Reading Reflections

Calvin Walker had tried stuffing a pillow over his head, literal earplugs, and headphones pumping as many piano pieces as possible to drown out the audio water torture that was his invalid father, Reynold.

He used his mind to imagine the words changed, no more than the cooing of a bird through the window. That just wasn't possible.

"I'm hurting badly! My feet hurt badly!" The words just did not translate into anything so pleasant.

Each cry though, he came or he answered. And each time he looked at his father, with his wandering gaze, trapped in a bed with a voice still his own but a mind which fought to understand. When he was there, Reynold couldn't tell his son what was wrong. No aid or comfort soothed his pain. He couldn't help but wonder if his father's mangled mind found alarm in the oscillating fan brushing the hairs on his arm. But while an infant might learn and realize this wasn't a danger, the regression slipped that hold each time and he fretted ever more plaintively.

He let out a deeper, still, and mellow voice at his father's bedside. He hated that voice even though it was more confident and clearer. It wasn't him. It wasn't his words but it was what his father needed, so he tolerated it. Most times.

This day, he just couldn't. The night before had dragged from sunset to night to burning, teary morning with the constant drumbeat of two every minute of his father's rote phrase about the pain then about how he needed help and it was terrible pain and he needed help and the pain and he needed help and it was the terrible pain and he needed help and it was the terrible pain and he needed help and and and...

Morning was past exhaustion while he dreamed more repetitions merely translated into wolves outside a forest. Continuing again that noontime sent him to his edge. To steam and disgust and a wild swarm of emotions he knew his father didn't deserve, but he felt true all the same. He puffed and dashed his car away from the house during a break when a caregiver would shoulder a few hours for him.

A blanket of random 80s rock from a station deep in the salt flats cooled him along with the curtain of cold air through the vents. He had one destination in mind: A library.

Not exactly a riotous time out but healing for him. The one far to the east, past all the parched, cracked lake beds and gnarled shrubs girdling dusty plateaus.

The library was new for him, once half a laundromat and a grocery store. The remnants remained with an ever-present soapy aroma mixed with old cereal. He wandered by books he knew he would never be able to finish in peace with lofty, fantastical peaks and starry voids.

He slipped past the audiobooks and took a moment at the metaphysical section, just a little ways into the 100s. A large, roughly-bound tome caught his eye. He'd spent plenty of hours scouring the county online catalog for works of every flavor, but this was something unique, something special, which he had never seen at a library. It looked too real, too rough to be in a place like this. It hadn't even been surrounded by protective plastic. However, slipping it off the shelf, it still shined.

The front cover, decorated with strange text like something out of the Voynich Manuscript, held a vast, reflective glass at the center. It reminded him of those rounded dishes hung on store walls to catch shoplifters. It caught a distortion of his face, which made him turn away.

Waiting his turn in line at the help desk, he stole glances at the librarian. His eyes kept searching her face. It was immensely cute. Fair, flush cheeks. Rounded softness. A hairless, silken sheen. A dainty nose that held her wide glasses. Then a long, brushy bloom of hair that framed it all. He swallowed and tried to make up for looking by searching the lines of the tile floor even as the thought of her face sent a shiver down his back.

Soon, he had to face her. He pulled on a calm expression to match her light grin as he asked, "What is this book?"

She held and turned it around a few times. "Oh, this is a new one. It was donated last week but no one can make sense of it. Want to check it out?"

Calvin gently turned the book. He wanted to ask more questions, to wonder if this should even be out in circulation. But this seemed special and intriguing, even if that was a silly notion to foster.

"Sure, not like I have anything better to do," he told the librarian as casually as possible.

He expected some sort of library police to burst out and seize this delightful mystery from him at any moment. But the librarian smiled with her cute cheeks and checked out the book. Three weeks. Then she waved for the next patron.

No surprise, screams, or other anarchy. Just the routine hush of the library. Calvin still hustled out with the strange book intimately pressed to his chest.

He set the book on the seat beside him. It sunk into the old, faded material and slid around as he pulled out of the spot. It was at no risk of falling off and getting dog-eared, so he let it be.

The air dropped from moist stagnation to that curtain again. He was way the heck out there, so he took the slow route home, past a dozen crusty liquor markets, tiny dusty diners, smoky pizzerias, new farming suppliers, old brick post offices, and busy dollar stores, till he returned to the overbuilt tract homes.

The perfect place for mental wandering. He thought about the librarian. His face reflected in the side window, shadowed and harsher than he wanted. He looked for that lady's face instead, pleasant despite the dimming light. What a face to meet and greet the world!

He had been called handsome, even in his sleep-deprived hours. Some even complimented his smile. They said he was "nice". He'd tried to see and show it. It wasn't the worst thing to hear but the mental reflection of the librarian, of those full and smooth cheeks and easy, radiant smile... There was no comparison. A face like that reflected how he sought to feel.

With a swallow and a sigh, he held on the face, an idle notion following his thoughts of the passing terrain like an eager puppy.

Curving past a wash and a hiking point, he let the car coast down by schools, rows of apartments, and elevated train tracks. He pulled into the fast food place on the right and searched the menu. While he was tempted to try something else, his favorite meal (the BBQ chicken sandwich) was all he needed.

At the window, he set the parking brake and waited. Back at the register was a girl whose uniform didn't even try to hide the curves of her chest. It actually highlighted them. The slope was broad but high. Full, but not overflowing. He had sighed through so many images on his laptop but right here, in living flesh, was something to make his breath catch.

The rest of her was cute but that chest, that bust. It was enough to make anyone envious.

Calvin watched and reflected, I bet those would feel amazingly soft. I wish I could experience that for myself, at least once...

He passed money to the other server with his food and set the bag on the floor, away from the book. Before driving off, he asked for a container of their spicy sauce because he knew it would take a minute to prepare and afford him one more moment to look and wonder. He could go inside but that felt terrifying.

Ambling through the parking lot, he took the back way through unfinished roads and scattered homes with dusty, spacious lots. On the spotty sidewalk, a shapely young woman jogged in a cotton/spandex outfit, not a care in the world as her ponytail bounced from side to side.

Her behind stayed in Calvin's thoughts. It swelled against her pants, impressively large but perfectly formed. She must have been working on it for a long time. Again, he thought to himself, I wish...oh I wish I had a shapely ass like that to sit on. A personal cushion to enjoy on any hard, wooden chair...

No matter how much work he might do or running he might undertake, he knew a flat and achy butt was all he could ever hope for, not one as delightfully plush as hers. He couldn't linger long but he held the image of her with the rest as he reentered his neighborhood.

Inside, the caregiver had already left but she had put his father to bed first and he was loudly snoring with faint whimpering as an old revival recording from a big tent evangelist played. He touched his father gently on the forehead and squeezed a single pillow underneath to prop up his head. His father didn't rouse but he stopped whimpering. Rubbing his eyes at the golden scripture on-screen, Calvin went back for everything in his car.

He ate the fresh lettuce out of the sandwich and set the rest in the microwave to keep it warm. He flipped through a few pages of that special book and read to himself the first words he saw, "Presevemi urismodu quam necilis tortorarana rebrosa, vel traposavem sapienatero mirerra..." His father suddenly snored loudly, so he tucked the tome under his arm and made his way to his room. Well, what functioned as his room with space stolen and objects shifted around to serve the needs of his father's care.

Reading, the gibberish continued until it became impossible to speak. Yet, his eyes glazed over with the sound and translating. He just saw the words rushing past his eyes like code flowing from a screen as it booted up.

A thought, beyond and from the words appeared to fill the page like each word was a part of the puzzle. It could only read, "Imagine. It will be. Close your eyes. Open your mind."

Then, it switched, like a cross-eyed image, and became, "When you know what you wish, feel the image, touch the mirror, to reflect your inner reality."

With a blink, it was back to a mess of nonsense filling a page. He shook his head with a snort. Such a strange thing to come up with. Surely, it was his own thoughts making something of nothing, of a book that had to have been written as a joke. Just a daydream of letters. Still, he had felt confident of those words.

His mirror sat on the other end of the room, recently-wiped but old and ringed by fancy woodwork.

With a sigh, he muttered, "Sure. Why the hell not? Nothing's gonna happen anyway..."

As he stood, he wobbled, not quite feeling completely connected to his body. It was as though his body had numbed as he sat but it could still move and his mind was present. Inner reality...

The librarian, face cute with lovely hair and glasses for her dainty nose. The cashier, with a bountiful bust revealed under any clothes with soft, striking slopes. The jogger, a behind always put forth to rest without discomfort. A dream girl. A dream self to be as he wished. Her voice, her body, her thoughts, her reality.

Warming excitement crossed his cheeks as, without needing to dwell on the actions, he closed the book, set it on his bed, and placed his hand on the glass.

Instantly, a flash of sun-like brilliance washed over him from the book with a loud noise, like a train crashing against the windows, roared and shook the walls. Then, complete silence and hot darkness.

The quiet was first broken by Reynold's yelling. "Calvin!! My feet! Ooooooh. I hurt I hurt...ooohh. Calvin! What was that noise?! Help me, please!...CALVIN!"

His father was calling him, but he wasn't there anymore. She was there.

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A chest to draw envy from all crested through a new top, similar to the librarian's. Hair warmed her ears and the back of her neck. Her hands, soft and dainty, rested beside the vast, gaping opening that revealed her new chest. The book had tumbled to press against her thigh.

A pretty face to bring all smiles and attentive looks along with cheer. But her expression was one of surprise.

A perfect butt, which she sat upon and didn't feel the sparseness of the carpet. These things and she knew, as she shifted her thighs and tried to pull the shirt lower, hers was a fully-female body.

It was so much. It was everything. Every idle thought and dream. She teared up and it wasn't from a body full of unfamiliar hormones. She got just what she wanted. But what now?

Her father was in the other room and he wouldn't quit. Would he let this strange woman stay? Might he already know her? But he had called her by her name as a man. So many questions, fears, and tears. But, beyond them all, she felt as radiant as the light she had been changed by.

At least she would be a true nurse for her father now. One he watched and treated nicely with old man jokes about CPR. She just hoped it wouldn't get weird...

She rose from the floor, put the book away, and softly called out, "Ummm.. co.. coming dad.."