately, kept exposing her like especially mean paparazzi.

Oksana on the other hand, understood all the theories perfectly. Language slowed her down. English textbooks assumed fluency was a God-given right, and people tended to mistake careful, slow pauses for emptiness of thought.

Now, they needed something no one else had, just to grasp the hope of a passing grade.

“The Astronomicon,” Eileen said quietly.

Oksana nodded. “Worst name. Best hope.”

They crossed the street.

Inside, the air thickened—cooler, heavier. Paper, polish, dust, and something mineral beneath it, like rain trapped in stone.

At the front desk sat the librarian.

Overweight Black man, early fifties, vest and tie, sleeves rolled. He looked like the physical manifestation of please respect the quiet. Except his eyes were deeper than they should be. Not unkind. Just… layered.

His stamp hovered mid-air.

“Shh,” he said.

It wasn’t loud. It didn’t need to be.

“We’re closing in ten minutes.”

“Yes, sir,” Eileen said immediately, her guilt moving faster than her thoughts.

The librarian’s gaze slid to Oksana and lingered.

“We will not cause trouble,” Oksana said, voice formal.

The librarian’s mouth twitched. Not a smile.

“The section is off-limits,” he added.

Eileen blinked. “Which section?”

The stamp came down. Firm.

“You know.”

Eileen leaned toward Oksana. “Either he’s psychic or he says that to everyone.”

“Where I come from, sometimes it is both,” Oksana whispered.

They moved deeper into the stacks. Lights dimmed. Ceilings lowered. Signs hung like museum labels: ASTRONOMY, POLITICAL SCIENCE, PHYSICS, HISTORY, and so on.

Eileen followed a printed map she’d dug up from an online forum full of dick jokes and life hacks that, in hindsight, had sounded unusually serious.

Old wing. Basement level.

They turned a corner—

The librarian stood at the end of the aisle, hands folded, head tilted.

He hadn’t walked past them.

Oksana whispered, “He follows us.”

Eileen whispered back, “Or he is the building.”

Her partner grabbed Eileen’s elbow in both hands. Squeezed. “Do not joke please. Not now.”

Eileen gulped, nodded. They walked faster.

Another aisle. Another turn.

Now the librarian sat at a table they hadn’t passed, calmly reading.

Eileen swore in mandarin as the girls quickened their pace. “Okay. That settles it. He’s architectural.”

Oksana merely gripped Eileen’s elbow harder.

Eventually, they found the door.

Plain old wood. Brass plaque.

RESTRICTED COLLECTION

Keypad. No handle.

Oksana stared. “This section is off-limits.”

“So he told us,” Eileen said. “Anyway, it’s in here. I hope.”

She typed the code she’d found online.

Denied.

Again.

Denied.

Eileen sagged. “Great. We’re screwed.”

“May I?” Oksana asked.

She entered the same code—changed one digit.

The lock clicked.

Eileen stared. “How did you—”

“Back home,” Oksana said, “everything is locked.”

The door opened.

Cold air spilled out. Not air-conditioning cold. Deep-water cold.

They stepped inside.

The door shut.

Eileen turned.

The keypad was gone.

The plaque was gone.

Just wood. Smooth. Certain.

“This is fine,” Eileen said weakly. “This is how libraries work.”

Oksana replied flatly, “No, they don’t.”

The restricted section was wrong in careful ways. Taller shelves. Narrower aisles. Dim lights that felt tired. Books bound in materials Eileen refused to identify.

Under it all: the susurrus of pages turning.

They found the Astronomicon on a lectern, perfectly centred.

A massive silver book that seemed to swallow light.

“It’s very dramatic,” Eileen said.

Oksana walked up to the lectern and touched the cover of a book that was surely older than the country both girls were standing in. “Cold. Also, it wants.”

“Everything wants,” Eileen said, rolling her eyes as she moved to stand beside Oksana. “What matters now is what we want.”

They opened it together and gasped.

Eileen hadn’t been sure of exactly what she expected when she had first proposed the idea of seeking out a mystery tome of super-knowledge to her project partner in their dorm room three nights ago, but it probably wasn’t pages full of equations that seemed to resent normal math. Symbols that nested, bent and rearranged. Diagrams that seemed to bend her perception of Euclidean geometry with nothing but laughter.

Eileen staggered off the lectern, rubbing the heel of one palm into her right temple as she shook her head to clear the rainbow spots dancing at the corners of her vision.

Oksana meanwhile, was leaning closer to the book, breath frosting the pages.

“This is real,” she whispered. “Structure.”

Eileen lifted her phone and switched on the camera app. A few pictures and they’d get the hell out of there.

The screen flickered, the app died.

The symbols shifted.

The ink adjusted—like an eye focusing.

Her phone followed the app. Eileen swore in both Mandarin and English this time.

“Oksana,” Eileen said carefully, “This is super sus, I think we should—”

Oksana smiled.

A full smile. Light. Unburdened.

It didn’t belong to the woman who flinched at sirens or slept like a soldier.

“It speaks,” Oksana said. “In meaning.”

Eileen reached for the cover to slam it shut. Too slow.

The page lifted.

The equations opened.

And they were gone.

---------------------------------------------------------

They fell into text.

Paragraphs formed walls. Punctuation hung from ceilings. Footnotes scuttled.

Eileen sat up. “I’ve decided. I hate this book.”

“Yes,” Oksana agreed simply.

Something dragged itself across the floor behind them. Both girls’ heads snapped around.

The librarian tore through a sentence, a sentence, as he lunged towards them.

Except he wasn’t a librarian anymore. He wasn’t human anymore.

Pod-shaped. Too many limbs. Far too many eyes. Still wearing that vest, somehow.

He roared—not in rage, but exhaustion.

Eileen screamed, reached for Oksana’s hand, only to realize her friend was already several feet away and motioning for Eileen to catch up.

“Move, bitch!” Oksana shrieked, waving her arms over her head in a panic.

“Were you going to leave me behind?!” Eileen said as she scrambled after her partner.

“THIS SECTION IS OFF-LIMITS!” the librarian-thing bellowed.

“WE NOTICED!” the girls yelled back.

They burst through another chapter heading.

THE UNDERTAKERS’ UNION DISPUTE

A gray town under a low sky. Streets lined with coffin shops. Every sign read some variation of:

NOW HIRING — MUST BE OKAY WITH BITING

Men and women in stained uniforms wrestled corpses back into coffins with the exhausted choreography of people who had done this too many times.

One undertaker wiped sweat from his brow and said evenly, “Sir, please stop being undead.”

The corpse sat up and hissed.

“No.”

The undertaker sighed.

Eileen slowed despite herself. “Why is this… familiar?”

Oksana stopped completely.

Her shoulders stiffened, then squared.

“These people,” she said quietly. “They keep working.”

An undertaker lost his grip; the corpse lunged, snapping teeth inches from his face. The undertaker didn’t scream. He just adjusted his hold and muttered, “You’re not special. Everyone dies.”

Oksana’s jaw tightened.

Back home, death hadn’t stayed in coffins. It walked streets. It knocked on doors. It arrived with paperwork and uniforms and promises.

People had buried, and buried, and buried—until burial itself felt pointless.

One undertaker glanced at Oksana. “You here for the night shift?”

Another added, “We’re short-staffed. Again.”

Oksana laughed — a sharp, startled sound that surprised even her.

“We made jokes,” she said softly. “Because if we did not, we became stone.”

Eileen watched her carefully. “You don’t have to—”

“I know,” Oksana said. Then stepped forward.

She faced the undead man, who snarled and clawed uselessly at the air.

Oksana’s voice dropped — calm, steady, practiced.

“Lie down,” she said.

The corpse froze.

Then, slowly, obediently, lay back in the coffin.

The undertakers stared.

One whispered, “Is she… management?”

Oksana closed the lid with finality. Thud.

Silence rippled outward.

Oksana exhaled, long and controlled, like someone setting down a weight she’d carried for years.

“Death is loud,” she said to Eileen. “But it listens when you stop begging.”

Eileen swallowed. “That was… incredible.”

Oksana shrugged. “Authority is sometimes just refusing to be afraid.”

Behind them, something crashed through the chapter’s punctuation.

The librarian-creature roared, closer now.

Oksana took Eileen’s hand. Her grip was firm — grounded.

“We go,” she said.

They ran — leaving behind a town where the dead stayed put, if only for a moment.

--------------------------------------------------------

Another chapter.

THE ARTBOOK OF BEAUTIFUL CANNIBALS

Gallery-bright. White walls. Mirrors everywhere—floor to ceiling, polished to cruelty.

Figures drifted between frames, tall and elegant, smiling like critics at a private showing. Their teeth were too even. Their eyes lingered too long.

One stepped toward Eileen, gaze appreciative in a way she’d learned to brace for.

“You’re exquisite,” it said.

“Thanks,” Eileen replied automatically. Then, catching herself: “I’m also tired.”

The figure tilted its head. “You hide very well.”

Eileen looked at the mirrors.

Every reflection showed a version of herself she recognized too easily: composed, attractive, effortless. The kind of girl people listened to only until something complicated appeared—then passed over like decoration.

“I don’t hide,” Eileen said, gulping. “I get filed.”

The cannibal smiled wider. “You are admired.”

“I’m consumed,” she snapped. “There’s a difference.”

More figures gathered, circling, murmuring appreciation like a tasting menu.

“So much surface,” one whispered, licking cracked lips.

“So little resistance,” said another, drooling.

Eileen felt the old reflex rise—the urge to shrink, to soften, to apologize for existing in a physically perfect body that attracted attention before credibility.

Instead, she straightened.

“Yes,” she said. “I look like this. And I also did the work. Both things can be true, even if that makes you uncomfortable.”

The mirrors flickered.

The cannibals faltered, their smiles slipping—not offended, but confused. Confidence wasn’t something they could chew through.

Eileen met her reflection again. Still beautiful. Still hers.

“I’m not hiding,” she said quietly. “I’m just done apologizing.”

The cannibals recoiled, suddenly uncertain, as if they’d lost the recipe.

Then they fled—frames rattling, mirrors cracking, admiration dissolving into hunger without direction.

Oksana grabbed Eileen’s hand. “You okay?”

Eileen exhaled, shaky but real. “Yeah. I think I just stopped feeding something.”

They continued to run.

----------------------------------------------------------

They ran through margins and footnotes and half-written endings.

Behind them, the librarian-creature chased, panting.

“I AM TRYING TO SAVE YOU!”, it roared in a dead tongue that was heard, felt and sensed, all at once.

“FROM A DISTANCE!” Eileen screamed.

They reached a garden.

Grass. Roses. Quiet.

A sign read:

INTERLUDE: SMELL THE ROSES OR REMAIN HERE FOREVER

Oksana inhaled.

“I am tired of waiting,” she said.

“Me too,” Eileen agreed.

They stood anyway. They waited. A minute passed, or maybe it was an Age. Neither girl could be sure.

The bushes exploded. The girls turned.

The creature arrived, exhausted.

“The Astronomicon eats readers,” it snarled. “And I like books. I like the quiet. I do not want to devour realities like my family keeps suggesting.”

“You’re a librarian,” Eileen said.

“I am trying to be a librarian.”

He gestured to a tear in the hedge with one long, spiked tentacle. “Exit. Before the book makes you consistent.”

They ran one final time.

-------------------------------------------------------

They broke back into the restricted section.

Dust. Shelves. Reality.

The librarian was human again, fixing his tie.

“Do not seek the Astronomicon again.”

“Don’t worry, I’m illiterate now,” Eileen said. Oksana nodded repeatedly until her neck hurt. The librarian merely snorted, helping them both back up on to their feet.

Back at the front desk, he slid them a thin book.

“Use this, if you so desperately need help. Cite it. Do not open the appendix.”

Oksana hugged it. “Thank you.”

“Graduate,” he said. “Become boring. It’s underrated.”

Outside, the air felt warmer.

Eileen said, “We’re still screwed.”

Oksana smiled. “Less.”

Behind them, the librarian stamped returns.

For at least ten minutes.