OPEN ME!

‘Morrigan? Where is she? MORRIGAN!’

Cato paces up and down the library angrily, searching for Morrigan. She hasn’t been in his presence for an hour. It was unlike her, and he detested it. The state of the library was in NO shape for closing time. Books were not on shelves. Candles were going out. People were still around. Too many people.

Little did he know marching around irately cleared them out faster than Morrigan at her hardest?

He glimpses at a table, where two girls are reading silently. One of them have long dark hair like Morrigan’s.

‘Morrigan! Get over here! I’m talking to you.’

Before he even gets 10 feet to their table, the two girls run from him, screaming.

He releases a silent, deep growl. ‘Morrigan doesn’t run screaming from me...’

And without warning, a red-haired student surfaces out of nowhere and storms before him, holding an oversized geography book.

‘Sir, I know the library is almost closed, but I need to take this book out NOW!!!!! My homework is due on Monday, and I haven’t done crap! Please— let me take it out NOW!’

The student falls to the ground, pulling his hair, his tie, his everything.

Cato can only sigh at him. He needed Morrigan over here to help him with this amazing episode of ‘humanly tribulations’, but she was nowhere to be seen. There was no choice left but to use whatever skills he had to get rid of people.

‘I have no time for you. Get out!’

He picks up the student by the collar and throws him out- other students and members of the public watch Cato carefully and summarise from his behaviour that he is tired of their patronage for now. The library is cleared out within SECONDS, and Cato shuts the heavy ebony doors with a WHAM!!!

‘Morrigan!!’ he growls. ‘Where are you?!’

Underneath the thick scarlet curtains, miserably watching the sunset outside, was Morrigan. All the energy she had left for was contemplation, although she had enough of it….

‘Morrigan, if you can’t tell Cato what’s going on, you’re nothing but stupid…. A nuisance... He’s important to you.’

She sits up, determined. ‘You’ve got to do it!’

Then, after some dramatic reflection attacks her mind, her legs give way, and she sits down again. Defeated.

Sighing forlornly, she gazes at the purple clouds covering the sky, the orange sparks screaming out from underneath the horizon. A cluster of doves soar overhead, diving into the great beyond. She deeply wishes she could fly away with them.

Though she knew he required her help to run the library, and that she’d been doing it devotedly nearly 7 years, Cato never displayed any sort of… ‘friendly emotions’ towards Morrigan.

The ‘friendliest’ thing he’d do is walk her home when it was too dark, though she knew he was just being a gentleman. He’d help her revise for tests. He would give her his secret books, and chuckle softly if she returned them the next day, deathly pale, and shivering.

‘Weak,’ he would call her. She would smile back.

Some tears drop from her eyes, and soon a silent torrent of them arrives.

The curtain suddenly blasts open with a force so fast, Morrigan is almost blown away by it. On the other side, Cato.

‘Morrigan!! What is it with you today?!’

He freezes when he sees her drenched face. An inexplicable moment occurs between the two, as he beholds her, and she beholds him. But his curiosity comes at a cost.

The sun is still out, and it…. stings.

‘Agh—!!’ he bawls, covering his face.

Without a moment’s hesitation, he is already behind the curtain.

Feeling guilty, Morrigan wipes her face clean with her sleeve.

‘Cato?’ 

She sits up and tries to pull back the curtain. But soon, her hand is grabbed, and she is whirled away from the curtain with incredible velocity. The sudden rush leaves her breathless and motionless as Cato glares at her with a form of discontent and apprehension.

‘Have you forgotten the rules?! I forbid these curtains open when the sun is out! And that includes you hiding behind them for whatever reason....!’

Morrigan desperately wishes to know why he wants them shut, when the beauty of the sunset outside was immaculate. She clenches her fists, opens her mouth to argue, but then she forces it shut. A flood of tears begin to pour from her eyes, as a gush of emotion surges through her.

She was crying. For the first time. In front of Cato. 

She struggles to stop, ending her sobs with a quick exhale. 

Silence.

Cato observs her, somehow unable to say anything. Morrigan can’t, either. Her head bows low.

As soon the clock chimes seven, Morrigan flees up the stairs to get her things. Cato remains frozen, unable to move. Unable to speak.

Morrigan knows why. He caught her at her usual self, vulnerable and angry. She had been all sorts in front of him, bruised black and blue, red, and purple, yellow, and green, but tears— NEVER. He had never witnessed one drop.

But his look.... when he saw tears…. It was as if something had snapped inside of him, something had burst. It was unusual to see him looking at her that way. It felt…

Warm.

As she shuts the door behind her, Cato's silvery eyes deeply express a forlon glow of concern.

Morrigan arrives at the stockroom, where Cato kept his unfortunate and unusual books. This was her favourite place in the world— it had nobody there to judge her, it had a comforting atmosphere of silence… It was better than home…. Home, where she had nobody but herself. She quickly wipes some unwanted tears dripping down her cheeks.

‘You can't hide it, Morrigan.... someday.... you have to tell him....’

Whilst stuck in her own thoughts again, Morrigan is stepping backwards. It is an awful habit she has developed since childhood. Not having friends left her to her daydreams, and she’d get into them frequently, often forgetting about the world around her.

She knocks into a shelf behind her, and multiple books fall from it. They crash down to the floor and gather a hearty dust cloud about her.

Morrigan opens her eyes to reveal a clutter of rubbish around her.

‘Cato really sucks at cleaning when I’m not here.’

It is not known why he has such an attribute. He owns the place, doesn’t he? How long has he had it for? Suddenly, a peculiar thought comes into Morrigan’s mind.

‘How old is Cato?’

Another, large book falls on her head, disrupting her imagination.

‘OW!’

Whilst rubbing her head, Morrigan’s eye catches something extraordinary.

THE NECRONOMICON.

Written in BIG letters on a HUGE book, lined by a heavy looking black sleeve— obscured, and covered in intricate silver detailing. A large, white skull’s head sat in the middle of the book. It looked like it was ready to jump out at any time, as it discharged a spectral glow.

‘The… Necronomicon?’ Morrigan spells out.

This is the first time she’s been able to pronounce one of Cato’s strange books.

Picking it up, Morrigan feels enchanted by the daunting cover. Gliding her fingers through the ghastly grooves of the front cover, which seemed to scream out ‘unordinary’, she wonders why Cato never showed her such a grand thing before.

Perhaps because it was too intimidating for her? But that couldn’t be. She had been given books that were shaped unusually, some that had spiky textures that were impossible to hold without gloves, and even some that had a particular and awful smell to them.

However, this book had an… aura… an aura that seemed to defeat the unconceivable power of darkness the other books held before it. Its appearance boasted a burning supremacy to the others, hot enough to burn them into cinders.

Mesmerised by the incredulous thing before her, Morrigan acquires a sudden temptation, a dying urge…. to flip the cover.

Her heart beats thickly. Her forehead slowly forms a film of hot sweat. She bites her lip hard to wake herself up, but it’s futile. Her breathing, which was heavily paced, became heavily staggered, like she was being suffocated. Only one thing could end this pain. She must open it.

She must.

As her sweaty fingers glide towards the cover, she can no longer fight the temptation to flip it over…

She clenches her teeth as she clenches the sleeve.

Now she must open it.

She must open it.

OPEN IT.

‘OPEN ME!’ a voice drills in her mind.

‘NO, MORRIGAN!! DROP IT!’

Morrigan’s mind snaps into consciousness. Her head spins around. Cato is at the doorway, his glimmering silver eyes wide open in supreme horror.

‘DROP IT!!’

Morrigan gasps for air. Her sweaty, shaking fingers slide off the cover as she drops the impure tome of darkness. But it lands on the floor, half open.

‘NO!!’ Cato bellows.

Thunder and lightning clap. Red and white smoke permeates the air, suffocating their surroundings. A gust of heavy wind roars and blasts into the stockroom, so strong, Morrigan is tossed into the bookshelves like a bin bag.

‘Morrigan!!’ Cato cries, rushing towards her.

She is knocked out. Her ochre eyes are shut. Cato gently places her down, as a terrifying cackle emits from the book.

‘HAHAHAHAH!!!!!’

‘I must stop him before he gets out!’ he vows, clenching his fangs.

He lunges towards the book, and as he lunges, several demonic shadows of darkness hop out of his body, their pristine white fangs flared open in anger, their silver eyes determined to fight. They enwrap the book, suffocating it with their dark misty bodies, but a strong bright light from the book swallows the atmosphere, penetrating Cato as his body burns up like paper.

‘AAAAAAGHH!!’ he painfully screeches, as the light completely overwhelms him, Morrigan, the entire room— and the library.