"Edward Bryant - The Transfer" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bryant Edward)

fabric's pattern is designed to hide anything. But I can see the
instruments. I look away from Jim to the waldothe long, curved forceps.
Beside it are the incision clips, stylized clothespins with teeth.
All told, there are three of us in the room, but in every real way, I am
now alone. I begin to know with final sureness what will happen.
And yet . . . and yet I know I am not the person I was for all my early
years. I know that somewhere inside, I do have a core that will not be
bent, cannot be warped, and maybe, just perhaps, I can draw upon it.
But the forecast is bleak.
What I feel is like the pulling back of a nail from the quick of a finger.
No, Dorrie, I tell myself, that is too soft, too gentle. It is more like
the wrench of my heart being taken away, torn from me.
Jim's kiss was always gentle. This man's will be rough.
Jim's embrace . . . His touch was kind. The man's will be brutal.
When Jim entered me, it was joyfully. This manI cannot imagine his touch.
Not yet. It will tear. Burn. Like the lightning, only not clean.
The crimson, the sheen, the mask, the blood. I will say goodbye to Jim in
my soul and look ahead. The man with the gun and the scalpel. I have read
of killers like him and his fellows, though I didn't think people like us
ever encountered them. It was always another depressing story on the news,
just before the weather.
Some people win lotteries.
Jim and IForget that, Dorrie.
I look forward again. Storm fronts. Equalizing potentials. . . . The man
stares down at me, and is that a gentle smile? It is a smile. He holds
Jim's mask in his free hand.
I think I am ready to give it up. He will possess me here on this soaked
bed in the Sleepaway Motel in Bishop, California, before he pulls the
trigger or pushes the blade.
His lips, shiny, part. I'll want you to wear the mask, he says, for you
and me. Just for us, Dorrie. He leans down toward me.
That is when I decide.
What a surprise for him. He will comprehend the trauma of my
transformation. Frankly even I do not know the extent of the power, the
energy released by storm fronts colliding.
I wonder what he will encounter beyond the mask: something with horns,
fangs, scales, fur? Something as bestial as only he can imagine? Or just
himself enhanced? Whatever the sum, it will only be the result of his
terrifying addition.
Goodbye, Jim. Farewell, love. This nameless man in the motel, regardless
of how I am transformed, will get no less than he deserves.
And probably more.