The tourists always come in, but they’re the first to leave. It’s probably the antagonistic arrangement of the shelves. Set up in a way that might lead some to believe there’s a minotaur in the middle of them, reading pulp comics while she waits to tug at the skin of a human with her teeth. If the minotaur somehow gave birth, the damp little monster would have to work her way out in circles, first through the pulp she was born into, then mansion-imprisoned murder mysteries, past a more categorical shelf: local histories, ecologies, stolen courthouse records of family trees that have disappeared somewhere along the line, a single stack of books acquired secondhand from dropout med school students, an illustrated collection of extinct sea creatures, shelves of ax horror–all titles written by the same author,
then an architectural honeycomb of rooms devoted solely to arcane symbols and the spells of languages that have been dead since their conception. The tourists never make it past this point. But, if they’d only muscle through, they would, in theory, see the wretched newborn beast, leaving hoofprints of afterbirth on the bohemian carpets. There’s a carefully torn comic book panel, an action shot of the heroine leaping from the moon, stuck to her bloody forehead, like she’s playing an esoteric game of Blind Man’s Bluff. That’s when the idea of the minotaur starts to break down. The further she journeys from the center of the bookstore, the more she grows into something entirely different. Clothing sprouts wretchedly from her skin. Her legs narrow, pale, and lengthen. Her horns fall to the floor like wet paper. She’s a tourist now. She’s wandering the shelves with her hands held gentleman-like behind her back. Nothing is for her. Nothing piques her human interest. And pretty soon it’s time to leave.
Caleb Bethea is subbing the rest of this novel as we speak. Wish em’ luck!
Back Patio Press 