"Guy N. Smith - Throwback" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Guy N)

with them also. Only I'm not going with you, wherever you're going. I'm going
to stay right here, try and work it all out for myself. Then the tunnel
darkened, blanked everything out. Who am I, where am 1? I don't know.

A shrieking wailing sound, a dazzling blue light that seared her eyeballs, the
concrete beneath her starting to heave up again. She felt her stomach coming
up, didn't try to stop it, turned her head away and let the spew come with its
own force. Falling, hitting the hard pavement but still hanging on to that
wooden post; if you let go you'll be swept away.

After she had vomited Jackie felt marginally better. Another flash of
lucidity, much stronger than the last one, opening her eyes but the light was
too bright. Not just the flashing bulbs of ambulances and police cars caught
up in the stationary traffic but dazzling sunlight like you found in tropical
areas. Squinting, determined to watch what was going on. Noise that had her
wincing, cowering back. A police car, a red and white one, had ploughed into
the standing cars and an ambulance had gone into the back of it. Vehicles were
shunted, buckled.

People were screaming. Everybody had gone mad.

I'm mad, too, she thought. But what the hell is the matter with me? She had to
find out, get help. Still holding on to that wooden upright she twisted
herself round. People buffeted her as they streamed past but she managed to
maintain her grasp. A shop window, some kind of display, but it did not
register in her brain because she wasn't interested, only in the reflection in
the glass. That familiar street scene but she forced herself to dismiss it,
didn't want to see it again. Only herself!

Oh God! Her own image came at her, barely recognisable from the one she had
studied in the mirror before leaving the house that morning.

Which morning?

It was her face. She pressed herself up against the heavy-duty glass pane in
her anguish. Her smooth skin had become blotched and rough, almost raw in
places. The eyes had sunk back into dark sockets, pinpoints of blue that
glistened unnaturally. Her pert nose and lips were thick, squat, almost
mongolotd in appearance. Smooth silky carefully groomed blonde hair was
tangled and awry, coarser, as though a new growth predominated; darker too.
Her breasts appeared to have inflated, she could feel them pushing against the
restriction of her bra. And then the vision faded, darkened, and she thought
she was going to pass out.

She sank down to her knees, sobbed. It was like a feverish nightmare where
weird fantasy became macabre reality amidst a heap of sweat-soaked bedsheets.
You kicked and tossed, fought your own battle, sweated it out, and eventually
everything turned out all right. Closing her eyes, trying to pray only she
could not remember the words, not a single one. Crying with frustration and
fear, beating her fists on the hard pavement. The concrete should have been