Living Words, by Hildegard Venning

The sunlight shone through the wide kitchen windows onto the tattered old book that sat in Maddy’s lap. It seemed like she had read it a thousand times before, though if she was realistic it was probably more like twenty times. As the sun dipped below the horizon, the sounds of the neighbours grew silent. The only noise was the flick of the light switch as the house grew darker and darker.

There was no more light, it had all been swallowed by the shadows by then, and the once clear shape of the kitchen began to blend. Maddy never stopped reading, never. It was her worst fear, her weakness, but it was also a place where she took risks. Not the kitchen, the book. Every night the words blended, and every night she ignored them and hoped they’d go away.

Her heart raced, her fear of the book never shrunk, it grew, until she couldn’t stand it. Maddy leapt up onto her feet, and stared at the book in terror. The ink was swirling around the page, as if it was water, but it had a purpose. Pictures began to form, treble pictures, pictures that made her want to rip the book in half. So she did.

For a moment everything returned to normal, but then the pictures spilled out of the book lunging for her, like wolves. Panicking Maddy grabbed a jug of water and poured it over the pictures. “SPLASH”, Maddy stared at the remains of her worst fear, a pile of sodden pages and a thin smear of black ink across the floor. From her perspective it seemed like a win, but she had forgotten something, there was more than one book in the house…