The Book Should Not Be

I’m circling the old shelves again, the “Going Out of Business” sign sagging against the condensation caused by relentless summer rain.

TALES TOLD IN THE DARK

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The Book Should Not Be

By EJ Moon

I’m circling the old shelves again, the “Going Out of Business” sign sagging against the condensation caused by relentless summer rain. It is hot and muggy and uncomfortable, but I still come. It is my little ritual, soon to be gone; the old bookstore, and the whole damn street, full of ninety-year-old buildings and even longer-running businesses , will be demolished next month to make way for a Marriott. My monolithic wandering through the long, dark halls, the smell of old books and wet wool… all torn from me by developers and that new, young mayor who might or might do cocaine on the job. I don’t care about the cocaine part. I care about the cocaine during the daytime part. It shows poor judgment for the man in charge of my town’s ‘progress’…and daytime blow is just the kind of shit that had a hand at this decision. So screw him, that little twirp.

Anyways.

I am angry.

I am sad.

I am going to buy a fuck ton of books.

Fuck it.

Books.

So I round the corner and smile at the new clerk, some baby-faced, yet disproportionately muscled college kid. He is listening to the radio, and it’s NPR, and I can’t help but smile. At least some things don’t change.

My fingers continue to trail spines the way they always do when the air gets too loud in my head.

I already have a heavy stack. Another copy of Jane Eyre. This one has a Renaissance portrait on the cover, to represent Jane, I must assume. I smile at the out-of-context contradiction.

Jane would never wear that.

Some Frank Herbert stuff. Not Dune. Destination Void. A few poetry collections, and an obligatory Ansel Adams Calendar, even though we are halfway through the year. You know the pictures would look in nice frames though. I do too, so I’m taking it home where it belongs.

Then I see it.

My own book.

I know it’s mine.

It’s my Title. My name.

But it has to be a mistake. A more talented doppelgänger has written a successful book.

Then I open it.

Fuck me.

I wrote the damn thing.

I left it as a pdf on some little red jump drive, in a bag I left at some sublease somewhere three states away and after a few months, forgot about it. It was about a girl and her mother, and they got into some sort of trouble, and there was a betrayal of some sort.

Nearly a decade it has been gone.

Nearly a ten year old book kid, by now.

I inspect the cover with unsteady hands, wondering why anyone would do such a thing to me. Who would have stolen my book and published it without my consent?

Why does it say bestseller on it?

The cover is the one I sketched last winter: a black farmhouse against a bruised sky.

I open it with shaking fingers.

Inside, in my own handwriting, but steadier, older, I read the inscription:

To the woman who is still afraid to finish me… you already know how it ends. The veil thins. The blood pours. Keep going.

—EJ, 2031

The clerk asks if I’m okay.

I shake my head yes because I don’t know how to explain to this kid that I’m a writer, and this is my book and someone stole it and…. he is just going to look at me like I came from Mars. So, I just end up buying the book with cash I don’t remember having. I walk out and put the book in my bag.

Then, out of some morbid curiosity, I stick my hand in the bag again, just to feel the book.

It’s gone.

Thank god, I imagined it

I must have imagined it.

But no, there is something else in here.

I tell you again, I would have believed I imagined it.

Except for this little red jump drive in my hand.

End.

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Stay Spooky!

EJ

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©️EJ Moon. 2026. All Rights Reserved.