Bethany had been in the old downtown city library for hours. She loved the vibe of the place, with its long labyrinthine hallways and ornate woodwork. After being closed for decades, the city decided to renovate the library last year, and the main wing recently opened to great fanfare. It had become her regular haunt for the last few weeks.
She sat in her favorite study room, the one where the evening sunlight streamed in through the tall, arched windows, bringing a warm, comforting feeling. The ambience helped her be more creative and relaxed, she had decided.
But right now Bethany wasn't relaxed—at all. Her fingers flew across the keyboard of her laptop as if possessed by some supernatural force, tapping out words with an almost feverish intensity.
She had been pouring her heart and soul into her latest book for the past few months—Stellar Fates. "It's a sci-fi romance novel about two
star
-crossed lovers" she had joked to her friends, pun intended. She'd spent months crafting the adventures of her two protagonists in outer space, and writing about the obstacles they faced in trying to be together.
And now the looming deadline for the first draft of the book was only days away.
"I love ya Beth, but no more extensions on this one," her editor Kara had told her over the phone last week, "If you can't get it done by next week, we'll have to revisit our relationship."
Bethany knew "revisit our relationship," was a euphemism for her publisher canceling the whole contract and leaving her with nothing to show for the last 8 months of work except the measly $10k advance check. If she didn't finish the book on time, she was going to have a hard time making ends meet in the next couple months.
One chapter. That's all she had left. But she had been working on that one chapter all month. In fact, she had lost count of how many times she had started over. A cloud of anxiety, dread, and stress seemed to follow Bethany around now as she constantly worried about how the hell she was going to finish this damn book.
The keyboard clicked and clacked as she tapped out a line into her laptop. "He looked into her eyes and knew he'd do anything to protect her"—before quickly jamming the backspace button. "Fuck, that's not right either," she mumbled.
Bethany snapped the laptop shut and closed her eyes, leaning back in her chair with a sigh of frustration. Her shoulders were tight from the hours of being hunched over the laptop. She reached up to massage her neck, feeling the knots of tension in the muscles.
She should probably take a break. Get some fresh air, maybe get something to eat.
She felt a vague feeling of discomfort permeating the edges of her consciousness. It slowly creeped in, tugging at her attention, like a fly buzzing around her head. Uh oh. What had she forgotten?
She checked in with her body, and the vague discomfort turned into a dull ache in what she realized was her bladder. She had to pee.
Bethany opened her eyes and looked around the room. Twilight gleamed through the arched windows and the room around her was dark and silent. "When was the last time I took a break?" she wondered.
Bethany looked at the empty Poland Springs bottle and it seemed to look back at her mockingly. "At least I did a good job of staying hydrated", she thought, with a bemused smirk.
The dull ache in her bladder grew sharper and more insistent and Bethany realized she would need to do something about it pretty fast. She quickly gathered her things and stuffed them into her bag, irrationally feeling guilty for taking a bathroom break with her deadline looming. She zipped up her bag and headed out of the room, tossing the empty water bottle into the trash on the way out.
The hallway outside the study room was completely empty and eerily silent. All that could be heard was the sound of Bethany's own footsteps echoing off the marble floors as she rushed towards the women's restroom, sweat beading on her brow as the feeling of urgency in her bladder intensified. But she felt a chill go up her spine as she reached the door.
It was firmly locked. Bright yellow 'Do Not Enter' tape stretched across it, seeming to mock Bethany's predicament. "What kind of place would close off a bathroom when people were still using the library?" she thought, more than a little annoyed.
Bethany hurried around the corner to the men's restroom, feeling justified in using it given her urgent need. But it was firmly locked as well.
"Ok this is not great," she thought. Maybe she could get one of the staff to open it up for her?
The staff? Bethany stopped in her tracks, a cold dread prickling her skin as realization slowly dawned on her. She hadn't seen a single soul since she had gotten up—no staff members, no patrons, not even a cleaning person.
Bethany finally checked her watch. 9:03PM. But didn't the library close at...
"Shit," she muttered, as it dawned on her how bad she had screwed up: in her feverish obsession with finishing the book, she had not only lost track of time (and her bodily functions), she had completely failed to notice that the whole damn library must have closed hours ago. Everyone had gone home. Bethany groaned inwardly, berating herself for not paying more attention.
"No. This is fine. There's a Starbucks on 4th street, just a couple blocks from the library. Just walk out the exit and you're halfway there," she thought, giving herself a pep talk. But she could feel her control over her emotions slipping. Hoping that she wasn't locked in, she turned right and quickly walked towards what she thought was the exit, before realizing she was going the wrong way and doubling back. She followed a few turns before realizing with a sickening feeling that she had no idea where she was.
Dammit! The maze of long marble corridors that had endeared her to this place initially now seemed to be taunting her. She wandered around the empty building for another few minutes, before realizing she was thoroughly lost.