Dancing Fairies

The blaring sound of sirens cut through the icy winter air. Breathing out, Alanis could see white puffs of hot air escaping from his lips before a clear mask was gingerly placed over his mouth by a panicking nurse in a large beige winter coat, an ID card hanging around her neck. Alanis tried to read it but his vision had become blurry from the large amounts of blood he had lost, soaking the white snow beneath him.

He could hear drowned out voices around him, voices he did not recognize. Blurry lights danced in his vision, like the fairies from the children's books he used to read. For the first time in months, he finally felt at peace. As the will to keep his eyes open slowly seep away with each graceful step that the fairies took.

Until a month ago, he was the ghostwriter to Luke R. Wilson, a very popular author of his time. His life had not been easy. If not for his talent in literature, he could not survive while taking care of his younger brother, Samuel.

His mother had died giving birth to Samuel, using her last words to utter the name she had chosen before her strength failed her and her eyes closed for the last time. Alanis was forced to watch as his father descended into madness. By the time he was 17, the gambling and all the cheap beer had finally caught up to Alanis's father and the massive debt drove his already unstable mental health over the edge. On the anniversary of his mother's death, he came home to the lifeless body of his father, hanged like the Christmas ornaments they used to hang when his mother was still alive. Leaving him and his brother to deal with the massive debt their father had accumulated.

Unlike Alanis, Samuel was a very smart child. Always praised by his teachers for getting first in the class. Alanis knew that Samuel deserved to get his education. But they just couldn't afford college, much less for two people. So without any other options, Alanis dropped out of high school.

But finding work was not easy, every job he applied for was taken by someone with better qualifications. Alanis could only find work at the local library.

The library was surrounded by a large garden that his parents used to take him to when he was three. They used to have picnics on the benches, played in the tall hedges of the maze, and read books under the shade of the large oak tree in the center of the garden. But this all stopped after his mother's death.

She had loved reading more than anything else in the world, this love of books had been inherited by Alanis. Peddling his bike uphill on the same familiar roads, the old library building came into sight, the same building where he met him, Luke R Wilson. The man who would become his employer.