=Bedtime Story=

She was completely engrossed in the story when the words started  disappearing. She rubbed her tired eyes, looked closer, and it helped for a time...about two-and-a-half paragraph’s worth. Victor had been telling her for months that she needed new glasses.  "You're squinting," he said, frowning. "And I'm not frowning." She frowned, recalling the scene. She shoved her thumbs further into the book, using them as placeholders. She turned the book over to look at the cover and found the title was gone. It must have fallen off. How? It was embossed, for god’s sake! Well, it was true, all the same. They didn't make books like they used to make them. A light search of the bedclothes turned up a small crease of hardened crumbs, a penny, a toothpick of all things (Victor, again?)...but no sign of the embossed title, nor any of the missing words. When she reopened the book to take up where she left off, several more sentences slid out. They vanished into the pattern of her silky nightie: a complicated labyrinth of red poppies. She turned a page, then another. It was like reading a burning paperback or a book written in disappearing ink. She riffled the pages, catching sentences, phrases, single words that happened to cling momentarily to the paper, often out of their original position, making strange, sometimes alarming new connections, having brief, explosive intimate relationships with words they’d never associated with before. Then they, too, dropped into oblivion beyond the edge of the page. She could foresee what would happen. Soon the book she was reading would be blank. Was she going blind or dreaming or discovering the true inner secret of books? She quickly turned to the last page for help, something she always thought of as gauche, the mark of lesser readers. But the words "the end" had by this time vanished with the rest. She sat bolt upright, riveted against the pillows. She thought of those book cover blurbs that warned readers to lock the doors and turn on all the lights. She faced the night wide-eyed and alone. There was no way to know what came next.