"Barry Longyear - Dark Corners" - читать интересную книгу автора (Longyear Barry)

I study Nurse Stover, the wisps of unruly black hair on her neck rebelling against the tight bun beneath
her starched white cap.

I couldn’t rape Nurse Stover.

The idea of it repels me.

I might think differently, though, if I were a giant grasshopper.

I could cut her throat. I wonder about that, because the doctor once said that the four victims I was
supposed to have killed had all been butchered. Then, because I never speak, the doctor went back to
making notes.




In my little rubber room for the night. Long ago I wrote that it looks like the upholstered interior of a
really cheap coffin, and that hasn’t changed.

God, I want to know who I am. I want out of here, to be free of Hicks, but to do that I have to
remember my name.

It’s a rule. If I can’t remember my name, I’m crazy and they won’t let me loose. If I tell them my name,
then I’m cured and can be sent back out to do whatever it is that I once did.

If I ever find out what my name is, I will write it down. I must remember to write it down. It’s important.

What was it that took my name and memory?

Was it the Misty Man?

The Misty Man had filled the corner of my cell after that one terrible beating Hicks had given me. It was
like the punishment had excreted the Misty Man into existence by the sheer demand of my pain and
need.

A god?

A ghost?

The projections of an other dimensional alien whose brain waves seeped through the cracks of his own
dimension? That’s what I believe. He was locked up and tortured by his own kind and he reached for me
the same way that I reached for him. Then we met. I saw him in my cell. He saw me in his cell.

What’s there to believe? The doctor had pushed around a pink form. He told me that I had been
overworked, under great stress. Then there was a death. Then there were four more deaths.

According to the doctor.

The issue isn’t communication with aliens, the doctor had said. The issue is getting in touch with reality.
The issue is getting better.