Being a librarian won't exactly make you rich, and the mandatory Masters' degree comes with a mountain of student debt. I make a virtue out of necessity. Shopping the vintage stores, I pour my curves into pencil skirts, thigh highs and kitten heels. I wear cat's eye reading glasses on a chain around my neck. My style is flirty and retro, with a touch of sass.
The money saved hunting for deals on clothing has steadily shown up as ink on my body. What started as a prank when I graduated from library school - a tattoo of a book, with a long-stemmed rose curling into a line of poetry -- has become a full-fledged obsession. A mass of swirling colour decorates my back and hips. Little do the library patrons know that under the pin-up girl clothing, my body is covered in technicolour tats.
The library where I work is a college library. Each of the library staff claims one evening shift a week. This week I was in on Thursday.
Thursday nights are usually quiet, the undergraduate students all out doing Jager shots in the campus pubs. My coworkers were out doing much the same, celebrating the upcoming wedding of our resident history specialist in a hail of jello shots and gold stripper shorts. But here I was, stuck in the stacks, dragging out dusty volumes for an absent faculty member.
Typically, the book of 19th century agrarian records I was searching for hovered on the very lowest shelf. Too vain to actually put on my reading glasses, I got down on my knees to read the call numbers, carefully tucking my skirt under.
Crouched down so low, I heard a strange sound. I thought it came from the other side of the stacks. It was a sort of liquid, rhythmic sound. Only when it was followed by a deep moan did I look to see what caused it.