The Weirdest Conversation

I'm stuck in a haunted hotel. I have to find my way out but I can't since the stairs lead you back to the floor you came from and elevators open to floors that have no floors. Everything is a nostalgic shade of sepia and I could almost love that hotel except that it's haunted, it's scary, something evil is after me and I cry. What did I do to deserve this? What did I do? Why am I being punished? Leave me alone! Stop hurting me!

Someone meets me in the hallway and gives me my "mission" that I must accomplish before I am allowed out of the hotel. This mission will lead me to my destiny. I walk and find myself in a library with shelves a hundred feet high filled with all the books I could ever want, ever.

An elf meets me and says, "I am your trainer. You're here to find your destiny. You're here to learn from me."

"Learn what?" I ask and I secretly think, "Please, not a sport."

He reads my mind and giggles, his tiny self convulsing with laughter. He says, "Everything you need to know is written in these books," and his little hand gestures upward, towards the shelves that stretch a hundred feet.

And for some reason, the hauntedness disappears. I am a student again and I feel safe in this gigantic library with my tiny trainer and I've always been an eager pupil and if this elf wants me to learn from all these books then I will.

He says, "Let's start but you must be ready because... it will hurt. You must listen to me always and follow everything I say." His little almond eyes twinkle at me.

And I silently think, "Jesus. Am I to be the next Electric Michaelangelo?" But he reads my mind again and giggles.

I try something. "Can you read my mind?" I say silently, in my mind.

"Yes," he says in his mind.

"I read minds too. I think. Sometimes. I'm good at guessing people's intentions," I say silently, in my mind. This is the weirdest conversation I've had in my life.

"It's a talent of yours which has always creeped you out a bit, hasn't it?"

I hang my head guiltily and also to hide a tear. "It's made me paranoid and crazy."

He giggles out loud and says to me in his head, "It's made you a good teacher and you've never been wrong in Elimidate."

I walk around the shelves and let my fingers graze the spines of the books and I feel a peace descend upon me. How nice to have someone understand me. To know what I'm thinking even before I have thought it. To not think of me as malicious. To take time out to train me. How could this possibly hurt? I could spend a lifetime and learn everything I need to know from my elf trainer and never go back to the world. I could die here.

I pick a book. "I'd like to start with this please --" but when I turn around to hand him the book, he's gone.