Magazines Are Holding Us Hostage

Magazines have captured us and taken us hostage. We were easy. Not realizing how fast they multiply. We are up in our knees in them now. They must have litters overnight, maybe in the daytime also. They crept up on us sneakily, one or two at a time. Mail carriers brought them in. My husband dumped them around the house. At first they had just taken over the living room. They are on the kitchen table now too, in the closets, most of the bureau drawers, and in all three bathrooms. What are they doing here? Who has time to read? Not us. They surround us now, boxes and baskets and wastepaper barrels of them. We have developed little paths, but it does us no good when one slips down onto a floor. We are too tired from our battles to move them, so we begin stepping over them, which makes us fall into the ones in the boxes. They chastise us for not reading them. They entice us with their colors, and they call us names behind our backs. We are too intimidated now to read them. Why do we not just throw them away? my husband asks. Is he kidding? Does he have any idea how much money we have paid for these interlopers? A conflicted hostage, I begin to read.