The Book Eating Boy

They came to a small shop in the desert, encased almost entirely in glass. It was mostly deserted, except for a few staff. African women, in big green aprons. Inside were striped pink couches. Electric bulbs hung from the ceiling. Beneath was a marble table and all around were children’s books.

A small bell tinkled as the couple stepped into the shop. The man was dressed in a heavy gray trench coat. His face was wrapped almost entirely in white bandages and he wore dark sunglasses and an obviously fake nose. The woman had a mane of electric violet hair and jeans on. They had come here to find the incredible book eating boy.

The man brushed past the Christmas tree at the entrance. Light blues was playing – Sammy Davis. The woman stayed at the entrance and surveyed the place with her hands on her hips. Her cubic gold earrings caught the light. The air wavered outside, the way it does on a hot road, so that the horizon seemed to almost disappear.

“Welcome,” said the African hostess in her thick Kenyan accent. “Please, sit. Try our chocolate.”

The woman pursed her lips. She was reminded of a fairy tale – Hansel and Gretel, that was it. The Bedouins they had camped with two nights ago had warned her about mirages like this. Outside, a small figure with burning wings fell from the sky, barely noticed.

“My name is Princess,” purred the African woman.

“Cameron,” said the man in the disguise.

“Blaire,” said the violet haired woman.

They sat in the corner, in the children’s section. On Blaire’s left was a pop up book with the title missing about a kid who destroys the world by mistake. She smiled. Being good was a prison, in her opinion. Only angels were forced to be good so in a way, evil was freedom, evil was human.

The coffee came with sugar cubes. She picked one up, touching it lightly with her tongue. Her grandmother had diabetes. There had never been chocolates in her house, so when she was a little girl her gran had fed her sugar cubes. She would suck until the center of the cube melted and the gooey mess leaked into her throat.

“A fucking sugar cube can really send you back,” she said. The memories were sweet on her tongue.

“He’s here.” The man in the disguise said. Cameron’s preposterous fake nose and mustache made her smile harder. He brought the coffee to his mouth but realized he would have to unwrap himself and stopped. “The boy who loves books so much he eats them.”

“How do you know?” she asked. She was interested in his reasoning. Since he’d become invisible he’d been capable of shocking deductions. It was almost prescient. Her tongue flicked out again, lapping at the sugar cube. She had a sharp face, narrow almost black eyes, pale skin.

“When you eat books you swallow the memories of their authors. This boy’s digestive tract has the unique ability to absorb these memories and regurgitate them as actual living beings. I’ve seen this place before,” he gestured around them with the coffee cup, “In the novel, The Angel’s Penis.”

“Angels have penises?” Blaire said, amused, watching Princess prepare the dessert. The cake was made of toffee and biscuit, with a sprinkling of pretzels on top for a salty caramel taste.

“That’s beside the point. In The Angel’s Penis a holy schlong lands on the Earth. It gets discovered by a young boy who uses it to seduce girls into rapturous states of near-orgasmic bliss. This café is the location of the first.” Cameron’s voice was flat, concerned.

If Blaire was aware of the heat growing between her legs, she gave no indication of it. She was watching the cake coming towards them and the African hostess’s benevolent smile. She could feel the grains of the sugar cube against her thumb and forefinger and she remembered her grandmother brushing her bangs from her face.

“The question of what you would do with a holy penis is intriguing but the author does not bring it to its full proportions,” continued Cameron. “In the novel, the boy uses it to impregnate every female on Earth. He enslaves them and murders all of the males.” He watched Blaire take the cake. Her face was flushed and she was breathing heavily.

“To escape the horrors he has created, the boy synthesized the penis DNA and injected it into himself, fleeing up the stairway to heaven.” Cameron continued. He held the smoke bomb behind his trenchcoat and waited. “God punishes him for his impunity and throws him out. He falls, burning out of the sky and when he hits the ground every woman is destroyed. Only the holy penis and the children remain.”

The African woman smirked as Blaire rose the cake to her lips. The impregnation was beginning. She could see Blaire was coming. She would be the first to bear a child.

Cameron detonated the smoke bomb and rugby tackled Blaire. The burst sent the other staff diving for cover and the hissing mass of black smoke blasted around them. He dragged her to her feet as she coughed, the fake memories of her grandmother and the sugar cubes choking her mind.

They ran together into the desert. Blaire glanced behind them.

Sitting in a pile of books was a boy. The glass café was entirely gone, the smoke rising up behind him like a malignant black mushroom. He stared after them with huge, hungry eyes, tearing pages out and stuffing them into his mouth.