Inflatable Duck in the Library

This first one is a true story.

Listen: about this inflatable duck possessing the library. It’s problematic. This bulbous infestation must be removed. He’s a bit of a playful scamp, but smells of mushroom beets. I understand, stenches of mushroom beets aren’t worth losing your soul over, honest, but I’m starved, and on the verge of evaporating under this infernal phosphorus lighting, as I’m sure you can tell from my hairline and sallow pores.

This isn’t just about me. What the library folk find absolutely dreadful are the sounds reverberating from within the inflatable duck whenever it’s bumped, prodded, or poked. Keening deathrattles. Wilting baby teeth. You can sympathize with this.

Now I’m reasonable. I dislike telling others how to sound – swear on my mother’s burnt toast – but these macabre bleats disturb my focus. Can’t find a cookbook. My hairs jitter during this inflatable duck’s gurgles, which disrupts my sallow pores, and so on. All I can do is think ’When’s the next bump gonna come? Who’s gonna poke it next? Is it behind me with open fangs, briny claws, stretching through stale buzzes emanating from dim library lighting while I flee from its leather wings? Am I next?’

What I’m calmly asking of you is to disregard my needs and think of the poor girl who’s afraid of the small spaces between parked cars. She told me, through her gait, that she’ll die if anyone bumps the inflatable duck one more time. How am I to live, knowing this tyrannical inflatable duck will commit murder with auditory violations? Truth is I am too famished to find the resolve required to live with this profound knowledge. Which is why I need you.

Yes. I tried reasoning with the poor girl who’s afraid of the small spaces between parked cars. I gave her our government’s official statement of ‘Only fools believe in the nonsense of ducks,’ and the heretical ‘A disinterested woolgatherer fantasized them up.’

Etc.

She proceeded to fortify the cooking section, gurning about how the woolgatherer is a malicious god for possessing arcane abilities for conjuring nonexistent inflatable ducks.

I don’t know what to yell at her anymore. I explained, with a hefty encyclopedia for beration, that she must flee. Now! Back to her home to create a womb of pillows to shelter within until the infernal duck immolates.

She cannot, she insisted as she lost control of her sentience, because someone parked their car next to her SUV.

Listen: She cannot stay here because of the terrible inflatable duck. She’s petrified. Emotionally wrecked. The thought of traversing the gulch between cars has her jabbering while I strike her with the encyclopedia. She’s beyond reproach.

I guess what I mean to say is, what I’ve been trying to disclose, is that the other driver, the one who created the eldritch and malfeasant gap between cars was the fucking duck. The inflatable duck made the gap between the cars. He drove to the library in his inflatable car, parked beside her, with intentions of torture!

What I’m asking of you, begging, as I need this poor girl who is afraid of the small spaces between parked cars to vacate the cooking section so I may feast on letterheads, is for you to send more paramedics.

I’m dreadfully famished so I must depart.