You must have fallen asleep; otherwise you don't know why your eyes flip open and it seems like you've been out cold for long.
You look around and realise that you're no longer in the place that looked like your room, but you're now in the Library with a low lighting coming out from no where exactly.
The floor beneath you feels like flesh, slick, somewhat slippery and warm, and even pulsing... with ink.
... And you realise that you're laying down on it.
Disgusted you scramble up to your feet, swiping at your body only to find that your shadow is more than just one.
... They're several of them, clinging to you like cobwebs coming out from a spider.
You gasp spinning and stumbling backwards to get away from the 'things', but like all shadows, the follow you.
... Everywhere you go, even as you scream and start to run, but they're there, following behind you, right on time.
You keep running until cut the corner and then you look behind to see that the shadows have stopped moving.
... Then they vanish all together, leaving only one---- your shadow.
You glance at it warily and raise your arms, then shake your head and stretch out your left leg and it does exactly the same, so you breath down, sagging your shoulders and letting out a sigh of relief.
You stay like that for what feels like five minutes and then straighten, looking all about you and wondering why the shadows left.
The walls around you are built of books— thousands of them— all stacked up and leaning at impossible angles you were never thought at school, stretching up and up until they vanish into darkness.
It's then you realise that you've never seen the ceiling of this library---- as in literally.
You raise your hand to wipe at your forehead and then see that they're both covered in ink, all the way all to your elbows---- black and glistening.
Your hands are shaking now and you begin wiping with both of your palms one after the other, rubbing at your arms frantically in a desperate attempt to get rid of the ink.
But they don't come clean---- at least not entirely---- and so you begin tugging at the helm of your shirt and using it to clean your arms.
The ink starts to clean finally and you laugh, happy that something right is finally happening in this place, but then...
You see more ink seeping out from your skin in tiny drops from each and every one of your skin pores---- like sweat.
A nervous sad spreads across your lips and you fall to the fall.
What were you even thinking?
You bend your head, not even having the strength to sob, and then you see the book you shouldn't even have opened in the first place laying by your feet with its pages trembling.
Seeing it makes you remember all the personal details of your life's secret you were forced to write down into it yesterday... some minutes ago?--- no it felt like hours?
You don't even know how long you've been here.
But you wonder when you'd be shown the way out----- you wrote down your secrets didn't you.
That's all the library wants, so you should be free any moment soon.
Just then the sound of something wet and slithering, interrupts your thoughts and you turn around the corridor of bookshelves. You turn, and SHE---The Librarian--- is right there in front of you.
You gasps, jolting from the scare and hastily walk backwards till you hit a bookshelf, sending some books falling down to the floor.
The librarian looks at the books on the floor and then at you, and begins walking towards you while you scamper backwards with your elbows, palms, ass and the sole of your feet.
Soon you hit a wall---- or maybe it's another bookshelf, you're not sure but you don't dare to turn your eyes to find out as She towering over you.
She's taller now, in a shape that is made of tattered paper and black ink, and she's grinning while looking down at you.
Her grin splits her face from ear to ear, completely lined up with jagged teeth and of course, there her too many eyes which keep floating and shifting across her face without blinking, as if they want to jump off her face or something.
"Ah," she croons, and her voice suddenly sounds like rusted hinges and the crackle that comes from burning pages.
"You're awake. I almost thought you wouldn't make it past that stage."
You try to take a step back again but the hard surface behind you doesn't allow you to, and the Library itself leans in while the walls start to creak and you suddenly feel as if it's eager to watch what would become of you.
SHE tilts her head at you while all her eyes start swirling.
"You've been so generous," she says. "All those confessions, those lies, those secrets---- I could taste them as you wrote. They were delicious."
You try to speak and ask when she'll take you home now that she has what she wants, but the words catch in your throat.
The Librarian's grin widens now. "Did you think it would be that simple?" she asks, "That you'll write your confessions, and then…freedom?"
You freeze instantly;
Did she read your thoughts?
You feel a scream begin rising up from inside you, but her eyes pin you to the floor, again silencing you completely before you can even say a word.
"No, no, no," she whispers, stepping closer and bending down to your level while ink drips down from her hands, staining the wooden floor beneath her feet.
"The Library is hungry. It always has been and always will be. Your words are a fine appetizer— but now, the real feast begins."
She reaches for you now, elongating her fingers to turn into tendrils of ink and paper.
Then they wrap around your arms, your chest and your throat.
"You see," she says and her many eyes start blinking at the same time.
"... this Library is no ordinary place. Every story here is alive, waiting for a soul to inhabit it and every book is a world of its own."
She pauses for a second then says, "And now, because of your confessions, it knows you and how to hurt you."
Her already impossibly wide grin begins growing wider than it already is and she hisses;
"You will live every story, every horror, every death. And every time you die, you'll return here— emptier, but never free."
Her words sound like a curse and you struggle against her grip, but the ink seeps into your skin, dragging you down flat to the ground and holding you down.
"You gave me your secrets," she continues in a low and hungry voice. "Now I'll give you theirs. You'll become the ink, the blood and the scream."
You feel the Library itself begin to move and spin; its walls start to tremble, books rattle on the shelves, some opening on their own and fluttering their pages like trapped birds, and those damn shadows from earlier appear again, creeping closer from the sides and whispering your name.
The Librarian leans in, and you feel her breath cold bathe your face.
"You will feed us," she says.
"Every word you live, every scream you make will ALL feed the Library, and ME."
She pulls you closer, and her many eyes burn into your two eyes, each one showing you a different scene--- likely from many books:
A child alone in the dark screaming for help.
A figure with too many arms.
A mirror that bleeds.
A lady by a lake.
"Are you afraid?" SHE asks.
You want to scream that you are, that you want to run and that you just want to leave this place however the words won't come.
But she grins even WILDER, again reading your thoughts as if it's nothing.
"Good," she says. "Fear makes the stories sweeter."
The ink around you tightens once she says that and begins pulling you down.
The walls of books fold inward, forming a tunnel of pages of which every one is alive with writhing words and screaming voices.
The Librarian raises her hand, and a book appears in her palm.
It's old, cracked and bound in what looks like human skin, and its pages are stitched together with black thread, pulsing and raising rhythm with your heavy-ed breathing.
"This," she says, pressing it to your chest, "is your first journey."
You feel its warmth, burning you while the ink seeps from it and into your veins.
"You'll read it from the inside," she croons. "You'll live it, die in it, scream in it. And when you return here, we'll begin again."
You try to pull away, but the book opens, and blinding, white-hot light pours from its pages.
"Wait!" you finally manage to scream. "Please—"
But the Librarian's just grins.
"See you on the other side, Reader."
Then she shoves the book against your chest— and you're falling, tumbling through pages that slice at your skin and drag at your hair.
The words from within it wrap around your limbs binding and tying you up like chains.
... And you fall and fall and fall— into the first story.