Slyly peeking around the corner of his book, Glen stared at it. It isn't that anybody should care about his staring, just that he felt an inexplicable sense of guilt for doing so. But he couldn't take his eyes off of it. It was the ugliest thing he had ever seen and he could not for the life of him tear himself away from drinking in its disgusting form. Unwilled, the edges of his thin mouth curled downwards into a snarl.
The object of Glen's secret, shameful study was a sculpture; one of many that populated the library. There were only four or five attendants on hand at any one given time in the Wolshire Branch Library, but there were a thousand eyes.
The sculptures were, Glen fancied, the deathbed wish of some crumbling aristocrat who tried to balance the scales of heaven by flinging vast sums of money at honorable institutions in the twilight of his debauched life. The swollen, cracked lips of this imaginary man (it was of course, a man) spoke in Glen's mind, hissing authoritatively "Use some of my money to fill the Wolshire Branch with scuptures..." and the man's eyes rolled halfway back and saliva pooled in his mouth before he regained composure and continued, "sculp...scuptures of sea creatures-the beasts of the ocean to watch over our books."
And then he died, and went to Hell anyways.
Glen looked from left to right, safely behind his novel and then, upon seeing that it was safe chanced one final glance at it. There it was, a hideous golden eel as large as in nature and ten times as menacing. Its body, a cleaner, clearer gold color was wrapped around jagged black sculpted oceanic rock. Its head rise above the rock, a dulling shade of gold as the hands of many children had rubbed it or, more likely Glen thought, mothers covered it from their babies' eyes.
It was at that moment that Glen, timid Glen, decided that he would steal the golden eel. He would steal it and he would kill it.
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