Member-only story
Real-life fiction
The Book That Came To Life
It’s true. You can believe me, I’m a figment of your imagination.
Jenny sat on the clifftop bench overlooking the comings and goings of the bustling fishing harbour below her feet. She often sat there. High enough that she did not see specific features going about their day-to-day, but close enough to pick out the many people she knew.
Jenny knew everybody. She had lived her entire life in that small fishing village. And had met the rest in the pages of the many books she devoured. Jenny sat there in her brand new red frock.
She liked it this way — the familiarity of memory recall without the sacrifice of human contact. She found talking tiresome. She found people exhausting. Books never exhausted her that way. She loved to study people … one person in particular always caught her eye. She lowered her binoculars and smiled.
She did not need to use binoculars. She mostly chose to use them for that one particular local.
She could always stop reading and put the kettle on without apologising. Her book characters did not seem to mind. She was never at a loss when reading. But face-to-face, beyond hello and how are you, or, nice weather we are having, she was a lemming. She could not understand how…
