Arcadio adjusted his trench coat and stepped into the damp alley behind the abandoned synthetic-yeast factory. He tapped the rusted steel door three times, paused, then tapped twice more. A slide panel screeched open, revealing a pair of suspicious eyes through a narrow slit.
‘The twenty-word passcode?’ a raspy voice whispered.
‘Let me concentrate for a second,’ Arcadio said, sweat beading on his forehead. ‘Last week you had six words.’
‘That was last week, sir,’ the muffled voice replied.
Arcadio closed his eyes.
‘One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, …’
‘Continue, please.’
‘… he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin.’
There was a long silence. Then the lock clicked.
The heavy door groaned open. Arcadio slipped inside and was instantly intoxicated by the glorious, forbidden aroma of aged paper, damp cardboard and faint leather. He breathed deeply. The scent of pure, uncut cellulose.
¤
In the year 2126, under the strict rule of the Anti-Literacy Junta and universal marital law, spousal surveillance was legally mandated to eliminate independent thought.
Reading was the ultimate contraband.
Citizens were permitted only video feeds, unedited reality broadcasts and government-approved emoticons. Yet, in this subterranean cellar at 221A Baker Street, a dozen brave addicts sat in a circle on folding chairs, huddled around a single lit lantern.
For their own protection, the members adopted codenames taken from characters in novels by Nobel Prize-winning authors. That way, even if an informer had infiltrated the group, no real identities could be revealed. A***** was Arcadio, S***** answered to Sethe and their leader, S****, went by Santiago.
¤
Arcadio took an empty seat beside Sethe, a retired geography lecturer who was nervously twitching. Santiago, the meeting leader, cleared his throat and stood up.
‘Welcome, everyone, to our meeting tonight. Let us begin by admitting our powerlessness over the printed word.’
‘Hello, Santiago,’ the room chanted in hushed unison.
‘I’ll start,’ the leader said, pulling a crumpled paper napkin from his pocket. ‘It’s been four days since my last relapse. But last night, while my wife was asleep, I… I succumbed. I sneaked into the bathroom, turned on the glow-lamp and read the back of a shampoo bottle.’
A collective gasp echoed through the cellar.
‘Sodium Lauryl Sulphate,’ he continued, tears glistening in his eyes. ‘Active ingredients, warnings, directions for application… I couldn’t stop. I read the Polish version too.’
‘Stay strong, brother,’ Arcadio muttered, patting Santiago’s shoulder while trying to ignore his own withdrawal tremors.
Sethe raised a trembling hand.
‘I did something worse. I found an old IKEA instruction manual behind the radiator. No text, just diagrams… but I spent twenty minutes assembling a bookcase in my mind.’
‘Forgive yourself, Sethe,’ Santiago said gently. ‘Visualisation is a slippery slope.’
Suddenly, Arcadio’s knee twitched, causing his heavy coat to flare open. A dense, rectangular lump slipped from his inner pocket and hit the concrete floor with a thud that sounded like a thunderclap.
The room went dead silent. Everyone stared at the floor. It was a pre-collapse paperback. The glossy cover showed a sweeping Scottish landscape, a dashing lord and an inappropriately passionate embrace.
‘Is that…’ Sethe whispered, her eyes wide with unholy lust. ‘…a chapter book?’
‘I can explain!’ Arcadio stammered, scrambling to cover it. ‘I found it buried in a skip! I was just keeping it safe!’
‘Read it!’ a man from the back hissed. ‘Just one sentence! Just a noun and a transitive verb, mate!’
‘No, we can’t!’ Santiago yelled, though his eyes were glued to the cracked spine. ‘If the Marital Enforcement Unit finds us with adjective-heavy fiction, we’ll be sentenced to forty years of forced reality-television watching!’
‘Please, Arcadio,’ Sethe begged, sliding her chair closer. ‘Give us a taste. A bit of rising action. Maybe a minor plot twist.’
Arcadio looked at the desperate faces around him. He felt the familiar, dangerous pull of a well-placed semi-colon. With trembling fingers, he picked up the book, turned to page forty-two and began to whisper.
‘Lady Penelope gazed out across the misty moors, her heart pounding like a runaway locomotive…’
The room shivered in ecstasy. Someone let out a ragged sigh.
‘He is a scoundrel,’ she thought, ‘yet his dark eyes hold a secret I am desperate to decipher.’
‘Oh, that’s the good stuff,’ some other addict groaned, slumping back in his chair. ‘Direct speech and internal monologue. Brilliant.’
Before Arcadio could reach the next paragraph, a heavy boot kicked the alley door off its hinges. Red emergency lights bathed the cellar as two officers from the Marital Enforcement Unit charged inside, brandishing high-powered torchlights and digital dampening rods.
‘Freeze!’ the lead officer bellowed. ‘This is an illegal gathering of unauthorised bibliophiles! Drop the prose and put your hands behind your heads!’
‘It’s not mine!’ Santiago shrieked immediately. ‘I was just here for the free tea!’
The second officer stepped forward, picking up the fallen romance novel with a pair of long metal tongs. He squinted at the page Arcadio had been reading, silently scanning the text. His posture stiffened. His jaw softened.
‘Wait,’ the second officer murmured, his eyes scanning down to the next paragraph. ‘Does… does Lord Reginald actually return her affection in chapter five?’
The lead officer glared at his partner.
‘Officer Higgins! Step away from the narrative!’
‘Look, sir,’ Higgins said, pointing with a trembling finger. ‘The character arc is surprisingly robust. There’s a subplot involving a missing land deed.’
The lead officer snapped the tongs out of Higgins’ hands, looking at the page himself. Seconds ticked by in total silence. The tension in the cellar reached a fever pitch as the chief enforcement officer slowly lowered his baton, took a deep breath and pulled up an empty folding chair.
‘Alright,’ the officer sighed, adjusting his helmet. ‘Start from chapter one. But if anyone tells my wife I was listening to a third-person limited narrator, I’ll arrest the lot of you.’
