How you managed to dose-off in the library and nobody find you under the bean bags in the story corner is neither here nor there. You are stuck, the doors are locked, everyone has gone home and here you are, trapped inside the library until dawn.
But the fear slowly subsides as you realise just how cool this is, locked inside with 10,000 books (at least!) Each and every one a world enticing you to pull them off the shelf and dig inside.
So you slowly shuffle down the isles, running your fingers along the spines in the half light, letting your eyes drift from spine to spine.
The Bideford Bansky, The Last Byte (a digital vampire novel) A Symphony of Sinistry (folk songs from the Dark Side)
The first book your fingers settle on is called 'The Inconviencince Store' you pop it open and inside are every day consumer goods like cola, sun screen and pop-sickles. But rather than the items listed, there are ingredients and detailed instructions. For the sun screen it suggests you buy a blow torch and zinc ore along with a hammer and a whole coconut. If you mashed up the coconut with the hammer you would make coconut oil and using the blow torch and zinc ore you could make zinc oxide. Finally you could then mix these ingredients together and to make a lifetimes supply of sunscreen!
You put the book back and continue to peruse.

Chapter one
The Awakening

Chapter two
The Stacks
In the next isle you crouch to see the larger printed books on the lower shelf, they have great titles like
Matchbox Robots - how to make an army of nano-bot robots to control the world.
The lower shelf has titles like, A Cumulus of Moods, Cupids Fletcher and The Button Collector, the last book is about a rather devious and curious woman who spent her life on public transport cutting buttons off peoples shirts with secret scissors hidden up her sleeve. The pages were of her journals, every page had a button neatly stitched with detailed notes below on where the button was taken and a description of the victim. The first page quoted
'on the A398 between Pieminster and Codfincher'
then went on to describe the spot on the garment where the button was stolen from
'right shoe'
'left sleeve pocket - single'
'waistcoat front no 3 of 6'
You slip the book neatly back into its slot on the stacks and the hours draw on as your peruse further and deeper into the world of paper and print.
The noises of the library are different at night, the hush has depth and texture, rather than the forced hush of truculent children fidgeting on laps before being seduced by the illustrations and poetry. The bustle of librarians, trolly wheels on carpet, the photocopier, the woosh of the electric door, all friendly comforting nosies, now strangely absent.
But then you hear a very different noise accentuating the quiet.
THUMP
Was that the sound of a large book hitting the floor just two isles over!
Are you alone!
Matchbox Robots - how to make an army of nano-bot robots to control the world.
The lower shelf has titles like, A Cumulus of Moods, Cupids Fletcher and The Button Collector, the last book is about a rather devious and curious woman who spent her life on public transport cutting buttons off peoples shirts with secret scissors hidden up her sleeve. The pages were of her journals, every page had a button neatly stitched with detailed notes below on where the button was taken and a description of the victim. The first page quoted
'on the A398 between Pieminster and Codfincher'
then went on to describe the spot on the garment where the button was stolen from
'right shoe'
'left sleeve pocket - single'
'waistcoat front no 3 of 6'
You slip the book neatly back into its slot on the stacks and the hours draw on as your peruse further and deeper into the world of paper and print.
The noises of the library are different at night, the hush has depth and texture, rather than the forced hush of truculent children fidgeting on laps before being seduced by the illustrations and poetry. The bustle of librarians, trolly wheels on carpet, the photocopier, the woosh of the electric door, all friendly comforting nosies, now strangely absent.
But then you hear a very different noise accentuating the quiet.
THUMP
Was that the sound of a large book hitting the floor just two isles over!
Are you alone!
Go to the travel section and look for the next Tell Tales card and keyword.