Raw Pleasures
Instead, my body betrayed me with a shiver that wasn’t fear.
I reached out, fingertips brushing the leather handle of the whip. Smooth, cold, waiting. The weight of history was in it; I felt as though countless hands had touched it before mine, each trembling, each guilty. I thought of how the librarians must guard this place, how she—stern, precise, immaculate—would punish a trespasser like me if she ever found out.
And still, I did not leave.
I bent closer to the manuscript on the lectern. The words seemed alive, as if watching me. I mouthed the first line silently: The reader must become the text.
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