Used
I had lived a long and happy life but it seemed my time was up, I was being mauled by a vicious dog and I couldn’t see how I could be repaired. All around me I saw pieces of me on the floor in the room, dripping with the beast’s saliva. I was in so much pain. I never realized that dying would be so sad. As Killer was ravaging me I saw on his snout one of my pieces, a sticker that said “used”. That sight was incredible, that singular word explained who I was an how amazing my life had been.
Many of my peers were not as lucky as me, once they were purchased at the bookstore they went to their new homes, were read once, and then they lived a sad existence on a bookshelf, craving human interaction, silently pleading that they would be remembered. I on the other hand, well I lived a magnificent life. Soon after being born at the printing press I was sent to the adoption center that humans call a ‘bookstore’.
I was eagerly chosen by a man named Professor DeLivres. For years we taught together, enlightening the minds of college students. Professor DeLivres constantly read me over and over, letting me help him understand my story more. He rewarded me with upgrades, with what people would call ‘tattoos.’ These additions to my body were so beautiful, making my pages so much more effective. For years he and I were good friends, working together in perfect harmony, but one day everything changed. He had put me in his laptop’s case. I usually preferred my personal chariot that he called his ‘briefcase’ because Laptop was kind of a bully, always telling me he would one day make me obsolete. We were just sitting there, minding our own business when all of a sudden Professor DeLivres started jostling us around violently and was screaming something, then he was running in a mad dash. Before I knew it a stranger was opening the case and grabbing at us in it. Laptop was the first to be examined and that was the last I ever saw of him (not that I’m complaining).
My fate wasn’t as bas as I thought it would be. I was brought to a new adoption center and sold to a sweet old lady. After agreeing to foster me she decided to do some ‘plastic surgery’ (as humans call it when done to their bodies) on me. She got rid of the wrinkles on my face by affixing a new clear skin to my areas of impurities. After that I received my pride and joy- a bright yellow piece of skin with the word “used” tattooed on it. Oh the joy of having that placed on my spine! To me it screamed “look at me, I’m brilliant and I have experience to make you brilliant as well, pick me!”
Sadly I sat there for weeks, maybe even a couple of months, just waiting to be loved again. One day at the end of the summer it happened, the sweet old lady plucked me off the shelf and put me into a soft bag. For a few days I was tossed around, jostled this way and that, but then when I was really started to feel claustrophobic for fresh air I saw the light. The bag was opened and I was looking at the bright young face of my new partner. After opening me to flip through my pages she seemed elated at the multiple tattoos that I had from Professor DeLivres. She ran me into the other room to show her friend Kate saying, “look at these notes, they are brilliant! This book is going to save my grade in 410!” From that moment on our bond was inseparable. She brought me everywhere, always taking ferocious notes about my story and about my tattoos. In her class she was always the first to comment and as the semester went on she gave me a few more tattoos but in pink instead of the black that Professor DeLivres used, she even added long lines of a bright yellow color to some of my pages. My time with her was very happy indeed and I thought we would have a long future together. I soon had my heart broken though. Apparently, unlike teachers, human students don’t keep their books after a class is over. I learned this when one day after a final she handed me over to somebody in the cafeteria saying, “trust me this book will get you an A next semester, whoever had it before me was brilliant and the notes are incredible!”
My new owner wasn’t as great as she had been. His room was always cloudy and smelled weird. His friends and him were always sitting around eating junk food and smoking something that I don’t think they were supposed to. There was an entire month between the semesters so for all of that time I sat on a shelf along with a few other books. One large book told me that my expectations were too high, that I would be sorely disappointed because although this boy was smart he did not care very much about his studies and therefore I would probably only be given attention before tests or in class when he wanted to glance over me before making a comment to lead his teacher on to thinking he did his work. I was flabbergasted by this news, how could anyone want me but not want me at the same time, why would he not give me a chance to open my secrets to him and bring him joy? Once his classes started this prophecy unfortunately came true and yet I still sat with bated breath hoping that I would be an exception, that he would fall in love with my story. Although this never happened the way I prayed it would he still did give me a few extra tattoos when his professor would ramble out a certain page to look at. These instances would fill me with pride because he was very intelligent and the comments he would make off of just a brief scan of my page would be elegant and always started a meaningful discussion. I wish he had put that effort into every excerpt from my story but alas it never happened. Before I knew it the semester was over and he was putting me up for adoption at the school bookstore.
Weeks later I was chosen off the shelf and put in a pile of other books that were wrapped together and put on a shelf in the back that was labeled “online purchases for pick up” and was informed by the other books that this was a good thing. A few days later all of us that were bundled together were picked up by a pretty girl who took us back to her house and lovingly examined all of us one by one. When she got to me she looked a bit disappointed and said, “oh my, aren’t you marked up quite a bit, well I guess I will have to make due with you anyways, maybe it could even turn out to be a good thing, I guess we will see.” When she started reading me a couple of weeks later I think her tune changed a bit and before I knew it she was tattooing me over some of my other tattoos and adding even more extensive tattoos. Though I loved her passion I was starting to get tired of the tattoos, a few here and there are nice, but I was starting to feel trashy with every edge of my pages having something on them. Even though I felt a bit overwhelmed with the ink I was at the same time overjoyed by her devotion to me. She brought me to the most incredible places too. It was the summer and she did her reading of me in the park and at the beach and in cafés. Life was perfect with these outing during the day and classes in the evening. She made me proud, always leading discussions with her commentary. Unfortunately the summer classes ended soon and I was dreading the thought of what my next reader would be, dreading the time just sitting waiting to be adopted again. She was different though, like Professor DeLivres she loved me and did not want to part with me.
For two years her and I had a great life. She would refer to me often when writing papers and whatnot, always finding a way to incorporate my story into her scholarly documents. She would talk about me as her “favorite book” to anyone who wanted to talk about reading. She loaned me out to her friends so that they could see why I meant so much to her. Aside from my time with Professor DeLivres I had never been happier. One day everything changed though. The boy who she had moved in with bought a new puppy and named him ‘Killer’ and let me tell you I could see it in his eyes that he would be trouble. How right I was! He was always tearing something up or using the house as a toilet or doing just about everything he possibly could that he wasn’t supposed to. Luckily I was safe to watch from a shelf that was too high for him to reach.
One day though my luck ran out. Killer was about a year old and was still as rambunctious as ever, and while running through the house while he was alone one day he knocked the entire shelf that I was on over. It was like Christmas came early for him! That’s when the massacre started, before I knew it he was tearing up all of my friends and I just hoped that he would get tired and leave us all alone. I had no way to escape him and therefore was at his mercy. Apparently though he wasn’t feeling merciful that day and he soon began to eat me alive. There was something about me that he found very alluring and so after his initial chewing session he proceeded to carry, drag, and fling me about the house before dropping me because he was distracted by the door opening.
My lady and her man came in and she just stood there in shock for a moment. Then she noticed me laying under Killer’s feet and lunged. Tears streamed her face as she picked me up and examined the damage to me. Dozens of my pages had been torn out, I had puncture wounds everywhere from his sharp teeth, he had chewed the top corner off of me completely, my pages were slobbery and ripped, essentially I was a disaster. For what seemed like forever she just sat and turned me page by page crying at the destruction. Her man had put Killer outside and was trying to clean up the mess when she turned to him and said, “that fucking dog! You let that fucking dog ruin my favorite book! You know how much this book means to me! You know that this book can not be replaced and look at what your fucking dog did to it!” He knew better then to argue with her about me, I was her favorite after all.
I thought she would fix me, I thought she would find a way to make it all better. I thought all I needed was a little more plastic surgery (ok well maybe a lot more but still) and then I would be okay. I thought she would go to the ends of the world to make me all right. I was wrong. After crying for a long time, after looking through me for hours and hours over a few days, after transferring everything she could from me to another copy of me she tossed me into a recycle bin. I thought it was weird for her to be holding another version of me, I thought that it was odd when she was going page by page and putting the exact same tattoos on the other’s pages, but I still thought nothing of it, I figured that she was doing it for a friend or something, I didn’t realize I was being replaced.
I don’t know what is going to happen to me now. My soul seems to have died with Killer’s attack on me. I am a book, what good am I now that I am in pieces? What will become of me at the recycling plant I do not know, I don’t even know what it means to recycle. I hope that in the next stage of my life I am just as happy. I hope that I have another stage of my life and that this is not the end. If it is though at least I have lived to the fullest. I have helped to teach dozens of people. I have individually assisted students master my material. I have loved my readers and been loved by them. What more can a book ask for? My pages may not have been old enough to fade from time but I know that the mark I made on the people I touched will be there forever.
I am a Used book and I have a story to tell, not just the one on my pages, but the one about where I have been and what I have done.
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