#26 Reversal

Dear diary,

So, I'd finished all the shelving for the day, but still had fifty minutes left before my shift was over. Bron was flipping through Italian magazines at the check-in terminal, Goldie was wiping down the counters with industrial strength cleaner, and the rest of the staff were out the back in the staffroom; I only recently realised that's where they hide out when they're not on desk. So, out of boredom, I decided to do a sweep.

A sweep is library slang for going around and picking up all the books left on the carrels, tables and floor. Some people are incredibly lazy and leave everything they were reading just lying around. Sometimes you find other stuff too. In the past I've scored a good pen, half a pack of chewies, a phone cover, a briefcase with hundreds of unmarked bills... Often you have to get on your hands and knees and really have a good scrabble around to find things under the carrels. Which is where I was today.

As I was walking past Reference I caught a glint of something shiny out of the corner of my eye. A little ray of sunlight had momentarily chanced upon a reflective surface and lit it up for a fraction of a second, but that was all an adventurer like me needed to spot it. I got down on all fours and had a look under the carrel. The carpet had come up and something was sticking through. Apologising to the person sitting at the carrel, I crawled under their chair and took a look.

I looked at the thing which had caught my attention in the first place: a romance novel with a gold-tinted title. Score one. But that wasn't important at the moment; what was important was the gaping hole in the floor, which had been clumsily covered up with a loose square of carpet. I took out my Swiss army knife, switched on the torch function and held it between my teeth as I pulled back the carpet to look inside. It looked like a small tunnel that lead down into the darkness, too deep for my torchlight to penetrate.

There, about 20 centimetres away. Holding the torch between my teeth I rolled up my right sleeve and wedged my right hand into the small crack. I extended my fingers to enlarge it so I could reach further inside. Slowly, guided by the torchlight, I slithered my hand under the carpet and into the hole. My fingertips scrabbled exploratively until they rested upon the treasure. I dug them into it and dragged it out, careful not to cause any damage to it.

It was a tatty old Mills & Boon cover. Hardly worth writing home about. But what had been under it was much more interesting. I shoved my right hand in again to fech the bundle of old papers. They had yellowed with age and water damage, but they were still readable. As I shuffled through them my jaw dropped. They were the pages from the empty cover, but they were in reverse order. Some sick and twisted individual must have taken them out one by one and put them in the opposite order. What the?

I got the same reaction when I showed Bron. She didn't bother check it in, instead she just dropped it straight in the bin. Even though I was unable to save it, at least it got the respected burial it deserved. RIP M&B.

-Jay