The last sheet rattles back into the poly pocket.
That was a weird one. My guess is they were the proofs for some kind of experimental art book. The cocktail napkins were full method. I shook real crumbs off one of them.
Thick snow tumbled in a constant flurry around the building during my reading session. A white duvet hides the roads and paths, the final tyre treads long gone. This provides a perfect fence from the outside world. I will spot anyone trying to cross that frozen moat with ease. Even if they make their way inside, I can jumble together an excuse about sheltering from the weather. I will pretend to faint, and claim to not remember what had happened.
But which member of security is going to pull themselves away from a fire, hot chocolate in hand, to investigate this old crap? I may as well be on the moon.
I pad around the room, brushing against collections with my fingers. A selection of recording devices hidden behind glass. A couple of model dummies painted silver. In one corner is a wooden sculpture higher than my waist. Two figures, twisted like they are formed from driftwood, sit on a bench under the words ‘A Boy and his Bear, by Walton Kearney.’
Near a table of severed polystyrene heads were several well-used wooden cupboards and set of drawers, both smudged with paint. I opened a few of the drawers at random. Stuffed into each one were ragged stacks of notebooks,folders, crumpled sheets of paper. In one there was even a filofax, the plastic cover bent and sticky. Was someone intending to throw this stuff out?
Wedged into the corner behind this selection was a cardboard packet. I picked it up. The grinning joker on the dog-eared front declared this was a pack of cards. I popped open the top, and expected to find plastic scorpions, or a scroll in an unknown language. But inside were normal pack of cards, thin as razor blades.
Drawings and patterns in black ball point pen defaced every figure and number. Scrawled on the back the same pen had written lines and lines of spidery text. Some had faded photos attached to them with rusty paper clips.
The snow hammered down, increasing the snug cushion around the building.
Fifty-two to read.
I was getting in the swing of this.