I wrote this story in 2017 and it appeared in Dark Ink Magazine in Spring 2018. They have since changed ownership and I cannot find the magazine anywhere online, so I am making it available here. This is my only foray into speculative fiction. The picture below is the cover of the magazine when it was released.
The Book Avenger
by David H Weinberger
Ravaillac sat meditatively in front of his overflowing bookshelves preparing for his forthcoming activities. He had just woken from a five-millennium slumber and was eager to get busy. Ravaillac was born during the third millennium BC, at the time clay tablets came into being. It was as if he was born in the spirit of the written word to protect it from its distractors and opponents. After the rise of papyrus, he slept, and only in the twentieth century did he awake. It was a time rife for book desecration.
Ravaillac had an endless list of retributions he was anxious to finally mete out. Over the course of his slumber, humanity had participated in a vast desecration of books, from overdue or unreturned library books, to book burnings and censorship, and he was ready to uphold what he saw as the ultimate justice. He knew he could not travel to the past to make up any wrongs done but he could attack the present and today’s book desecrators. A busy and productive night was planned, starting with Gretchen.
Gretchen read thick paperback fantasy novels. She only read these novels in bed before sleeping for the night. The books, however, were fairly heavy for her and their bulk in her small hands was difficult to keep upright in her prone position. Her developed habit after purchasing a new novel was to repeatedly crack the spine until the stiffness of the book was softened a bit. She would then fold the front half of the book completely over the second half. She grabbed the top of the first half in her left hand, the top of the second half in her right hand, and with all her limited strength tear the book in half. Not only was it easier to read half the book in bed, but she also thrilled in the tearing sound of paper and cardstock as she ripped through the spine.
Gretchen climbed into bed with the first sundered half of her newest fantasy. Ravaillac entered her bedroom, startling Gretchen who screamed and dropped the mutilated novel on her chest. Ravaillac silenced her with a finger to his lips, climbed on top of the bed, and straddled Gretchen. She was frozen in fright with the only sound in the room the dull thud of the first half of the book hitting the floor as Ravaillac lifted Gretchen by her head. With superhuman strength, he began vertically folding Gretchen back and forth by grasping her shoulders and repeatedly bending her on the axis of her spine so that each shoulder blade touched the other, followed by her breasts and shoulders touching each other. He continued folding Gretchen until her body lost all rigidity and fell lifeless in his hands. Finally, Ravaillac grasped each side of Gretchen’s head and tore her body down the middle so her left side was severed from her right side, her entrails spilling to the bed. Once she was completely halved, he gently lay her back on her bed, picked up the first half of the book from the floor, the second half from the nightstand, placed them together, and ceremoniously lay the violated and now restored novel between Gretchen’s two halves. He left the bedroom and found his way to Michael’s flat.
Michael read literary fiction from around the world. While attending university, he had the typical habit of highlighting passages or dialogue which spoke to him or answered existential questions which consumed him. Upon leaving university, he became unsatisfied with highlighting as it was difficult to thumb through each book to locate the page containing the sought-after passage. He continued to highlight but added to his routine the activity of tearing out the page from the book which contained the highlighting. Once pulled asunder, he posted each divorced page on his wall under specific labels, such as, Death, Justice, Happiness, and A Life Fulfilled.
Ravaillac entered Michael’s flat as Michael was posting an especially lush page from Crime and Punishment. Ravaillac stealthily approached Michael and calmly placed his hands on Michael’s shoulders. Michael, abruptly awakened from his thoughts, turned around and looked aghast at Ravaillac. Ravaillac lead Michael to the reading lounge chair and forced him to sit. Michael obeyed wordlessly. Ravaillac took hold of Michael’s left arm, and with supreme strength, violently tore the arm from Michael’s torso. Michael screamed through the pain and watched his sinewy stump squirt blood which flowed over his lounge chair. Ravaillac hung the lifeless arm on the wall under the Crime and Punishment page Michael had just posted. Next, off came the right arm, the left leg, and finally the right leg, all hung on the wall under one of Michael’s postings. Ravaillac generously left Michael’s head attached, allowing him to view his appendages scattered along the wall with all the violated pages. He gently patted Michael on his head and then left the flat so he could gather his writing utensils for his next visit.
Thomas was radically addicted to marginalia. He simply could not read a book without writing in the margins. He wrote his interpretations of the text, connections to other writers and stories, and future readings which sprung from the text. Every margin, header and footer of every book Thomas owned was littered with his red, blue, black, and green marginalia. He did not so much read as annotate.
Tonight, Thomas was writing marginalia in Dante’s Inferno. Ravaillac approached Thomas as he was sitting at his desk. Ravaillac took the book, silently shaking his head with a look of disgust on his face, and placed in on a shelf. He told Thomas to completely undress and to lie down on the desk. Tears of fear flowed down Thomas’ cheeks as he wordlessly followed directions. Once Thomas was prostrate on the desk, Ravaillac removed a small wooden box from his jacket. Upon opening it, he saw his prized 1865 Mabie Todd sterling silver dip pen with gold nib. The dip pen requires the writer to dip the tip of the pen in an ink bottle but Ravaillac did not need to dip as Thomas would be supplying the ink necessary for writing. All Ravaillac needed to do was press firmly on Thomas’ skin with the point of the pen to draw blood. He started by piercing Thomas’ neck just below his left ear. Then, in the finest script, he wrote the entirety of The Inferno on Thomas’ body. As he wrote his impeccable cursive on the neck, the chest, the arms, trails of blood followed the nib of the pen spelling out Dante’s words. When he was done, Ravaillac stepped back and looked at his masterpiece. The epic poem was realized in blood all over Thomas’ body. Thomas had fainted as Ravaillac reached his lower arm so he did not as yet realize the text he was now marked with. Ravaillac cleaned his pen, stored it in the box, and left Thomas’ apartment.
Ravaillac did not like distributing justice. He would much rather see people treat books respectfully. He remembers decades ago during the book burnings taking place throughout the world and how he had retaliated. It was no pleasure for him to turn that fire against the desecrators. Their howls of pain still echo in his head along with the crinkling burning of hundreds of thousands of pages. Censorship left him with the same uneasy feelings. He had sewn up the mouths of so many people censoring books so they would suffer the same torture the forbidden books suffered. Their silent cries continue to play in his mind. But Ravaillac knew he existed simply to watch over the books of the world. He could not get caught up in worrying about the pain and anguish he unleashed on people. Linda would be no different: it would be painful but necessary for him to act.
Linda removed her robe and placed it on the stool next to the filled bathtub. She stepped in and slowly slid down into the warm soapy water. She took a sip of wine and then leaned outside the tub to pick up the newest novel she was reading. From lying on the floor next to the tub, the dust jacket of the hardcover book was wrinkled from the water. She took it off and dropped it to the floor. She flipped to page 184 where she had stopped reading the previous night. The pages were warped and no longer laid flat upon themselves. Linda was used to reading novels in the tub, where the water and heat did their corrosive damage. Every book on her shelf contained a wrinkled cover and warped pages. Linda was not concerned. She liked nothing more after a long day at the office than to luxuriate in a warm bath with a good book.
Ravaillac looked at Linda in the tub and the damaged book. He had watched her for some years causing untold damage to personal and library books. He entered the house and then the bathroom. He rushed to Linda’s side and covered her mouth with his hand, demanding her to refrain from screaming. He restrained Linda in the tub by tying her hands to the faucet and the legs to the clawed feet of the tub. He pulled up the stool and watched her bound body in the water. After a mere half hour, Linda’s skin began to wrinkle. In an hour, when the water was reaching room temperature, Linda had larger creases and was starting to shiver from the cold. Ravaillac watched as the hours passed and the wrinkles grew in size and texture. Her body began to look like a white topographic map with undulations forming from her ankles to her neck. Knowing that her skin would be waterlogged within hours, he gently caressed her feet, smiled, and left Linda alone to soak in the freezing water.
It had been a long evening for Ravaillac, yet he had barely made a dent in his retribution duties. There were more of the same violators he had already dealt with, as well as people who ate while reading and spilled food and sauces on books, people who stacked books horizontally, people who dog-eared pages instead of using bookmarks, and people who used e-books instead of the traditional printed books. All of this needed attention and Ravaillac would definitely attend to them. But tonight, he was exhausted from meting out retribution. The books would have to wait for another night. Another night when his strength was at its fullest and he could concentrate on justice.
End