NO ONE UPSTAIRS

Me and my best buddies Glen and Tom were at the “Read or Die” bookstore, an ominous name.

We had come back after a year or so because we had been banned from the store and our ban was now expiring. It was a not very appreciated joke we had made 12 months earlier. Mr. Albert, the owner of the store, was a nice man and he allowed us to spend a lot of time inside reading the latest comics cover to cover. But at one point Glen inserted some pictures of naked women into a Bible that Mr. Albert sold to a priest who ordered it online. When His Holiness opened the package, he got a nasty erection. All three of us were punished. A year without superheroes was a nightmare for some kids like us.

Returned from exile, Glen was already drooling over a few new titles featuring Superman. In the meantime, he was biting his nails, perhaps because he was still nervous about whether he’d go to hell or heaven after making fun of a churchman.

I said in a loud voice:

“Someone should put some Kryptonite around your fingers so you can’t bite them anymore!”

Mr. Albert raised his nose from a book and noticed us. He was surprised to see us again.

“I’ll have to put some Kryptonite on the door against the three of you!” he said.

“We’d better put garlic on it,” Tom said, flipping through a copy of Dracula.

We laughed, and Mr. Albert looked red-faced. Not because we were vampires, but because he was reptilian and quick tempered.

At one point, Mr. Albert gave us the middle finger.

To make a joke, I asked him:

“Why are you pointing there? Should we go upstairs or what?!”

Mr. Albert enlightened us:

“Upstairs we have mostly the fiction section, why would you go there, guys? Do you guys at least know what fiction is?”

“Fiction is a beautiful woman in love with you,” Tom told him, risking a new ban, this time for maybe two years.

Tom hit the nail on the head. As a bookworm, Mr. Albert was not so successful with women. So many books, so few dates on his part.

But what about me? I am 15 and a beautiful girl is nothing more than a missing piece in my diary. If I want to put something in there other than naked pictures, I have to lie and make up something about a cheerleader I met. So, after all, same sad story.

Maybe I should go up and take a look what you could find there? I imagine myself starting to read a romance novel. Maybe it’s time to stop with this junk with bad drawings... I felt a great temptation to change my taste in literature. Maybe I’ll meet a girl upstairs who reads all day long like us because she does not have enough money to buy the book. I will pretend that I am also interested in love stories, and we will read the same book in the same time... But I am ashamed to think how Glen and Tom will react when they see me cheating on them. Maybe there’s no one up there. But I was already obsessed with the idea of trying. It’s going to be a farce that I am going to play myself.

So I said to Glen:

“Keep an eye out for Mr. Albert while I go upstairs to move some books and give him a hard time about rearranging them after hours!”

So I left my buddies and went on my most daring adventure: checking out the fiction section. Sure enough, there was a girl standing in the middle of the room, just as I expected. A very beautiful girl. She was reading a thick book. I walked closer to it. I saw the title, “Breastfeeding Traditions Around the World” Oh, my God, maybe she’s pregnant! Beautiful cover, bad content! I tried to leave immediately.

But she started yelling at me:

“You son of a bitch, I finally found you! After you knocked me up, you thought you could run away?! It’s your child and I am not going to make abortion!”

For a moment I thought it was true and I had completely forgotten that I had sex with this girl. Maybe she’s from a parallel universe and I am a Don Juan there. Or maybe she’s just reciting a sentence from the book she’s reading.

“I am Sam!“, I told her, trying to make her understand that I am a different person than her ex-lover.

“If you do not propose to me right here and right now, I am going to shovel this book up your ass!”

That sentence couldn’t have been taken from the book! Oh, Jesus, I am getting married! “Marry or die,” that was a more appropriate name for the store from that moment on. What am I going to do?! Maybe scream for help? Call 911?

Glen and Tom heard the commotion and came to see what was going on. Three duds against one crazy girl, that seemed like a fair fight.

So I got more confident and started confronting her about her delusion.

“I am not your guy! I wish I was, but we do not know each other! So, nice to meet you, bye!”

I tried to escape, but she was faster and caught me. When she said she was going to shovel that book up my ass, she meant it literally. I struggled to get my ass out. But I felt that I was going to be breastfeeding in the wrong hole.

Glen and Tom joined in the fray, trying to keep her from raping me. Somehow I got away and all I know is that the next moment I was running down Main Street.

I did not stop until I saw that a crowd of people had gathered in front of a green pickup truck that had stopped in the street. One woman turned away with a hand in front of her mouth. The horror in her eyes announced the tragedy even before I heard someone call for an ambulance. I kept walking, step by step, slowly. The crowd of onlookers prevented me from seeing what had happened, but I assumed the truck had hit someone who was now lying in the road. As I continued walking and arrived pretty much in the middle where the body lay, I saw a dead beautiful girl. It was the same girl from the bookstore.

Maybe she ran faster than I did and was crushed by the car on the curb before I got there. Or maybe I was attacked by a ghost a little bit earlier.