Her head hit the pillow, and the others not having a reasonable counter-argument, followed suit. They’d hardly dozen off into dreamland when they were rudely woken up to the banging of metal against metal.
“Get up, everyone! It’s the start of another beautiful day!”
Short nap. The energy of the Living Martyr’s followers seemed infectious. It was only fair that they follow up where they left off.
The Young Woman surveyed the corridors of the library. It seemed the Guide members had gotten wise to her ways and barricaded all avenues of escape. No matter. She’d already devised means of eluding capture. Let the others try to move up the ranks via conventional means. She’d game the system instead, gaining promotions via ways that the others couldn’t possibly comprehend. Ways that only she was privy to that no one else had the foresight to see.
The Young Woman leafed through the fertility book filled with helpful tips such as,
- Eat yams to double your odds by producing twins.
- Handstand upside-down to ovulate your ovaries faster.
- If the woman doesn’t take care to cross her legs properly, she could become pregnant within 50 days.
She suppressed a laugh that came in the form of snot spurting out of her nose, the wad dangling mid-air before splattering onto the pages. She shut the book not bothering to wipe the offending material off the offending material. This book was clearly no help at all. She needed something that’d show visible pregnancy symptoms within 20 days.
Feeling she wasn’t making any progress, the Young Woman decided to look elsewhere. She looked at the directory. There was a lot of esoteric subjects ranging from all kinds of subject matter ranging from religious insights to unauthorized biographies spread out all over, until she found the section for makeup. But when she got there, all the books on the shelves were filled with boring financial records. Looking closer, there was one book left untouched, a volume on prosthetics. And not the kind of prosthetic where you’d attach a missing body part, but add an extra part to your body. It could come in handy if she ever wanted to glue a warty mole to her face.
“How selfish of you to take all those makeup books for yourself!” she accused the Numb Woman. “Save some for the rest of us!”
*FLASH*
“You’re better off not reading those. The standards of beauty keep changing throughout the ages. For instance, it was fashionable to lace black Kohl around the eyes, or have fish eat the dead skin off your feet. Did you know that according to this, the Living Martyr is responsible for creating beauty products that existed thousands of years ago?”
*FLASH*
“What would a man know about makeup?”
“You’re missing the point. He’s taking credit for discoveries other people have made throughout the ages. I had an inkling things were wrong when I opened the book of Beauty Tips. It was filled with antiquated helpful advice from long ago. Using common remedial household items commonly found in nature that was actually toxic.”
*FLASH*
“It hurts to look beautiful. You know tha... what are you doing?”
Her attention was distracted by the Mouthy Woman taking pictures. At first, she thought she was capturing the contents of the Numb Woman’s books, but on closer inspection, she was throwing the camera up and catching it mid-air as it fell down, pointed towards herself.
“Muh essignmint, taykin’ shelf-pertrayjsh.”
My assignment, taking self portraits.
*FLASH*
“What I’m saying is, those tomes hadn’t been updated with more modern methods using more recent discoveries that weren’t as harmful. They’re still recommending we smear ground-up metal all over our faces, using arsenic and mercury to bleach our skin And they suggest injecting pure nightshade directly into our eyes to give off an attractive look.”
*FLASH*
“You’re going to tell me the drawbacks of that aren’t you?”
“Nightshade may dilute your eyes, but it’ll also cause visual hallucinations, increase your sensitivity to bright light, and severely reduce your life to the point where it can be counted in seconds rather than days. And that’s not even the craziest thing listed.”
“I don’t even want to know.”
“They suggested using animal feces for facial creams and hair removal. I wish I were kidding.”
*FLASH*
“Using trace amounts of poison for good looks isn’t anything new. Why does this matter so much to you?”
“You can tell the value of a community or how they treat their weakest members. And the lack of respect I saw was disconcerting. Considering that so many of these tips can make you physically weak, it’s no wonder the stereotype that women are considered delicate and fragile continues to perpetuate. And these beauty tips were all suggested in the book I opened.”
*FLASH*
“And you only left me the prosthetics book?”
“I took a look, there’s nothing in there that can harm you. It’s very clever in how it disseminates disinformation. Lists a bunch of material that sounds authentic at first, and mixes it up with actual truthful stuff, making it doubly difficult to tell fact from - .”
There was a sudden uproar among the reading crowd where an irrate reader was raving incoherently in inconsolable irritation and for a moment, it looked like she’d have to be forcibly restrained when she suddenly fell flat on the floor, as if struck down by an unseen force, and shortly after, was ferried out by several members once she’d regained composure.
“What happened over there?”
“U’hf nir ehdyah. Sie’s nirmelly sew kumposhible.”
I’ve no idea. She’s normally so compossible.
She must’ve read something very upsetting. Considering that their hobbies consisted of murder investigations dealing with the most reprehensible crimes imaginable, it must’ve been something on the lines of selective genocide to bring them to that state. The Mouthy Woman stood up and took a *FLASH* picture of the ensuing scene, then sauntered over for more details. She always sought to protect her fellow women from such violent scenes.
“Whut’sh goyin awn hyer?”
What’s going on here?
“Why the sudden interest in beauty?”, the Young Woman asked. The Numb Woman never bothered with such superficial features before.
“I’m looking up old techniques used to attract clientele. I want to create a criteria of such immense high standards of stunning beauty that it’ll be painful to look at, let alone look away. Beauty that will make bystanders unable to pay attention to anything other than the absolute masterpiece right in front of them. Just the mere presence of a beautiful woman is enough to liven up any dull old scene. With that kind of power in your hands, you can convince anybody to do anything.”
“Have fun knocking yourself out. I’m going to do things my own way. You got anything in there about perfumes or aromas?” the Young Woman asked, sneaking a peek.
“Not in this volume,” the Numb Woman replied, shying her book away.
“Care to tell me where to look?”
“Figure it out yourself.”
“Yule niffer belif eht,” the Mouthy Woman sauntered back.
You’ll never believe it.
“What happened?”
“Sie wuz reedin uh buk ov Mirdir Misheriesh en reeched deh yen, wen dhey dhih deh mosh awnfirgifible ting umiginible.”
She was reading a book of Murder Mysteries and reached the end when they did the most unforgivable thing imaginable.
“What wuzit?”
“I was enjoying my murder romance mystery. The setting was tense with all the remaining survivors present. The prose so thick with tension you could cut it with a butcher knife. The scene was rising to an enviable climax... and then the pages revealing the explanation was cut out!”
“Naturally,” the Devoted Servant popped in. “It wouldn’t do to reveal everything all at once. You need to earn your ending.”
That was simply the evilest thing she’d ever heard.
“It takes patience to gain enlightenment - ”
“I don't have time for any of that! I need to find these things out now now now now NOW! What do I need to do to find out the ending?”
“Nothing terribly strenuous. Just some odd jobs to earn your keep. We need some new blood - ”
“I’LL DO IT.”
Ah, there was the catch. They’d lull you in with promises of revealing secrets only privy to the most devoted members, and then keep you from gaining satisfaction unless you complied by their ever-escalating standards. Neat little trick if you weren’t easily influenced by external factors. The Numb Woman turned to voice her thoughts aloud, but the Young Woman’d already gone. Looking closer at her collection, one of her books was missing.
The Young Woman dashed off with the makeup book dealing with pedicures in it. So what if the facts within weren’t accurate? So what if the suggested beauty procedures were dangerous? All that mattered was gaining knowledge that could be used to her advantage. She was willing to go to any lengths to get ahead of everybody else, sleeping her way to the top if necessary. Once she was at a secure enough safe distance, she cracked open the book to purvey the interiors for valuable information.
There was certainly information, and it was certainly valuable, but it wasn’t what she was looking for.
“Uren’t yah wurried?”
Aren’t you worried?
The Numb Woman shook her head. “She’ll be back.”
Not everyone was enthusiastic to play along with the unfortunate habit of having story endings left unfinished. They were used to unresolved conflicts without resolution, and refused to play by these rules, preferring instead to play out imagined scenarios in their heads, even going as far as to ignore rumours of the actual endings. Some of the more stubborn devout devourers of commercial paperworks tried to solve the murder mysteries themselves, certain they’d be able to figure it out, only to give up entirely and join the workforce. Those kinds of mysteries were intentionally designed to be as infuriatingly impossible to solve to the average layperson, and even veterans were mystified by the innocuous passages that hid clues obfuscatable even to the most devoted delvers of subliminal text.
When they weren’t arguing about imagined endings to incomplete passages, they were arguing about the presence of the founder who was mentioned everywhere, but was conspicuously absent.
“Where IS the Living Martyr anyways?”
“The Living Martyr is beloved, but under constant threat. There are countless assassination attempts on his life, so he never sits still, never stays in one location long enough to be caught.”
“You’d think he’d want to see the fruits of his labors.”
“He has far more important things to deal with right now. There are countless souls out there that need saving. It’s better for us if the Living Martyr ISN’T around. We would not survive his sheer radiance. Our souls are still too impure.”
“No, I think that’s the internal expanding explosion.”
“Impure souls!”
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