When A Sociopath Loves

.1.

I’ve read many more books than you. It doesn’t matter how many you’ve read. I’ve read more. Believe me. I’ve had the time.

In my sanctuary, against my mint walls, on my glistening white bookshelves, book spines provide the only color. The books are all brand-new hardcovers—no germy secondhand softcovers for me. They come to me from Outside, decontaminated and vacuum-sealed in plastic wrap. I would like to see the machine that does this. I imagine each book traveling on a white conveyor belt toward rectangular white stations where robotic white arms dust, scrape, spray, and otherwise sterilize it until it’s finally deemed clean enough to come to me.

When a new book arrives, my first task is to remove the wrapping, a process that involves scissors and more than one broken nail. My second task is to write my name on the inside front cover.

PROPERTY OF: F/N L/N

I don’t know why I do this. There’s no one else here except my mother, who never reads, and my nurse, Carla, who has no time to read because she spends all her time watching me breathe. I rarely have visitors, and so there’s no one to lend my books to. There’s no one who needs reminding that the forgotten book on his or her shelf belongs to me.

REWARDS I REWARD MYSELF WITH:

This is the section that takes me the longest time, and I vary it with each book. Sometimes the rewards are fanciful:

⁰ Picnic with me (Y/N) in a pollen-filled field of poppies, lilies, and endless man-in-the-moon marigolds under a clear blue summer sky.
⁰ Tea with me (Y/N) in a lighthouse in the middle of the Ocean in the middle of a hurricane.
⁰Watching him tend to those Hydrangea.

Sometimes the rewards are not so fanciful:

⁰ A visit with me (Y/N) to a used bookstore.
⁰ A walk outside with me (Y/N).
⁰ A short conversation with HIM. Discussing anything he wants, on the white couch, in his flower shop.

Sometimes the reward is just: HIM.