Tales from the Overlook

Good Company

( Technically this is a request off of Instagram but I also enjoy producing the soft content on occasion. The dialogue Jack is reading comes from Oscar Wilde's 'The Picture of Dorian Gray' )

In the great big room, it was almost like the world around it had fallen away, reducing it down to nothing but a single room existing all by its lonesome in a sprawling, empty universe. Yet at that very moment there was nothing else in the whole wide world that Wendy could have wanted.
The room was warm, despite the storm, heavily laden with swirling snow, raged outside in a fury that only nature could rage.
But more importantly, as far as she was concerned, was that she was curled up all nice and comfy-cozy beside her husband on the couch, a blanket draped over the two of them. Danny was all tucked up in bed, fast asleep and hopefully dreaming of the happy sort of things that children dreamed of.

"'I believe that if one man were to live out his life fully and completely, were to give form toevery feeling, expression to every thought, reality to every dream—I believe that the world would gain such a fresh impulse of joy that we would forget all the maladies of mediaevalism, and return to the Hellenic ideal—to something finer, richer than the Hellenic ideal, it may be.  But the bravest man amongst us is afraid of himself.  The mutilation of the savage has its tragic survival in the self-denial that mars our lives.  We are punished for our refusals.'"
Jack read aloud from the book that he rested in his lap, one hand instinctively waving about as he got more and more caught up in what he was reading. He had to raise his voice up louder than he necessarily wanted it to be in order to be properly heard over the roaring outside.

There was a steady smile upon Wendy's face as she listened on. Not even she could say whether she was more enjoying the story itself or if she was merely enjoying listening to Jack reading. Perhaps it was more a combination of the two, for it seemed to be perfectly normal for him to be reading to her.
It had been so terribly long since he had read to her, and she had been missing it sorely, and so she had been overjoyed that he - he! She hadn't even had to ask! - had offered to read to her.

"'Every impulse that we strive to strangle broods in the mind and poisons us.  The bodysins once, and has done with its sin, for action is a mode ofpurification.  Nothing remains then but the recollection of a pleasure,or the luxury of a regret.  The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.  Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful.  It has been said that the great events of the world take place in the brain.'"
It seemed the more he read, the more energetic he became. A clasp of his chest, a gasp or a sigh coming where he saw it fit. The words flowed naturally from his tongue, not only from his familiarity with the work - he had read the book more than once before he went about reading it to anyone at all - and had she pondered upon the nature of the words she would have been left with a lingering sense of unease, for the desire to give into the delicious temptations that the world had to offer came off a little too sincere in his reading.
Not even he knew how deeply rooted the longing that was making itself known in his voice was. He liked to think that he was going an excellent job of ignoring it.

Mastery over one's desires, whether it was getting the better of it and ultimately being freed from its grasp, or yielding to the delights in a marvelously splendid way that would leave even the most sensible folk gasping for breath once they resurfaced from the pit of delicious debauchery, was one thing, but brushing them off to the side was another thing altogether. It was a dangerous thing. It left what could have been a simple want to grow and fester unchecked, leaving it to become something more. Something worse. Something dangerous.

But things were getting better, weren't they? He was reading to her, her head resting gently upon his shoulder, and they seemed, for this moment at least, genuinely at peace.

Oh, how she wished they could stay that way forever.

"'It is in the brain, and the brain only, that the great sins of the world take placealso.  You, Mr. Gray, you yourself, with your rose-red youth and your rose-white boyhood, you have had passions that have made you afraid,thoughts that have filled you with terror, day-dreams and sleeping dreams whose mere memory might stain your cheek with shame-'"
There was something distinctly theatrical in his reading, the gestures came as though he was speaking to someone unseen, his expressions bringing another layer of sincerity to his mannerisms.
It was truthfully quite fascinating to watch, his face would come alive as he read, his mannerisms would become not his own but that of the character. These were all little things he'd picked up from when he was writing, bringing himself into the mindset of the characters so that they would seem truly real when he brought them to life upon the pages. Well, he hoped this was the case as least.

Before she could catch herself, Wendy muttered aloud, "What a wicked man!" Though there was a touch of laughter in her voice. Realising she's spoken out loud, she let out a smaller, "Oh!" and went to cover her mouth.

This had amused the reader somewhat, his attention drifting away from the pages for a moment, planting a brief kiss upon her head before responding with, "A wicked man with wicked thoughts, can there be a better character to read?"