Prologue: Every few minutes, a whirring, chopping sound came, paused, then came again. In the silent moments between, a hazy circle of light from the narrow room’s one lamp illuminated a desk, and on it the slender hands of a young woman. The hands picked up another church bulletin and began to write. Fast, hard strokes shaped words along the margins, under announcements, between paragraphs listing nursery schedules and coming events. Black letters formed dark words, fragments, sentences, until every portion of white space succumbed to pressure and ink. Once filled, the burdened sheet of paper was set aside and another chosen. It too was methodically filled, then another, until the stack reached five high. The hands shook as they lifted the stack and fed each bulletin into a desktop paper shredder positioned half-in, half-out of the circle of light. The small machine vibrated on the desk, chewing each paper before releasing proof of its destructive success into the pile of torn and useless shreds below. Only when every leftover bulletin had been covered with words, then shredded, did the hands still. They opened, palm up, to cover the woman’s face as she dropped her head and sobbed.
Posted on: Mon, 15 Jul 2013 14:03:48 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015