This is a short story that I was inspired to write by Ben Harris after his recent #booksnearbedtime chat on Twitter. He had a question that was devilishly cruel and asked us which book we would choose if we had to give all of our books away but were allowed to choose one book to read for a last time. He thought the concept would make a good idea for a novel and I agree. Whilst I couldn’t quite stretch to a novel I have been inspired to write and so here is my short story that explores the moment the choice has to be made by someone.

They stand in their dour uniforms with faces blank and impassive, waiting for me to choose.

Choose? How can I choose?

The two monoliths of men wait in their grey greatcoats seeming to devour the space of my small front room. My library of shelves looks small and insignificant compared to them. I look small and insignificant compared to them.

My books. They want to take my books.

What sort of cruel mind devises a punishment like this?

My crime? A simple one.
Reading.

Only reading.

Reading and daring to have an opinion.

My books are my life, my soul. They have expanded my world view and challenged my thinking, taught me to question. That was my mistake. I should have kept my opinions to myself; kept my questions unvoiced. These people who control our world don’t like challenge, don’t like different thinking, creative thinking. They live in a monochrome world with monochrome thoughts, want us all to live there with them. Simple and controlled. My books, with their colourful spines and colourful words have opened my eyes to what lies beyond our still grey existence. I have rebelled, I have stepped out of the norm and now I am to be punished.

I have been asked to choose. Just one they said. One book and only one.

“Before the rest are taken away, you may read one. Savour it for it will be your last.”

I look over at my shelves, filling the wall where the government issue video screen should be. Filled with ideas and thinking from Atwood to Karouac, from Amis to Auden and I wonder how I shall make this Hobson’s choice. I feel myself begin to hyperventilate and I cry out in short desperate gasps, falling to my knees. The books before me begin to blur. I have an overwhelming feeling of defeat.

The government men, those two hulking officials, look on unmoved.

“How? How I can I choose? Don’t make me do this,” I plead.

“You choose one or none. That is the choice.”

These are the first words either of them has uttered since they handed me the court ordered death sentence to my way of life. The court order that is laughingly my escape from internment, my only lifeline to be allowed to live on within ‘acceptable’ society. It lies on the pine-coloured table in the centre of the room, languishing carelessly on the corner, hanging off the side and hiding the ring stains of coffee cups that have built through years of my habitual reading and relaxing with a nice hot mug.

I think back to that fateful day in the courtroom where they laid out their ultimatum: internment or submit to ‘re-education outreach.’ I knew where internment led, or rather I knew it was just another way of saying ‘disappear the inconvenient.’ Nobody came back from internment. Nobody.

So I chose to live.

They will force me to attend a re-education course. Progress will be reviewed after 12 weeks. I shall present the image of the perfect citizen by then. Quiet and compliant, obedient and unquestioning. I shall become one of the crowd, not worthy of notice any more. That is what they hope. That is what I hope too.

But when they offered this choice at life there was a sting in the tail. I was also presented with another choice, an ultimatum.

“You love your books more than your government, so we give you the choice. Choose one and only one. All of your books will be taken, but before they go you may read one. One last time reading a book of your choice before you submit to government dictated rhetoric.”

At the time I thought the judge was being kind. What a fool I was. He wasn’t sympathetic to my feelings; I know now just how unsympathetic he was. I learned later that this is all part of the process, this is nothing unusual. It is how they deal with all the subversives like me. They might as well have asked me to choose my favourite child to spend my last fleeting moments with, if I had any. Too choose only one book to have that last moment of joy with, to savour, it is an impossible choice.

I compose myself, slowing my breathing and give the two granite like officials a hard stare.

“Ok, I will choose.”

I stare at my books, hoping for inspiration, for one to leap out to me but nothing immediately does. And then I see it, the one calling to me, the one that gives me my inspiration. I glance at the government men and hope that these two perpetrators of my punishment are indifferent to my choice because I am hardly being subtle. I pick ‘Pedagogy of the Oppressed’ by Paulo Freire. I hold it, cradle it like the priceless thing it is. I can’t keep it, but they will let me read it one last time. I shall allow these words to inhabit me, I shall keep them locked away in the recesses of my mind where the government re-educators cannot touch them. They shall energise and inspire me. They will be accompanied by ‘And Still I Rise’ by Maya Angelou which I have already committed to memory.

The government may have me in their vice and give me no choice in how they shape me to fit in with their new dawn of uniformity, but I shall never truly be theirs. I shall resist, subtly and secretly. My mind has taken me to places they can only imagine; my thoughts and memories cannot be taken away. I may not voice them anymore, but they will still be there. I hold my book and look again at the government men.

“This one,” I say. “I shall read this one.”

They stand, unmoving and uncaring. They see this as an end. A completion of their duty, bringing a free-thinking subversive into line. But I know, this is not an end.

This is just the beginning.