The Reader

A photo from a shoot with Julie Wions prompted me to write a little so-so prose.

The Reader, captive in a darkened room, reads as she was taught. One word at a time; one line, one page; one book at a time. When she’s finished reading a book it goes in the pile and she takes the next one down from the shelf. It’s essential that everything follow a specific order. She’s learned not to even look at the shelves anymore; the work is easier if she doesn’t know what comes next. 

Her work is not difficult. She reads at night and sleeps through the day. Sometimes when the weather is fair she even reads outside. She’s learned to make her captors her servants as the old woman said she would. Though she still can’t stand their vulgar attentions, she has learned to make herself not present when they arrive to court her affections. The tall one has a lisp and recently has taken to twirling the ends of the thin greasy  mustache he has growing above his upper lip. He seems to think it makes him appear genteel. But it’s the squat one she despises the most, he smells of sickly sweet ambergris and rotting fish and his skin is so oily it appears to be painted on.

Today she has spoken not a single word. Her eyes capture every letter from the dry, brittle pages as the Readers’ before her did and, as she suspects, the Reader’s who will come after her will. She has worked here alone since the old woman died, though she doesn’t remember how long ago that was. She remembers the woman’s servants appeared dressed in heavy black funerary suits and carried her body out wrapped in a sheet from the bed where her predecessor passed from life.

So she reads. Devouring even the faintest traces, leaving not even the suggestion of  letter forms in the wake of her gaze on the surface of the lamp-lit paper. The Reader commits them all to memory. And then  the door opens.