"Stephen Goldin - Herds" - читать интересную книгу автора (Goldin Stephen)

Sight. Color returned to the normal world, and speed became
as usual. But there was nothing to watch that moved. Just the
body of his wife lying lifeless in the middle of the floor.

Stoneham stood there, for how many minutes he didn't know.
His eyes roamed the room, seeking out the commonplace things
it held, avoiding the body at his feet. But not for very long. There
was a certain gruesome fascination about Stella's body that
compel'ed his g^ize, drawing it back from wherever in the room
it had wandered.

He began to think again. He knelt belatedly at his wife's side
and felt for a pulse that he knew would not be there. Her hand
already felt slightly cold to his touch (or was that only his
imagination?), and all pretense of life had gone. He quickly drew
back his hand and stood up once more.

Walking over to the sofa, he sat down and stared for long
minutes at the opposite wall. Headlines shrieked at him:
PROMINENT LOCAL' LAWYER HELD IN WIFE'S DEATH. The
years of carefully planning his political career, of doing favors for
people so that they, in turn, might someday do favors for him, of
going to endless boring parties and dinners… all this he saw
sinking beneath the surface in a great vortex of calamity. And he
saw long, empty years stretching ahead of him, gray walls and
steel bars.

"No!" he cried. He looked down accusingly at the lifeless body
of his wife. "No, you'd like that, wouldn't you? But I'm not going
to let it happen, not to me. I've got too many important things I
want to do before I go." A surprising calm settled over his mind
and he saw clearly what had to be done. He crushed out the
still-smoldering cigarette his wife had dropped. Then he • walked
to the utensil rack and took a carving knife from the wall,
holding Ms pocket handkerchief around the handle so that he
wouldn't leave any fingerprints. He went outside and cut off a
large section of clothesline. Back inside the cabin, he tied his
wife's hands behind her and bent her body backward so that he
could tie her feet to her neck.

Taking up the knife again, he proceeded to make a neat slash
across Stella's throat. Blood oozed out rather than spurting
because it was no longer being pumped by the heart. He hacked
roughly at her breasts and made an obscene gouge through her
dress at her crotch. For good measure he slashed ruthlessly at
her abdomen, face and arms. He cut her eyes out of their sockets
and tried to cut off her nose, too, but it was too tough for his
knife.

Next, he dipped the knife in her blood and wrote "Death to