(Books by Authors Who Never Existed:  A Steampunk Hybrid story)

Mr. TLC and the Book Stealer [Part 2]

(Books by Authors Who Never Existed:  A Steampunk Hybrid story)

By the author of BARD: Owner of the Gemstone

Tobey dashes down the rest of the stairs and jumps onto the Salinas desk with the bookcase of special books that mother keeps as a reminder of father.  Through the arched entranceway to the living room, he sees mother reclining with a knitting needle and yarn.  She seems very complacent.  He yells at her in human but her brass ear horn is inconveniently lying on top of a night table.  One of the doorknobs of the front door creaks open.  There’s no time to physically warn her.  He hisses at the door.

The door opens and the man walks with determined and heavy steps directly towards the books.  Tobey waits atop the Silas desk because it’s directly across from the front doors.  He notices an hourglass attached to the belt on the man’s top hat.  The grains in the upper section are almost all gone.  The man’s clamp hand reaches towards one of the books.  Tobey swats it away.

Again, the man raises the clamp hand, and again, Tobey swats at it.  The steam coming out of a pipe in the man’s top hat is wispier now.  The clamp hand shakes as it tries to raise as the last grains of sand settle on the bottom of the hour glass.  The mechanical arm of the clamp hand drops to the man’s side.

Tobey swats the man’s face as a reminder of his supremacy.