The Deconstructionist who liked books

Another of my monster stories for kids who are adult in years. You can now buy the whole book, either as an ebook, or as old-fashioned dead tree print.

That second link also allows to look around inside.

Always read between the lions.

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Spanner the Surfing Wrench was a deconstructionist. She was an expert at taking machinery apart, and most of the deconstructionists admired her mechanical skills. All the same, Spanner couldn’t ever make friends with other deconstructionists, because she liked books.

When she was little, her family worried about the way she read. “Why can’t you rip the ears off teddy-bears like your brothers and sisters?” her mother asked her one afternoon.

Spanner just sighed, and turned over the page. They would never understand, but her books made good friends.

Constructors put things together, but deconstructionists get their name because they like taking things apart. At home, they call themselves Decos, and they were active in Egypt in the days when the pharaohs made pyramids. Back then, the things Decos liked best was taking the head off a hammer, or separating a pick or an axe from its handle.

Then one of them, a deconstructionist called Ptakeittobits discovered papyruses and decided to pull those apart as well, because one of them told readers about better ways of repairing axes and hammers and picks. Ptakeittobits shook his head. “We don’t need that,” he growled as he chewed up the papyrus.

A papyrus is a long roll of stuff that looks like paper. The Egyptians used to write things on papyrus, and sometimes they would add drawings, before they glued the pieces together to make a long scroll.

Ptakeittobits found one of these one day, and realised that if you undid the glue, the scroll would fall apart. He started with that, then he began changing what was on the papyruses, and for a while, the Egyptians made upside-down pyramids. “It’s brilliant,” he told his friends, “all the taking apart just takes care of itself…”

Later, the ancient Romans had problems when the deconstructionists discovered Rome. It took a long while for them to get there, because every time the Decos set out to sail from Egypt to Rome, one of them would start taking the ship apart, they would all join in, and all the deconstructionists would drown.

In the end, the deconstructionists walked east, all the way around the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, and then west to get down into Italy. By the time the deconstructionists got to Rome, the Romans had forgotten about them, and they had started gluing sheets of paper together to make scrolls.

Well, the deconstructionists soon put an end to that! The Romans were clever, but Biblius Philius was the cleverest of them all, because he came up with the idea of stitching sheets together, so there was no glue to undo.

When the deconstructionists made it to Rome and learned to cut the stitching on books, Biblius Philius invented page numbering and book binding, so the pages could be assembled once more, and then be bound again.

Sometimes the book lovers won, and sometimes the deconstructionists won. Illuminated manuscripts used poisonous pigments full of arsenic and lead, mainly because it stopped the deconstructionists chewing the pages. In the end, the deconstructionists learned to wash the pages before they chewed them, and the Dark Ages started when all the illuminated manuscripts were eaten.

Over time, most of the deconstructionists found other things to do. Some worked for builders as demolition experts. Some learned to pull old cars apart for spare parts, but most of the time they forgot and pulled the spare parts apart as well. Most deconstructionists weren’t very bright, because they never read books.

Modern times have been hard for the deconstructionists. It’s hard when you plant a vegetable garden and somebody in the family digs the seeds up every five minutes to see how they are doing. Sometimes, there was no work to be found, but the deconstructionists scraped by.

Still, wherever deconstructionists went, even if they worked in some other area, they liked to damage books whenever they could. They would sneak into libraries and put books on the wrong shelves, they would scribble in books, they would tear books, they would steal books, they would borrow books and not return them. All of this made it very hard for Spanner, who was often stopped at library doors, because all the deconstructionists look like each other.

And then she met Jo March.

Jo had been brought up to judge people by their actions, not by their appearances. More importantly for Spanner, Jo wanted to be a writer. In her researches for plot ideas for books, she had excited the suspicions of public librarians by asking for works on poisons. Now she was older, they knew Jo and trusted her when she spoke up for her friend Spanner, who might look like a monster, but who really, really loved books.

“And I don’t love books the way my father does,” Spanner told the nice librarian. “He likes to curl up in front of a fire and eat toasted pages. I just like to read them.”

Over time, Jo and Spanner became interested in how books were made and how they were repaired, so they went to one of the library technicians who knew all the old skills of book binding. Spanner’s family had taught her well, so she was already expert at taking a book apart into its sections, but now she and Jo learned the old arts of stitching, gluing. trimming and binding old books and slipping them into new covers.

“Taking apart’s much more fun when you turn around and put the bits back together again,” Spanner told Jo, who just grinned.

At home, Spanner’s family noticed that she was behaving more like a proper deconstructionist, pulling things apart. They worried, though, when they found her reassembling an old broken alarm clock. They were shocked when she set it going and it worked. Then she took apart an old television set, soldered it all together again, and it worked as well.

The family learned to turn the television on when the alarm went off, and sit around watching Demolition Derby and Great Junkyards of the World on the fixed TV set. Soon, they began to say nice things about Spanner and her fixing skills.

All the same, her father Bash looked worried and muttered “It’s not quite right for a deconstructionist…” He shivered and threw a few sheets of the Book of Kells on the fire.

“No,” said Mash, her mother. “It’s more like a reconstructionist than a deconstructionist. I’m not sure that we should tell the rest of the tribe, just in case the High Degger gets cranky, but there’s money in it, Bash. I think I’ll do something about putting all the old car parts together.”

Spanner’s family would have been more worried if they had known what she was doing in the library now. She was studying history, and in particular, the history of the poisonings caused by pigments in the old illuminated manuscripts that her ancestors had eaten.

One day they were at the beach, because Jo liked to swim and Spanner liked the breaking waves. “It’s amazing,” she told Jo. “All those bright colours seem to involve metals that are poisonous to us. Even painters used to get sick from them.”

She and Jo started looking into poisons and what they do. Jo was interested because she was going to write a murder mystery, but Spanner was beginning to think that it might be fun to make some new illuminated manuscripts to replace the ones her ancestors had eaten.

The only catch was that she didn’t want to be poisoned, so she needed to understand about all sorts of poisons that might be found in paints. Jo planned a murder story, set in an old monastery, and the plot involved manuscript pigments. “I’ll call it The Aim of a Nose,” she said.

They had no idea how useful all their study was about to be.

Mash and Bash had put together all the pulled-apart things in the house, but then a call went out for all the deconstructionists to come and help take apart a whole lot of old ships. It was well-paid work, and it involved cutting up the ships with tools and big torches.

Best of all, there would be lots of things falling down and making loud crashes. There is nothing a traditional deconstructionist likes better than the loud crash of bits falling off something, and Mash and Bash were very traditional.

Even though they were very traditional, Mash and Bash let Spanner do as she wanted. Spanner would come down to the breaking yard at lunch time. They would all break bread together, drink bits and pieces soup and eat lots of pizza, before they finished up with broken biscuits and Broken Orange Pekoe tea.

In the third week, Spanner noticed that all of the workers seemed tired. They had trouble lifting their heavy tools, and they complained all the time about having stomach aches, and deconstructionists never do that. Spanner started asking a few questions. Then she went back to the library to talk to Jo, because she had remembered something.

“It’s a nasty condition called Devon colic,” she told Jo. “But I can’t see where it’s coming from. Ships are made of steel, not lead!”

Jo thought for a moment and then walked over to a shelf and took down a large book. She looked in the index and opened the book up. “It’s the paint,” she said. Under all the other paint, there’s a layer of paint called red lead. They’ll need dust masks, or maybe breathing apparatus. We’ll have to tell them.”

“Right,” said Spanner. “Now don’t worry, I won’t tear the page out, but we’d better photocopy it.”

Within a week, all of the deconstructionists at the ship yard were happy, healthy, and making twice as many bits and pieces. The High Degger, the leader of the whole deconstructionist tribe, came on a special royal visit. He listened to what the tribe said and then called Spanner over.

“Reading has never been our way,” he said. “But it seems that your reading has saved the whole tribe from being very sick. Keep up the good work!”

And ever since that day, deconstructionists have been great readers, even if they read in a funny way.

Notes (for groan-ups):

Told to the author by the High Degger during breaks in the conversation, in broken English.

All the words in this translation were hand-crafted by traditional artisans working in reputable fair-trade workshops.

All rapping on doors, walls and fragile things in this work was all done by Mr McHammer.

Jo March appeared in this story by courtesy of L. M. Alcott Enterprises.

The Book of Kells was not harmed, as it was played by a stunt double supplied by Barbara Cartland.

Special illumination make-up by the House of Caravaggio.

All books damaged in the back story were later given first aid and provided with shelter under the Palimpsest Resettlement Program.

The Broken Orange Pekoe was bathed in hot water, and now feels much better.

Reference: Jack Derider, trans. Alan Bass, Writhing and Diffidence.

Vincent van Gogh: Semiotics: listening with half an ear.