No Spitting in the Library

"Hi, do you have a small meeting room?" She was small and wearing a long yellow scarf with little orange pumpkins on it. Her smile made me smile.

"We do. You're in luck, there's one free. Do you have a library card?" I said.

She frowned. "I don't."

"That's okay. We just need to hold a form of identification, then. They check out for an hour and that's rounded up for the quarter hour. So for now, you'd have it until 11:15."

She handed over her driver's license. It was from the next state over. Her name was Karen. I made a note on the sign-in sheet for the small study rooms. "How many people?"

"Three," Karen said.

"Okay. Let me unlock the room for you." I walked her over and she went inside, setting down a small purse and taking off the yellow scarf. She carefully laid it on the table and arranged it in a circle.

"Can I leave my things here?" she said.

"I can lock the room if you leave, but we recommend not leaving valuables anywhere in the library."

"I just need to wait in the parking lot for the others," she said.

"Sounds good," I said. The room had a window, and as I locked the door I swear I saw the scarf move.

A few minutes later, she returned with a couple holding hands. He had an Ichabod Crane look to him, all bent parts, while she had the matronly feel of someone who watched every episode of Murder She Wrote annually. They seemed excited. We all three walked back to the study rooms, me in the lead to unlock the door. As I put my key in the lock, I glanced in the room to see a cobra rise up on the table.

I stepped back. "Oh hell no," I said. The creature lay tangled in the yellow scarf, its tan and brown mixing with the pumpkins. Six inches of snake hung in the air looking at me with its skin open.

Karen put a hand to her mouth. "She woke up."

The couple crowded me at the window. Ichabod said, "Look at her. Three feet, seven inches?"

"Ten inches," Karen said. Turning to me, "Can you open the door?"

"No," I said.

"Sir, I need to get to her before she-" She was cut off by the sound of something hitting the glass. I turned to see a thick liquid oozing down the glass.

"Magnificent. Twelve hundred, you said?" said Angela Lansbury.

"I'm not opening that door," I said.

Karen raised her voice, "Please open the door or she'll get really mad."

"I don't even know how to clean that off the window," I said. "You brought a cobra in a library?"

Another splat.

"She's perfectly safe," Karen said.

"So that's Kool-Aid she's spitting?" I said.

Angela Lansbury said, "Actually they don't spit. It's a pressure-"

"I'm calling animal control," I said and walked away. Karen followed.

"Sir, you can't lock my property away from me like that," she said.

From behind me I heard Ichabod and Angela talking. They were also mad, but I was done with all of this. Experts needed to weigh in.

I dialed the emergency number and Gladys came on. "Hey, what's happening at the library today?"

"We got a spitting cobra in the study room," I said.

"I'll transfer you to Amy with animal control," Gladys said.

Karen said, "You can't call them. They'll take her away."

While the phone rang, glass broke. I turned to see the window to the study room was broken. The door opened. The couple had decided to get the snake themselves. Then the screaming started. Karen ran toward the front door.

The phone picked up. Amy said, "Y'all got another nest of bats for me? Llama?"

"Spitting cobra."

"You guys like to challenge me," she said.

"Can you call the police and ambulance, too? I need to evacuate."

Amy said sure and hung up. I pulled the alarm behind the desk and started making the rounds to get people out of the library, texting the all-staff channel about the snake probably loose in the building.