Nora Webber (librarian, 24)

Nora sat at the picnic bench behind the library, eating her lunch and enjoying the warm day.

It was nearing April in New England and she’d been hopeful this morning, choosing a pale green maxi dress and dressy sandals.

The warm weather held as she spent her lunch hour in peace, only putting down her sandwich once to tie up her long brown hair to keep the breeze blowing it into her food.

Her alarm beeped, giving her five minutes to finish, clean up, and get back to her desk, and she managed it all with a minute to spare.

“Hey, Colleen,” she greeted the other librarian in their small library. “I’m finished lunch if you want to go.”

Colleen, an older, friendly woman in her late forties, immediately stood at Nora’s words.

“Good. I’ve got to powder my nose first, then go out. How’s the picnic table?”

After Colleen finally left, Nora sat at her own desk, and took a deep breath to restart her earlier project.

Three stacks of books balanced on her desk, and another two boxes of even more waited behind her, one full, one mostly empty.

She picked up the book on top of the closest stack to her and evaluated it, it’s age, it’s condition, even the typeset, opening the book to check.

She placed it in the box behind her to be donated to a less fortunate library and took the next book off the stack.

Half an hour in, a old, yellowed piece of paper fell out of the book she’d just opened.

Curious, she set the book back on its stack, picked up the piece of paper, and read the looping cursive words, murmuring them to herself.

Fair of lips and mind wise, all shall bask in thine lies. Sweet of kiss and soft of voice, all shall have ****. Green of dress, eyes of blue, everything thy say shall now be true.

Odd. Nora read it once more, this time silently, then set the paper down to look at the title of the book it had fallen out of.

Controlling the Mind, the First Step to Controlling Reality by Dr. Vincent K. Willis

A lofty title. She preformed her usual evaluation, pausing with her hand above the now half full box of rejected books.

Shaking her head, she slid the paper carefully back inside, lifted her keys off the far side of the desk, placed the book down and set her keys on top.

“No one will mind if I take that home.” She told herself as she picked up the next book.

“Excuse me, Miss?” A male voice came from the patron side of Colleen’s desk. “Are you able to help me with the computer?”

“Of course.” Forgetting about the paper, Nora stood and made her way around Colleen’s desk and smiled up at the tall, sheepish looking man.

He looked to be about her age, maybe slightly younger, brown eyes and dark hair buzzed so short she couldn’t tell if it was brown or black.

He held a thumbdrive out to her. “I can’t seem to get it to open. I don’t think it’s corrupted, but…” he shrugged. “Can you try?”

“Of course, I’m sure it’s not corrupted, but I can check” she accepted the bit of blue plastic. “What computer were you on?”

He showed her and she slid the thumbdrive in, clicking on the appropriate prompts and then finally opening the thumbdrive itself… to see photos of porn.

“Uh. I think I grabbed the wrong thumbdrive.” The man stammered, reaching forward to yank it out of the computer.

“Stop. Wait. Let me…” Nora got out, closing the file window, not caring one bit about the porn. “I need to safely remove it first or you’ll corrupt the data.”

The man stopped, his hand falling to his side as he let her do what she needed to.

“There.” She pulled out the piece of blue plastic and handed it to him. He accepted it, mumbling embarrassed apologies.

“It’s nothing to be ashamed about,” The man stopped his embarrassed litany, his shoulders squaring even before she completed her sentence “almost everyone does it. You should see my collection. It’s nothing to be…”

Nora’s words were cut off as the computer screen blinked entirely black and then back on again. “What?”

As she stared at the screen, images, gifs, and video files began loading one by one, then two by two, filling up the once mostly empty desk top.

All of it was porn.

Her porn.

She realized she should be feeling embarrassed but she didn’t. Not even when the man sat down in front of the computer and began opening files up.