Edie stacks 5 illustrated copies of Don Quixote on top of an already teetering tower of books. She remembers her sister (who’s not really her sister) saying that pages with pictures are usually sticky and Edie knows better than to question her worldly not-really-sister. So, Edie presses down on Sancho Panza’s face, testing his resolve, and, ever the servant, he offers his face as a foothold. Sancho doesn’t complain much, only groaning slightly with dust and pain. Good, no time for fictional distress tonight.

     As Edie steps further upwards to a stack of rearranged animal-encyclopedias (the spines coincidentally spelling out “O-H-N-O”) her stomach growls a low grumble. In reply, a buzzing orb of blue light flashes into existence and hums past her eyes. As if expecting the hallucination, Edie’s stomach responds again with another bassy roar, making sure she’s aware of who’s really in charge of her reality at the moment. She swats at the hunger-induced-vision but only catches air.

     Startled by the sudden movement, the armies of Orangutans, Horses, and Newts (Oh No!) collapse underneath Edie’s feet and banish her back to the ground. She lies motionless amongst the pile of broken spines and smug Sancho smiles, the buzzing-hunger-light zipping through the air around her.

     “This is all your fault,” Edie mutters to the stupid-ghost-light, subconsciously replacing your fault for my fault in her head.

     After all, it really is her own fault for listening to her not-really-honest not-really-sister. And it is her fault for getting trapped here in the first place. It often is. Of course, Edie could have let the librarians know she was still inside before they locked up. Instead, she just let them forget she was even there — most people do anyway, so why not make it easier and save them the time. In their defense (not that she cared) Edie was hiding under a table, in a corner room, with all the lights turned off. Sure, she was tearing out maps of made-up sand planets, but still, they could’ve at least checked.

      Sancho glares up at her between scattered books, agreeing with her assessment of hastily made decisions.

     “You’re not helping,” she says as she tears him out and adds him to her collection of ripped pages.

     “Ouch!” the fake-light-annoyance crackles in a voice of broken glass crumpled in a canvas sack. Edie realizes that her hunger is a decidedly worse problem if strange lights are expressing their phantom-page pain to her.

     Edie grumbles off to rebuild her staircase, figuring that the Fall of the Roman Empire will provide more stability in reaching the unlatched window — no pictures! Unfortunately, even intentional irony isn’t strong enough to hold up young girls and the staircase comes tumbling down taking Edie with it. Her collection of torn-out pages follows her descent like fluttering leaves.

     “Nimnim!” The fake-light-that-thinks-it’s-real begins to pulse with a twinkled voice like glass rain on a tin roof. It swirls around the pages and shifts its fake-light-body into the inked sketches it sees with its fake-light-eyeballs: Da Vincian lockpicks for Gutenbergian locks, semi-aquatic semi-avian animal mutations, Tolkien-esque languages written with arrangements of carved stones.

     “Back off, crazy hunger ghost! These aren’t for you!” Edie flails around in the air. Even if she can’t fight the hunger dream away, she figures she can at least out-crazy it.

     “Nimnim,” the light-that-is-now-a-lion-turtle purrs, ignoring her swipes.

     “No, Nim you! For a psychotic breakdown, you really could be more exciting!”

     “Nim me!” the not-so-exciting-light excitedly twists into a grand staircase, reaching all the way to the window above.

     “Ha! A sense of humor! So clever of yo-OUCH!” Edie’s hand cracks against the steps of the light-that-knows-its-a-staircase and reels back. Edie realizes her sense of reality hasn’t just cracked but completely and utterly imploded.