"The Collector" - a short story

This is a short story I wrote for an anthology. It was passed over, and I was looking for another place to submit it too. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to fit in anywhere else. So, why not give it a home here?
I like it as a story, so I'm glad to share it!
Please remember to check me out at my author page on Facebook at facebook.com/authoremilyblue. Or, if you've got Twitter, I'm @Miss_Emily_Blue
Self-promotion completed, here's the story! Enjoy!
The Collector

The kitten paddled her palm with tiny paws, the round bulge of its soft stomach rubbing her fingers. Her heart ached with a fierce love she’d never felt before, a glow of heat spread into her throat and stomach.

“I think she likes you, Gene.”

Imogene let her gaze linger on the kitten’s thin tuft of a tail, the flat ears and the pink button nose between unopened eyes, savoring the details like a critic appreciating the fine nuances of a novel. “It’s a mutual feeling,” she murmured. “It’s a girl for sure?”

“Well, it’s hard to tell yet, but we think so. It’s funny, I could have sworn you said you didn’t like pets.”

With the utmost care, Imogene placed the little calico kitten back in the basket with the rest of the litter. The mother cat swept out her paw and pulled her daughter between her paws and began to bathe her with quick laps from a bright pink tongue. Imogene straightened up and looked at her neighbor. “What I said is I’ve never had a pet.”

“Every person should have at least one pet. It’s a good experience.”

The experience was what she was after.

The experience was always what she was after.

Fingers trembling, Imogene fished a $20 bill out of her wallet and gave it to her neighbor to have the calico kitten held for her. In seven weeks, the darling creature would come home with her and she would discover the world through its newly-open eyes, seeing and learning in ways she knew she couldn’t currently imagine. Anticipation flowed through her veins, sharpening her senses, filling her with the urge to shout simply to shout, to expend sudden energy.

The kittens needed sleep, and the neighbor needed to tend to chores before her husband came home. Imogene let herself be guided to the door where she said a hasty farewell. She stepped outside and bounded across the adjacent yards to her own front door, and leaped inside. 

She rushed through the foyer and down the hall to what might have been a bedroom if she’d lived with anyone else. Instead, the room was filled with bookshelves, shelves upon shelves, so many that they protruded out into the hallway and prevented the door from shutting. It was a library, though the clutter gave it the feel of a maze. 

Each bookcase held notebooks, ancient journals with yellowing pages, school-issued composition books, moleskins and pocket diaries with trendy cover designs. The smell of paper filled the air, light and sharp as a cut.

Imogene trailed her hand over the shelves as she walked, skimming her fingers over polished wood and uneven bindings. 

She was a collector. Only blank books would do as vessels, holding the memories and experiences she poured into them to build the library of her life. 

She closed her eyes, letting her feet carry her through the narrow aisles, walking a path she’d traveled a thousand times, of which she would never tire. Sensations tugged at her, mischievous ghosts of recollection, not as strong as what the books held but enough to turn her thoughts to the times gone past. Sunlight on her skin and damp grass under her bare feet, the cold of a winter wind blowing her from behind, making her feel as if she could start running and lift up in the air. 

She felt, distantly, in her mind, a hand on her knee and a soft-lipped kiss, and gray ocean waves coiling around her ankles. Bittersweet thoughts of her ex, on the heels of anger that still stirred the hairs on the back of her neck. The first sip of coffee at dawn. Taking a wrong turn off the highway, the queer empty isolation of a forgotten town.

All these and more, she had stored. When she opened a book, the distant memories crackled to life like a kindled fire and she experienced all over again the distinct moments that made up this first half of her life. 

Imogene opened her eyes. She stood next to a bookcase, mostly empty except for a few thin notebooks on the top shelf. She picked up the newest one and opened the cover, inhaling the scent of leather. She flipped past the decorative title page. This part was important. Every aspect of the magic of memory-keeping had to be exactly right. Nothing could be out of place, and that meant turning to the right page. The first page, where all stories began.

Her heart swelled in her chest as she recalled the weight of the kitten in the palm of her hand, so light and yet so powerful, so full of life and potential. The experience, uniquely hers, flowed from her in a neutral-toned, subtle light, filling the pages to brimming with emotion. No bright flashes accompanied the transfer, no gaudy sparkles or puffs of smoke, none of the usual trappings people expected from stage magic. This was real, and it could only be caught in the twisted, acutely-angled corners formed by the meeting of bookshelves. It was elusive and had to be worked for, chased, pursued.

Her shoulders slackened as the current of magic slowed, finally stopping when there was nothing left in her to give. Now, whenever she liked, whenever she wanted to feel this exact way again, she could come here and open this notebook and recall it all.

Imogene moved away from the shelf to a box in the corner, where she picked out another notebook at random. She set it on the mostly-empty shelf with the others for the next time.

The work of a collector was never done, after all.

The End

© 2019 Emily Blue