Sennel Wright adjusted his glasses to avoid the sun’s glare as he made his way down the street. The irksome sphere shone unobscured by clouds and made it difficult to see through the shop windows he passed. Through the glass he saw an interesting clock in an antique store and cupped his hands against the window to try and better make out its woodwork pattern. It was just after Sennel had figured out that the markings above the clock face were in fact of skulls rather than apples that a woman walked into him carrying two large paper bags.
“Oof! Watch it!” grunted the woman as she rebounded off Sennel and dropped one of the bags. It fell to the ground and spilled cosmetics across the sidewalk. “Now look what you’ve done!” She spat out irritably.
“Oh!” the young man exclaimed. He knelt down immediately and grabbed a tube of lipstick before it rolled off the curb. “Sorry! I was looking in the window—let me help, please!”
“You’d better help! I paid good money for these and if I lose any of them you’ll pay, I promise!”
Sennel finished collecting the escaped makeup. “Again, I’m terribly sorry.” He repeated as apologetically as he could. “I’ll work harder to be more aware next time. Please, have a nice day.”
There was no reply. The woman merely glared and turned her head in a huff before marching past. Sennel very much wanted to add a request for the woman to watch her own surroundings in the future, but it wouldn’t have been right. A gentleman did not draw attention to the failings of those around him. At least, he consoled himself, the encounter had been brief.
The messenger’s last breath choked on her own blood. The satchel slipped from her arm and fell open upon muddy ground. Blood congealed around the site as the letters, missives, and packages were sifted until a single book was removed. The tome was unremarkable from all outward appearances save for the cover’s curious shade of blue. A quick flip of the pages confirmed the book’s nature. The woman’s broken body, useless as it was, remained for the elements.
The Chapters store was thankfully air-conditioned; offering a respite from the summer heat. Sennel pulled a hastily written list from his pocket and glanced repeatedly down at it as he weaved through the aisles of books. Austen, O’Brien, Sawyer, Carver, each author had their works added to the increasingly unstable pile in Sennel’s arms. Several times he would stop as a favoured title caught an eye, but it was a longing look and little else. Sennel’s funds were limited as they were, and a gentleman couldn’t compromise his education for pleasure.
“That’s...quite the collection.” The cashier noted conversationally when Sennel reached checkout.
“It’s quite the course-load.” Sennel corrected. “First semester begins on Monday and I’m starting my English major.”
The cashier muttered an ‘oh’ as he wrung up the stack. Sennel thought he detected a note of pity or disdain, but he couldn’t be sure. He paid with two gift cards and a twenty and made his way to the bus stop carrying the stack divided between two bags.
Pearls formed in the mouth of a child, tuft from a wise man’s head, a tomcat’s hind legs? Ebony feathers, fur turned to glass, a rose from a noble’s garden? The materials called for were a combination of the utterly bizarre and the ridiculously common without any hint of underlying logic. Help would be needed to gather them all, but who could be trusted? No one, of course; so the question became, who could be used?
Sennel set down the bag of books and flopped onto the couch when he returned home. The excursion was more tiring than he had thought, but at least it was out of the way. Double-checking the list confirmed that he had everything he needed for the start of class. As shepherd’s pie cooked in the microwave, Sennel put the recent purchases into a leather pack alongside a stack of paper and box of pencils. The microwave dinged, and dinner was eaten.
Between bits of mashed potatoes, meat, and corn, Sennel considered the rest of the evening. A book seemed thematically appropriate considering what would begin tomorrow, but he couldn’t bring himself to start a new story with classes about to distract him. Laptop was packed and put away, so the internet was out. It would be a movie, then, something from pay-per-view to tide him over until sleep. Hoodwinked was selected from the listings; a nice, fun story that Sennel wouldn’t be up late dwelling on. One washed dinner plate later, he curled up on the couch with a bowl of brownie fudge ice cream and let the fairy tale begin.
