As a small girl, Adaeze used to leave half-finished stories she wrote everywhere. In her writing pad, her jotter, the back page of her school exercise books.
From a song that stopped mid-line to a story that never made it past the first chapter.
Severally, her kid brother had made jest of her as a lazy writer. But she preferred to tag it the regular line "writer's block". Although she knew the truth. Why she never finish her work.
Deep down she was scared. Scared that once something was finished, it would no longer be perfect in her head. How she came up with such an ideology was still blank to her. But she held it so tight like it was true.
She was of age now. A young, beautiful girl with dreams of being a writer, but she still never finished her stories.
One weird night, after a long day of failed writing, she left her desk and decided to take a walk. Maybe it would loosen up her mind. Lagos at night was noisy, filled with car horns, generator hums, and laughter from nearby beer parlors. But that night it was quiet. Too quiet that she could hear her footsteps on the tarred pavements.
Unlike her, she would walk back home on nights like that. But something pushed her on. One leg thrown before the other, she kept walking until she came into this quiet street she didn’t remember existing before. She was sure she took it that route every night, but today she just couldn't remember any of the buildings on that street.
At the end of it stood a building with a faint signboard, faint light, and just a door, slightly open.
On the signboard was boldly written. *The Library Of Unwritten Books"
Like a lost puppy, she wandered inside. Not because she needed a book to read but because she found the name oddly interesting.
Inside, the air smelled of old paper and candle wax. Shelves stretched farther than she could see. Books piled on books, some bound in leather, others in rough paper. Just as she had envisaged, the library felt nothing like a library. Just a weird shop from a scene in a fantasy movie.
On the counter, sat an old man on a wooden desk, pale as if he hadn’t seen the sun in years. He looked up and said,
“You’re late. Your books have been waiting.”
Adaeze frowned at first, then scoffed. “My books? Dude, are you sure you're the librarian?” she muttered to herself.
Pointing to a row, the old man got up, "Come, I'll show you where to start from."
Adaeze rolled her eyes. Still confused about what the old man meant, but her curiosity to know made her follow him. "Okaay." She stressed the word.
She got to a shelf which had books that looked familiar. On a closer look, it was her half-finished notebooks. Each jotter she had scribbled upon, her childish handwriting, her teenage scribbles, even the shortest stories she had deleted from her laptop years ago, stared at her. Each one was bound neatly into a book, each one glowing faintly.
Adaeze reached for a thin volume titled The Girl Who Swallowed the Sun. She could still remember it. A fantasy she started at fourteen and never touched again. As she was about to open it, the old man held her hands and warned her.
"I must warn you, once you open a book, you are bound to complete it.”
Adaeze squinted her eyes like she didn't understand what he meant. Of course, everything about the library looked weird from the entrance to the books. She wondered how they got hold of her books. But again her curiosity was stronger. She flicked it open ignoring the old man's warning. Suddenly, the words exploded across the pages, filling themselves. Images swirled around her, heat pressed against her skin, and suddenly she was no longer in the library.
She was inside the story.
The sky burned with a thousand suns against her soft skin. It hurt and there was no shelter nearby. She turned to see a young girl crying, light pouring from her mouth. She had the perfect character description she had given the main character.
Suddenly, Adaeze's hands felt heavy, and she looked, and in her hands was a pen. Though she was sure she hadn’t held one. A voice whispered,
Finish it.
She tried to shake off the pen. To step back into the library. But the library was gone and the pen stuck tight to her hands.
The old man's warning echoed in her ears. "I must warn you, once you open a book, you are bound to complete it.”
That was when she realised that the only way out was to complete the story.
Gradually, she scribbled words together, piece by piece. Each word shapes the story. She fought through deserts with her words, arguing with kings, carrying the burden of her main character. Each mistake would take her hours back.
Days. Weeks.
She wasn’t sure how long. But she kept writing till she reached the final words. Suddenly, the world cracked open, and she was thrown back into the library, shaking and breathless to see the old man standing beside her.
Smiling he said. “One story complete. Thousands left.” he pointed to the shelf with her stories.
Adaeze staggered, still breathless. “And if I don’t finish them?”
“They finish you,” he said, giving a spooky smile.
Adaeze turned to the shelf, which stretched endlessly, filled with millions of her glowing, unfinished books. That was when she realised she wasn't alone. There were others. Everyone’s abandoned works, their unspoken ideas, their silent regrets. Everyone was scribbling to finish their stories.
Her knees weakened.
The library hummed with voices, whisperers, and begging of other writers.
The man smiled gently at her and said, “Welcome to the Library of Unfinished Books, writer. Your work has only begun.”