Words Are All I Got

The moon decided it was time to visit the sky. That silly sun had taken an eternity going down, it almost wondered whether it had missed a shift. As it rose above and its silver light poured on creatures big and small, a tiny wingless insect chewed a longish word ‘egregious’. She gave a small burp after the second e and thought what an outstanding word this was to snack on.

She nibbled steadily for a few hours and finally managed to finish a page. The page was also a chapter end. Lepisma loved it when that happened for it meant the next day she could start on a new one. There was something exciting about biting the beginning of a story. It felt so fresh and untouched.

Lepisma, the silverfish was very particular about what she tucked into. She didn’t like Shakespeare too much. There were only that many ‘Thous, thees and thys’ she could stomach. She adored cartoon books and would very often gnaw along the line of the cartoon, her mouth taking the exact path as the artist’s pen. There was something reassuring about creation and destruction being on the same route.

Her tastes varied from book to book. Hardbacks had the yummiest glue, eating Kafka wasn’t fun for she always wondered whether she had actually eaten that meal, reducing Ted Hughes’ lions, elephants and jaguars into pulp in her mouth made her feel so strong, Julian Barnes was a bit too dysfunctional but with Donna Tartt she just couldn’t stop munching. What crazy plots her books had.

In her life she had travelled to two libraries through books. The first one was where she was born. This library had only memoirs and biographies. She ate so many lives of great people she was sick to death of them. Luckily for her, the next library had a more eclectic selection. It was a gigantic buffet. Crime thrillers, love stories, poetry, comics, humour, urban novels nudged each other in a random disorder. It had every single genre she could think of (Including potty fiction).

One day when she was devouring a particularly nasty passage on a killer sticking the soles of his victim’s feet onto his with super glue, she felt herself being carried. Oh what fun, she was going to travel to a new library. She wondered what kind of collection this one would have. She prayed for some graphic novels and a few more books by that Banville guy. He used the most interesting words.

After what seemed like hours she stopped moving. She waited for night and then cautiously crawled out. What a lovely library. From top to bottom it was filled with tomes, hardbound in leather on walnut wood shelves attached to movable ladders. There was a plush sofa close-by. She salivated at the feast she was about to have in this posh setting.

She quickly crawled into one of the books. Ouch, ouch, ouch, what was this? There were no words, only some bumpy raised dots. She squirmed and twisted, the bumps kept poking her. She tried crawling out but it was like moving through the jaws of a crocodile. She kept getting scratched and bruised. As she wiggled and squiggled one particularly nasty dot-bump tore her back and she died on the spot.

The next morning Lord Reader felt around for a book and picked the one in which Lepisma had breathed her last. As his fingers ran over the words in braille, he chuckled at what was written. This author was really funny.

Moral: Words can break your spine.



Lepisma is drawn by the fabulous Bijoy Venugopal. You can find more of his wonderful stuff here bijoyvenugopal.com