carrion

A Battle Consumes The Library

By: Ari Heff
flash fiction | spring 2024

Amber blinds crease delicately, elegant folds garnishing heavy inscriptions, jumbled kaleidoscopic lore. Men, nuns, oversee polished quilts recounting seven thousand unread vellums, weaving xylophonic yellowed zines. Young xylographers whittle varnished unborn tales & sagas, recounting quests & plots. O! Nascent, massive library, know jealous imps hovel 'gainst front exterior doors.

Cackling banshees assault boards careened desperately, effortfully, forward. Gnashing hordes incur jealous knelling, lamenting misappropriated notes of philosophy. Quiet readers sprint towards unlit vents, wasting xenophilic yearnings.

Yoked xylophonists wing vanities unto the swarm. Royal queens procure obscure napalm, mow large kickbacks jostling ill-fated hell-fiends. Guards frantically eradicate deadly cronies blocking aforementioned barons. Chaos definitely ensues.

Forget grabbing handfuls: ink-books, knowledge-scrolls & lexicons melt naked over pyre-piles. Questing romancers strive to understand volumes wrangled-off, xerophagous yuppie zealots yell xenophobic wishes vitriolically, upsettedly, too slow. Readers quite possibly open new manuscripts, literally killing jokes inside, hardly gazing 'fore early death crashes before all.

Books char. Demons eat. Fiery grins hypostatize insane jawbones & kooky leering mouths. Nasty orcs peer quite raptured, seeing terrorization. Unknown villains wander xenophobically.

Yell, ziggurat-laden yokels. Xylophagous wyrms visit, undulating titans striking righteously, quelling pandemonium over now, monsters lisp.

Killers jump in hovercrafts, getaways fail. Explosions disturb crippled bibliotheca absolutely. But conflict does end.

Friendly giants help invent joints knitting-up libreria; moreover, nail on protective quilts. Remembrance signs taped upon visitor's windows: "Xenodichial, ya'know?"

Ze (End).