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The Picture of Dorian Gray.txt

"You are very pressing, Basil, but I am afraid I must go. I have promised to meet a man at the Orleans.--Good-by, Mr. Gray. Come and see me some afternoon in Curzon Street. I am nearly always at home at five o'clock. Write to me when you are coming. I should be sorry to miss you." "Basil," cried Dorian Gray, "if Lord Henry goes I shall go too. You never open your lips while you are painting, and it is horribly dull standing on a platform and trying to look pleasant. Ask him to stay. I insist upon it." "Stay, Harry, to oblige Dorian, and to oblige me," said Hallward, gazing intently at his picture. "It is quite true, I never talk when I am working, and never listen either, and it must be dreadfully tedious for my unfortunate sitters. I beg you to stay." "But what about my man at the Orleans?" Hallward laughed. "I don't think there will be any difficulty about that. Sit down again, Harry.--And now, Dorian, get up on the platform, and don't move about too much, or pay any attention to what Lord Henry says. He has a very bad influence over all his friends, with the exception of myself." Dorian stepped up on the dais, with the air of a young Greek martyr, and made a little moue of discontent to Lord Henry, to whom he had rather taken a fancy. He was so unlike Hallward. They made a delightful contrast. And he had such a beautiful voice. After a few moments he said to him, "Have you really a very bad influence, Lord Henry? As bad as Basil says?" "There is no such thing as a good influence, Mr. Gray. All influence is immoral,--immoral from the scientific point of view." "Why?" "Because to influence a person is to give him one's own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of some one else's music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him. The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly,--that is what each of us is here for. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to one's [14] self. Of course they are charitable. They feed the hungry, and clothe the beggar. But their own souls starve, and are naked. Courage has gone out of our race. Perhaps we never really had it. The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion,--these are the two things that govern us. And yet--" "Just turn your head a little more to the right, Dorian, like a good boy," said Hallward, deep in his work, and conscious only that a look had come into the lad's face that he had never seen there before. "And yet," continued Lord

Hedge.txt

“gabbers,” and had no close friends of his own. Despite his progressive social views, his reflexes were sexist. He always chose male doctors, hurried to open doors for women with a gallantry that suggested they couldn’t push a handle, and constantly used the word “lovely” when describing his assistant. What had once seemed quaint and fixable now seemed oppressive. Maud started to spend Friday nights out with her friends and away from him, joining a chorus that met over pints at the local pub to complain about men and marriage. No one was having good sex. Everyone was sick of putting down the toilet seat. But Maud’s complaints ran deeper. She no longer wanted to be with Peter. And eventually he noticed. He stopped kissing her good night. He repeatedly asked her if she was listening to anything he said. They bickered over mundanities like who had left the cap off the saltcellar. “Maybe we should go to counseling,” Maud said half-heartedly after a failed attempt at sex, during which her vagina stayed dry and Peter lost his erection. “What’s the point of counseling if we no longer know how to talk?” Peter said. “Isn’t that the point of counseling?” But she didn’t insist. Together, they gave up. And, as she both knew and didn’t know, Peter started cheating. Then, in the spring of 2010, the head of his division retired, and Peter—the clear successor—was passed up by a junior colleague. He was devastated. “Kicked in the head,” he said when he called Maud from London to tell her. He was his usual quiet on his weekends home, but crankier, even with Louise and Ella. He drank too much at night, which made him nicer but in a messy, slurring way that reminded Maud of her father. As the orchard blossomed and the tulips emerged, he turned his resentment on Maud. If he hadn’t received the promotion, he said, it was the fault of the commute and the complications of a split existence. He said that Maud should never have taken the Monk’s House job and put him in this position. “You’re rewriting history,” she said. “You agreed to this.” “Stop talking about bloody history.” “Stop blaming me for your failure.” The two of them were in the potting shed, where they now went to fight to be out of earshot of the girls. Maud had thrown the word “failure” at Peter like a rock, and she saw the impact on his face. They didn’t speak for the rest of the weekend. The following Thursday evening, after she picked him up from the train station, he asked her to pull over. She’d never seen him cry, not even when his father died. It was disconcerting to watch his face crumble. “I’m sorry I’ve been an ass,” he said. “I feel lost. There’s one thing I’m good at, and I don’t even know if I am anymore.” He couldn’t take it, he said. He couldn’t go back to that office. He was humiliated. He had to quit. “And I need you to believe

Robyn-Harding-The-Drowning-Woman.txt

for when I’m gone. But can I do that on my own? Without Jesse’s help? I’ve been controlled and manipulated for so long that the thought of hatching a complex plan, of carrying it out by myself, is daunting, even terrifying. But I must try. And if I fail? I won’t live like this any longer. If I can’t set myself free, then I will end my life. I will draw a bath, take a handful of sleeping pills, pour a glass of vodka over ice. I’ll climb into the water and let the chemicals do their work. And then I will slip under and drown. Peacefully. Gone. On my own terms. * * * Finally, it is time. Jesse had instructed me to park the vehicle at the beach, close to my house. It would have played into the stalker narrative—the woman in the park who was obsessed with me. But that’s no longer relevant. Ahead, I see the Trader Joe’s where I told Lee I would leave her car. Flicking on the indicator, I pull into the busy lot. I slide the car into a lonely spot away from the doors and climb out. Moving around to the back of the vehicle, I open the trunk. It is stuffed with all of Lee’s worldly belongings. Carefully, I rummage through an overstuffed backpack until I find it. The netsuke is wrapped in a black T-shirt, but I remove it, stroke the snake’s smooth head before stuffing it into my pocket. It is the last piece of the evidence against Lee. I have protected her as much as I can. Setting her keys on the back tire, I begin the long walk home. My route takes me down side streets, through residential neighborhoods, along the gravel verge of a sparsely traveled highway. It will take me over an hour to get to my house this way, but I need the time to concoct a story. To explain why I am walking home. A lost key fob is the most believable. I’ll grab the spare, collect my car in the parking lot where Lee will leave it. Benjamin will punish me for my carelessness, but I don’t care. Soon, he won’t be able to hurt me anymore. As I trudge the last few yards to my home, I feel a prickle of anxiety. Nate is not at his post; the first sign that something is off. His black SUV is there, but it is empty. Did he catch Jesse coming in through the back door? Did he subdue him and call the police? My lover has a record, I’m sure of it. He could be charged with trespassing. Breaking and entering. Maybe even stalking. If caught, he’ll go down for this. Would he try to take me with him? My Mercedes is there, parked next to the garage. That means Lee was here, that she’d done as I asked. But she should have left by now in my car. My shoulders tense with worry. Was she confronted? By whom? She couldn’t have encountered

Katherine-Center-Hello-Stranger.txt

exactly how helpful you’d have to be for a non-insane woman to divorce you over it.” “There were a few other reasons,” Joe said. “Are you pathologically helpful? Did you give someone your car? Or, like, a vital organ?” “Not yet,” Joe said. “My last boyfriend was the opposite of helpful,” I said. “Your way is better.” “That’s comforting.” “I’m probably a good friend for you,” I said. “Because I never need help.” “That’s a relief,” Joe said, continuing to stroke my back in a hypnotizing rhythm and kindly allowing me to ignore the irony. I admit: It was relaxing. After a while, he said, “My friend who had a completely different thing from you used to breathe while I did this, and it helped her a lot.” “I don’t need to breathe, thank you,” I said. “Suit yourself,” Joe said. But then he added, “Deep breaths are super healthy for you, though—even if you’re totally fine. I might take a few myself. Just to improve my already stellar health.” And with that, Joe sucked in a big, loud breath, held it for about three seconds, and then blew it back out. “So refreshing,” he said then. “My grandma does this every day, and she just turned a hundred.” He kept breathing like that, and what can I say? Peer pressure. I joined him. We did about ten rounds, and then, I’m not going to lie: I did feel better. Less dizzy. Less nauseated. Less sweaty. “My friend’s totally different thing used to pass after about twenty minutes,” Joe said then. “I don’t think my thing is going to pass until this party ends,” I said. “Ah,” Joe said. Then, a second later, like he’d had an idea, he said, “Are you okay here on your own for a minute?” “I am now—and will continue to always be—one hundred percent okay,” I insisted, forehead still pressed to the concrete. “Be right back then,” Joe said. A few minutes later, I heard a chunk noise—just as the music cut out and it seemed like my dark corner got darker. Then I heard the ambient sound of a puzzled crowd. Then I heard Joe’s voice. “Power outage, guys. Looks like the party’s over.” Oh god, he was my hero. Just knowing they were leaving drained the stress from my body. By the time Joe came back, I was sitting up, leaning against the brick wall, breathing. Like a pro. “Did you just flip the breaker and pretend there was a power outage?” I asked. “Yep,” Joe said. “And everybody went home?” I asked. “Yep.” “And then you came back to check on me?” Joe shrugged, like, Obviously. “Did you worry at all that the darkness might freak me out?” “Nah,” Joe said. “We’ve got the moon.” I looked up and saw it for the first time. It was brighter than I’d realized. “I guess we do.” It occurred to me then that I might have to start altering some of my opinions about Joe. Next I asked, “And once the coast is clear, are

1984.txt

before the Revolution, it was said, the number had only been 15 per cent. The Party claimed that the infant mortality rate was now only 160 per thousand, whereas before the Revolution it had been 300--and so it went on. It was like a single equation with two unknowns. It might very well be that literally every word in the history books, even the things that one accepted without question, was pure fantasy. For all he knew there might never have been any such law as the JUS PRIMAE NOCTIS, or any such creature as a capitalist, or any such garment as a top hat. Everything faded into mist. The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth. Just once in his life he had possessed--AFTER the event: that was what counted--concrete, unmistakable evidence of an act of falsification. He had held it between his fingers for as long as thirty seconds. In 1973, it must have been--at any rate, it was at about the time file:///F|/rah/George%20Orwell/Orwell%20Nineteen%20Eighty%20Four.txt (42 of 170) [1/17/03 5:04:51 AM] file:///F|/rah/George%20Orwell/Orwell%20Nineteen%20Eighty%20Four.txt when he and Katharine had parted. But the really relevant date was seven or eight years earlier. The story really began in the middle sixties, the period of the great purges in which the original leaders of the Revolution were wiped out once and for all. By 1970 none of them was left, except Big Brother himself. All the rest had by that time been exposed as traitors and counter-revolutionaries. Goldstein had fled and was hiding no one knew where, and of the others, a few had simply disappeared, while the majority had been executed after spectacular public trials at which they made confession of their crimes. Among the last survivors were three men named Jones, Aaronson, and Rutherford. It must have been in 1965 that these three had been arrested. As often happened, they had vanished for a year or more, so that one did not know whether they were alive or dead, and then had suddenly been brought forth to incriminate themselves in the usual way. They had confessed to intelligence with the enemy (at that date, too, the enemy was Eurasia), embezzlement of public funds, the murder of various trusted Party members, intrigues against the leadership of Big Brother which had started long before the Revolution happened, and acts of sabotage causing the death of hundreds of thousands of people. After confessing to these things they had been pardoned, reinstated in the Party, and given posts which were in fact sinecures but which sounded important. All three had written long, abject articles in 'The Times', analysing the reasons for their defection and promising to make amends. Some time after their release Winston had actually seen all three of them in the Chestnut Tree Cafe. He remembered the sort of terrified fascination with which he had watched them out of the corner of his eye. They were men far older than himself, relics of the ancient world, almost the last great figures left over from the heroic days of the Party. The glamour

Divine Rivals.txt

between the girls. Sarah continued to eat her sandwich and Iris cradled her tea, glancing at the clock on the wall. It was nearly time to return to her desk when she dared to lean closer to Sarah and whisper, “Do you ever pay attention to what the Inkridden Tribune publishes?” Sarah’s eyebrows shot upward. “The Inkridden Tribune? Why on earth would you—” Iris held a finger to her lips, heart quickening. It would be her luck if Zeb happened to walk by and hear them. Sarah lowered her voice, sheepish. “Well, no. Because I don’t want to get fired.” “I saw the paper yesterday,” Iris continued. “On the street. They were reporting on monsters at the front.” “Monsters?” Iris began to describe the image from the paper—wings, talons, teeth. She couldn’t stifle her shudder as she did, nor could she untangle the image of Forest from it. “Have you ever heard of one?” Iris asked. “They’re called eithrals,” Sarah said. “We touched on them briefly in my mythology class, years ago. There are a few stories about them in some of the older tomes in the library…” She paused, a startled expression stealing across her face. “You’re not thinking to write your own report on them, are you, Winnow?” “I’m debating. But why are you looking at me that way, Prindle?” “Because I don’t think Autry would like it.” And I don’t care what he thinks! Iris wanted to say, but it wasn’t completely true. She did care, but only because she couldn’t afford to lose to Roman. She needed to pay the electricity bill. She needed to purchase a nice set of shoes that fit. She needed to eat regularly. She needed to find her mother help. And yet she wanted to write about what was happening in the west. She wanted to write the truth. She wanted to know what Forest was facing at the front. “Don’t you think Oath needs to know what’s truly happening out there?” she whispered. “Of course,” Sarah replied, pushing her glasses up her nose. “But who knows if eithrals are truly at the front or not. I mean, what if—” She abruptly cut herself off, her eyes flickering beyond Iris. Iris straightened and turned, wincing when she saw Roman standing on the kitchen threshold. He was leaning on the doorframe, watching her with hooded eyes. She didn’t know how much he had overheard, and she attempted a smile, even as her stomach dropped. “Conspiring, are we?” he drawled. “Course we are,” Iris countered brightly, holding her teacup like a toast. “Thank you for the tip, Prindle. I need to get back to work.” “But you haven’t eaten anything, Winnow!” Sarah protested. “I’m not hungry,” Iris said as she approached the doorway. “Pardon me, Kitt.” Roman didn’t move. His gaze was fixed on her as if he wanted to read her mind, and Iris fought the temptation to smooth the stray tendrils of her hair, to anxiously roll her lips together. He opened his mouth to say something but thought better of it, his

Rachel-Lynn-Solomon-Business-or-Pleasure.txt

I’ve been telling him. I’m just not the best with all the sciency stuff. And I don’t mind being a werewolf. In fact, I think I kind of kick ass at it? Caleb attempts to howl, then dissolves into a coughing fit. Well. Most of the time. HUX It’s not for him. It’s . . . for someone else. CALEB Have you even asked her, Hux? Maybe you should start there, huh? HUX Well, no. But you think if she had a choice, this is really what she’d pick? CALEB He moves closer to Hux, jabbing a finger at his chest. We have super strength, super speed, and night vision. I can hear conversations happening a mile away. I can heal myself if I get hurt. And not to brag, but it’s just a fact—we’re more beautiful than the rest of you. Shinier hair, perfect skin, bigger muscles. Who wouldn’t want that? HUX How would you know what she wants? CALEB Because I’m the one who turned her. chapter fourteen MEMPHIS, TN The energy between us is different as dusk falls. Kinetic. My sleeve brushes Finn’s at least a half dozen times, and he forgets to drop his palm when it lands on my lower back for a few extra moments. After a walk to the waterfront, I ask if he’s ready to go back to the hotel and his breathy yes jolts my heart into a new rhythm. The evening is unseasonably warm for late September, the humid air filling my lungs and making me a little unsteady on my feet. No alcohol, just a steady shot of lust straight to my brain. I switch on the lights in my room and empty the bag from the sex shop onto the bed. As nonchalantly as I can, I flip over the mystery novel on my nightstand. I’m not embarrassed of it; The Sourdough Slayer just isn’t the sexiest title. Our next lesson was supposed to be oral sex, but there’s no reason we can’t spice it up. Another deviation from my outline, but an essential one. Based on the way Finn’s eyeing our stash, he’s thinking the same thing. “It would be a shame if we didn’t test all these out,” he says, turning over a textured condom. “Make sure everything works.” “I couldn’t agree more.” He reaches for the vibrator, pulling open the packaging. “Anything I should know before using this?” “Start slow,” I say, even though I’m already eager to get his hands on me. “But otherwise . . . feel free to play around with it.” “I fully intend to.” Then he places it on the nightstand, turning his attention back to me. “Soon,” he promises, sitting down on the bed, patting the spot next to him. It’s a small amount of direction, but my body thrills at the thought of him taking control— and knowing what to do. “I liked today,” he continues, lifting a hand to run through my hair. My eyes slide shut at the gentle press of his fingertips. His other hand comes up

Jane Eyre.txt

with Hannah bustling about and covering you with flour." "Besides, the fire is too hot for you," interposed Mary. "To be sure," added her sister. "Come, you must be obedient." And still holding my hand she made me rise, and led me into the inner room. "Sit there," she said, placing me on the sofa, "while we take our things off and get the tea ready; it is another privilege we exercise in our little moorland home to prepare our own meals when we are so inclined; or when Hannah is baking, brewing, washing or ironing." She closed the door, leaving me solus with Mr. St. John, who sat opposite, a book or newspaper in his hand. I examined first the parlor, and then its occupant. The parlor was rather a small room, very plainly furnished; yet comfortable, because clean and neat. The old-fashioned chairs were very bright, and the walnut-wood table was like a looking-glass. A few strange antique portraits of men and women of other days decorated the stained walls; a cupboard with glass doors contained some books and an ancient set of china. There was no superfluous ornament in the room not one modern piece of furniture, save a brace of work-boxes and a lady's desk in rosewood, which stood on a side-table: everything including the carpet and curtains looked at once well worn and well saved. Mr. St. John sitting as still as one of the dusky pictures on the walls; keeping his eyes fixed on the page he perused, and his lips mutely sealed was easy enough to examine. Had he been a statue instead of a man, he could not have been easier. He was young perhaps from twenty-eight to thirty tall, slender; his face riveted the eye; it was like a Greek face, very pure in outline: quite a straight, classic nose; quite an Athenian mouth and chin. It is seldom, indeed, an English face comes so near the antique models as did his. He might well be a little shocked at the irregularity of my lineaments, his own being so harmonious. His eyes were large and blue, with brown lashes; his high forehead, colorless as ivory, was partially streaked over by careless locks of fair hair. This is a gentle delineation, is it not, reader? Yet he whom it describes scarcely impressed one with the idea of a gentle, a yielding, an impressible, or even a placid nature. Quiescent as he now sat, there was something about his nostril, his mouth, his brow, which, to my perceptions, indicated elements within either restless, or hard, or eager. He did not speak to me one word, nor even direct to me one glance, till his sisters returned. Diana, as she passed in and out, in the course of preparing tea, brought me a little cake, baked on the top of the oven. "Eat that

The Age of Innocence.txt

vocabulary; and now that Medora Manson, who shared her life, had been ruined, such a pittance would barely keep the two women clothed and fed. Yet Archer was convinced that Madame Olenska had not accepted her grandmother's offer from interested motives. She had the heedless generosity and the spasmodic extravagance of persons used to large fortunes, and indifferent to money; but she could go without many things which her relations considered indispensable, and Mrs. Lovell Mingott and Mrs. Welland had often been heard to deplore that any one who had enjoyed the cosmopolitan luxuries of Count Olenski's establishments should care so little about "how things were done." Moreover, as Archer knew, several months had passed since her allowance had been cut off; yet in the interval she had made no effort to regain her grand- mother's favour. Therefore if she had changed her course it must be for a different reason. He did not have far to seek for that reason. On the way from the ferry she had told him that he and she must remain apart; but she had said it with her head on his breast. He knew that there was no calculated coquetry in her words; she was fighting her fate as he had fought his, and clinging desperately to her resolve that they should not break faith with the people who trusted them. But during the ten days which had elapsed since her return to New York she had perhaps guessed from his silence, and from the fact of his making no attempt to see her, that he was meditating a decisive step, a step from which there was no turning back. At the thought, a sudden fear of her own weakness might have seized her, and she might have felt that, after all, it was better to accept the compromise usual in such cases, and follow the line of least resistance. An hour earlier, when he had rung Mrs. Mingott's bell, Archer had fancied that his path was clear before him. He had meant to have a word alone with Madame Olenska, and failing that, to learn from her grandmother on what day, and by which train, she was returning to Washington. In that train he intended to join her, and travel with her to Washington, or as much farther as she was willing to go. His own fancy inclined to Japan. At any rate she would understand at once that, wherever she went, he was going. He meant to leave a note for May that should cut off any other alternative. He had fancied himself not only nerved for this plunge but eager to take it; yet his first feeling on hearing that the course of events was changed had been one of relief. Now, however, as he walked home from Mrs. Mingott's, he was conscious of a growing distaste for what lay before him. There was nothing unknown or unfamiliar in the path he was presumably to tread; but when he had trodden it before it was as a free man, who was accountable

To Kill a Mockingbird.txt

at mealtimes. He went out for football, but was too slender and too young yet to do anything but carry the team water buckets. This he did with enthusiasm; most afternoons he was seldom home before dark. The Radley Place had ceased to terrify me, but it was no less gloomy, no less chilly under its great oaks, and no less uninviting. Mr. Nathan Radley could still be seen on a clear day, walking to and from town; we knew Boo was there, for the same old reason- nobody'd seen him carried out yet. I sometimes felt a twinge of remorse, when passing by the old place, at ever having taken part in what must have been sheer torment to Arthur Radley- what reasonable recluse wants children peeping through his shutters, delivering greetings on the end of a fishing-pole, wandering in his collards at night? And yet I remembered. Two Indian-head pennies, chewing gum, soap dolls, a rusty medal, a broken watch and chain. Jem must have put them away somewhere. I stopped and looked at the tree one afternoon: the trunk was swelling around its cement patch. The patch itself was turning yellow. We had almost seen him a couple of times, a good enough score for anybody. But I still looked for him each time I went by. Maybe someday we would see him. I imagined how it would be: when it happened, he'd just be sitting in the swing when I came along. "Hidy do, Mr. Arthur," I would say, as if I had said it every afternoon of my life. "Evening, Jean Louise," he would say, as if he had said it every afternoon of my life, "right pretty spell we're having, isn't it?" "Yes sir, right pretty," I would say, and go on. It was only a fantasy. We would never see him. He probably did go out when the moon was down and gaze upon Miss Stephanie Crawford. I'd have picked somebody else to look at, but that was his business. He would never gaze at us. "You aren't starting that again, are you?" said Atticus one night, when I expressed a stray desire just to have one good look at Boo Radley before I died. "If you are, I'll tell you right now: stop it. I'm too old to go chasing you off the Radley property. Besides, it's dangerous. You might get shot. You know Mr. Nathan shoots at every shadow he sees, even shadows that leave size-four bare footprints. You were lucky not to be killed." I hushed then and there. At the same time I marveled at Atticus. This was the first he had let us know he knew a lot more about something than we thought he knew. And it had happened years ago. No, only last summer- no, summer before last, when... time was playing tricks on me. I must remember to ask Jem. So many things had happened to us, Boo Radley was the least of our fears. Atticus said he didn't see how anything else could happen, that things

Bartleby the Scrivener A Story of Wall Street.txt

only unanswerable proof that any man can show of his possessing the means so to do. No more then. Since he will not quit me, I must quit him. I will change my offices; I will move elsewhere; and give him fair notice, that if I find him on my new premises I will then proceed against him as a common trespasser. Acting accordingly, next day I thus addressed him: “I find these chambers too far from the City Hall; the air is unwholesome. In a word, I propose to remove my offices next week, and shall no longer require your services. I tell you this now, in order that you may seek another place.” He made no reply, and nothing more was said. On the appointed day I engaged carts and men, proceeded to my chambers, and having but little furniture, every thing was removed in a few hours. Throughout, the scrivener remained standing behind the screen, which I directed to be removed the last thing. It was withdrawn; and being folded up like a huge folio, left him the motionless occupant of a naked room. I stood in the entry watching him a moment, while something from within me upbraided me. I re-entered, with my hand in my pocket—and—and my heart in my mouth. “Good-bye, Bartleby; I am going—good-bye, and God some way bless you; and take that,” slipping something in his hand. But it dropped upon the floor, and then,—strange to say—I tore myself from him whom I had so longed to be rid of. Established in my new quarters, for a day or two I kept the door locked, and started at every footfall in the passages. When I returned to my rooms after any little absence, I would pause at the threshold for an instant, and attentively listen, ere applying my key. But these fears were needless. Bartleby never came nigh me. I thought all was going well, when a perturbed looking stranger visited me, inquiring whether I was the person who had recently occupied rooms at No.—Wall-street. Full of forebodings, I replied that I was. “Then sir,” said the stranger, who proved a lawyer, “you are responsible for the man you left there. He refuses to do any copying; he refuses to do any thing; he says he prefers not to; and he refuses to quit the premises.” “I am very sorry, sir,” said I, with assumed tranquility, but an inward tremor, “but, really, the man you allude to is nothing to me—he is no relation or apprentice of mine, that you should hold me responsible for him.” “In mercy’s name, who is he?” “I certainly cannot inform you. I know nothing about him. Formerly I employed him as a copyist; but he has done nothing for me now for some time past.” “I shall settle him then,—good morning, sir.” Several days passed, and I heard nothing more; and though I often felt a charitable prompting to call at the place and see poor Bartleby, yet a certain squeamishness of I know not what withheld me.

Alex-Hay-The-Housekeepers.txt

and reckonings. He was twenty-one and a man of the world: he was going to bend it to his will. “Don’t mess me about, Danny,” she said. He shrugged. “The risk’s on you. Take it or leave it.” He called a spade a spade, did Danny. Or at least he did when it pleased him. When it suited the story. But she understood that, too, didn’t she? She gave him what he needed in the end. Enough to buy his ticket all the way across the world, to the Cape Colony. I’m on the make, she told herself, reading his letters, racing through the newspapers, waiting for him to buy his first claim, purchase his first stones, start making returns. It was very wonderful, that heart-stopping, breathless feeling. That certainty that she was sorted, that this was it, this was her made, forever. It lasted until the letters stopped. Till Danny dropped her. Vanished altogether. At first she couldn’t credit it. She went up to town, waited outside the offices of the only mining company she knew, doorstepped a clerk on his way home for dinner. There were a whole host of women on the pavement, waving billets and ticket stubs and blurry photographs, asking for news of husbands and brothers and cousins who’d gone off to the mines. “It’s about my brother,” she said. “Daniel O’Flynn.” The clerk was a young man, but he had silvery threads in his hair. He smoothed them now, irritation written all across his face. “Madam. I get inquiries such as these nearly every week. There are as many as fifty thousand men out there. You understand? I would have—we have—simply no way of knowing all their movements.” She squared up to him, pressed a letter into his hand. “Put out an inquiry. That’s all I’m asking.” The clerk clicked his tongue in impatience. “I see I must be frank with you. It is a hard life out there. It’s been a long, taxing summer. Even when they take the greatest care in the world, men put their lives in the hands of their Maker every day.” He frowned. “Is this an insurance matter?” he asked. “If so, I really must reserve my counsel.” This notion, that Danny could be dead, carried no credence with her. She turned her back on that clerk and marched home. There was no circumstance on earth in which Danny would have got himself killed. He was too hard-shell, too wily, for that. He would have negotiated with the boulder before it fell on his head. She pictured him in a shack office somewhere on the other side of the globe, heat raging down on him through a slatted window. Signing contracts, pondering his signature. He never respected his name. He hated being an O’Flynn, being one of a multitude, cousins crawling all over the neighborhood. “I’d like to live forever, Scarecrow,” he used to say, lying awake at night, bouncing a rubber ball off the beams. “Forever.” He’d return—she’d always been certain of that. The rest of the family wore

Hedge.txt

said. “You’d better get it out of her backpack tonight or she’ll forget.” “I’m doing amazingly well, wouldn’t you say?” Although he said it lightly, Maud heard the supplication in his voice. He’d understood what she meant about changing schools. “You’re doing great,” she said. He still thinks there’s hope, she thought, after they’d hung up. She had told Peter clearly that she didn’t see this summer as a trial or a test—she saw it as a transition. But Peter had his own stubborn optimism. He believed that he was proving to her that he could change, that he would pitch in more around the house and be more present with the girls when she returned. And yet, he was also proving that he could take care of Ella and Louise on his own. At seven, having read an article about the origins of the gravel she and Gabriel had found in the garden, she dropped a sundress over her head and brushed out her hair, letting it fall on her shoulders instead of its usual loose ponytail. Chopsticks or fork? Gabriel texted. Chopsticks! she texted back. I’m dying to know your idea for the beds. I’ll give you a clue: Light. That doesn’t help. Pls run. Coming! She fetched a bottle of wine from the refrigerator and the chipped coffee mugs they used as glasses. Outside, Gabriel was already at their meeting place—a wrought-iron table near the orchard—with a manila folder, two plates, and a bag of Chinese food. “Finally,” he said when she sat down across from him in one of the four rusty chairs flanking the table. “That was two minutes. Patience is not your virtue.” He held up the folder. “I won’t show you these lab results until you tell me.” “Fine,” she said. As she uncorked the bottle of wine, she explained her idea about the headlights. “That works?” Gabriel said. “I saw it work once. Could you help with your truck?” “Are you kidding? You think I’d miss that?” She filled their mugs with wine. Over Gabriel’s shoulder, swifts swam through the orchard, rustling glossy plum leaves. Plum blossoms in Chinese poetry. The nineteenth-century crossbreeding experimentations that resulted in the plumcot. The cyanide in the stone. Maud’s mind had awakened, new facts and anecdotes always cropping up. And so had her body, she thought, as she and Gabriel clinked mugs. In his presence, each gesture—as small as taking the manila folder he pushed across the table—felt heightened, unconsciously orchestrated. And she gathered his gestures too, like clues: the way he threw back his head as he laughed at her description of forgetting her shoes earlier, the way he caught his lower lip in his teeth as the two of them looked over the laboratory results. “High carbon,” she said. “The conservatory fire?” “Probably.” They were talking about work, but another conversation ran under the surface. She’d had workplace crushes before, most recently on a literary historian in Sussex whom she’d met at a pub for passionate discussions about the flowers in William Wordsworth’s poems until he

Ulysses.txt

hats pinned on his head. Out on the rampage all night. Beginning to tell on him now: that backache of his, I fear. Wife ironing his back. Thinks he'll cure it with pills. All breadcrumbs they are. About six hundred per cent profit. --He's in with a lowdown crowd, Mr Dedalus snarled. That Mulligan is a contaminated bloody doubledyed ruffian by all accounts. His name stinks all over Dublin. But with the help of God and His blessed mother I'll make it my business to write a letter one of those days to his mother or his aunt or whatever she is that will open her eye as wide as a gate. I'll tickle his catastrophe, believe you me. He cried above the clatter of the wheels: --I won't have her bastard of a nephew ruin my son. A counterjumper's son. Selling tapes in my cousin, Peter Paul M'Swiney's. Not likely. He ceased. Mr Bloom glanced from his angry moustache to Mr Power's mild face and Martin Cunningham's eyes and beard, gravely shaking. Noisy selfwilled man. Full of his son. He is right. Something to hand on. If little Rudy had lived. See him grow up. Hear his voice in the house. Walking beside Molly in an Eton suit. My son. Me in his eyes. Strange feeling it would be. From me. Just a chance. Must have been that morning in Raymond terrace she was at the window watching the two dogs at it by the wall of the cease to do evil. And the sergeant grinning up. She had that cream gown on with the rip she never stitched. Give us a touch, Poldy. God, I'm dying for it. How life begins. Got big then. Had to refuse the Greystones concert. My son inside her. I could have helped him on in life. I could. Make him independent. Learn German too. --Are we late? Mr Power asked. --Ten minutes, Martin Cunningham said, looking at his watch. Molly. Milly. Same thing watered down. Her tomboy oaths. O jumping Jupiter! Ye gods and little fishes! Still, she's a dear girl. Soon be a woman. Mullingar. Dearest Papli. Young student. Yes, yes: a woman too. Life, life. The carriage heeled over and back, their four trunks swaying. --Corny might have given us a more commodious yoke, Mr Power said. --He might, Mr Dedalus said, if he hadn't that squint troubling him. Do you follow me? He closed his left eye. Martin Cunningham began to brush away crustcrumbs from under his thighs. --What is this, he said, in the name of God? Crumbs? --Someone seems to have been making a picnic party here lately, Mr Power said. All raised their thighs and eyed with disfavour the mildewed buttonless leather of the seats. Mr Dedalus, twisting his nose, frowned downward and said: --Unless I'm greatly mistaken. What do you think, Martin? --It struck me too, Martin Cunningham said. Mr Bloom set his thigh down. Glad I took that bath. Feel my feet quite clean. But I wish Mrs Fleming had darned these socks better. Mr Dedalus

Fiona-Davis-The-Spectacular.txt

Judy caught her right in time and they both laughed. “Next Thursday is the opening day for the Christmas Spectacular. I’ll leave a ticket for you for the six-o’clock show. Is that all right? You’ll come?” Judy gave a quick nod. “I’ll be there.” CHAPTER THIRTEEN The first two shows of the Christmas Spectacular went by in a whirlwind for Marion, and while she adored the applause and the smiling faces of the children who waited for autographs outside the stage door, she blew past them, apologizing profusely, in order to meet Judy at the Rehearsal Club. She’d convinced her sister—over a rushed call—to come early so she could properly show her around her new life. Once Judy saw how well she was doing, she would report back to Simon and his curiosity might get the best of him, and he’d overcome his stubbornness. Judy was waiting near the steps to the Rehearsal Club’s front door, clutching her purse tightly to her side. She’d dressed up for the occasion, wearing her camel hair coat instead of her work trench, her hair tied back in a red bow. The fact that she’d made an effort moved Marion almost to tears. “You look marvelous,” she said. “The bow’s a nice touch. Do you remember Mom dressed us up in gorgeous red velvet dresses when we went to the Christmas Spectacular? We looked like a couple of princesses.” “I remember the collar being very itchy and wanting to throw it on the floor,” said Judy. Some things would never change. “Well, why don’t you come on up and I can show you my new digs?” Inside, a couple of the actresses screeched with laughter in the parlor while another boarder trying to use the telephone yelled for them to quiet down. “It’s not usually so crazy,” said Marion over the din. “The woman who runs it, Mrs. Fleming, is very strict about things like curfews and not letting boys up. Sort of like the Barbizon Hotel for Women, but for creative types. Noisy creative types,” she joked. Judy gave a wan smile. Upstairs, Marion threw open the door to her room, which she’d spent a couple of hours that morning dusting and straightening up. The lumpy beds were a far cry from the sturdy cast-iron ones in Bronxville, and the orange curtains were just as ugly as they had ever been, but she’d done the best she could. To her dismay, Bunny’s side of the room looked like a cyclone had hit. Her dresser drawers were open, clothes tossed on the bed as well as the floor. From the bathroom, Bunny’s voice rang out. “I cannot find my good garter belt and bra. I know they’re here somewhere, but you have to help me look.” “Bunny, I—” “Don’t tell Mrs. Fleming, but I’m going to stay at a hotel with Dale tonight. His wife is off visiting relatives . . .” Her words trailed off as she stepped out of the bathroom, a pair of black stockings draped over one arm, and caught sight of

Kalynn-Bayron-Youre-Not-Supposed.txt

overwhelms me. I always feel this way as the game commences, and the high is dizzying. My single complaint is that the fake blood he’s drenched in is too opaque. I like it better when I can see through it just a little. “Please!” Javier screams as he clings to the doorjamb, chest heaving. “Please help me! He—he’s out there!” “Who?” I ask. “What are you talking about?” I know my lines as well as I know my own name. “A guy in a mask!” Javier bellows, real tears glinting in his eyes. “Help me!” The brunette gasps as she clings to her friend, her eyes wide, her mouth halfway open. She’s terrified. Only me and the remaining staff know that it’s about to get a lot worse for her specifically. The rude guests are always the ones who end up crying or pissing their pants first. Over the course of the next few hours, the guests move through a carefully curated series of experiences. I like to make sure they have a good view of Kyle in his mask, machete in hand, as he carves up Javier, Porter, and Tasha one by one. Of course we leave time for guests to “hide” or try to make their own plans for navigating the camp, but it’s all a part of the game even if they don’t realize it. Halfway through the game, the guests end up separating, and Javier and Tasha have to herd them back to a common area so that we can move them toward the next gruesome display. While they handle that, I find myself alone by the lake. I separate from the group early in the game so I can help with other special effects. I’m waiting for my cue, which, for tonight’s game, is the audio of a girl screaming at the top of her lungs played over the tiny speakers hidden in the trees near the guest cabins. When it sounds, my job is to dump a bucket of fake blood mixed with a few pieces of raw chicken onto the path so the guests come across it. As I wait in the shadow of a towering pine tree near Mirror Lake’s shore, there’s a splash in the water behind me. I turn to look, expecting to see one of the guests doing something they’re not supposed to be doing, but there’s no one. I take a step toward the lake. Just offshore, I spot something in the water. A shadowy human-size shape bobbing near the surface. Their head and shoulders move up and down, but I can’t see their face. “Hey!” I shout. “Get out of there! You can’t be in the water!” I edge my way along the shore. Who the hell is out there? Who’d want to be? “Hey!” I shout again. “Charity, go!” A voice sounds in my earpiece, and my heart jumps into my throat. I scramble back to the path and spill the bucket of blood and raw chicken across the dirt. In the dark, it looks like somebody has

How to Sell a Haunted House.txt

giggle. “Ke ke ke ke ke ke ke . . .” he said and started rubbing his hands over his belly again. “Pupkin home.” One of his nubbins reached up and stroked the side of his face. “Ke ke ke ke ke ke ke . . .” Then he slowly sank into the blankets, still watching Louise, stroking one nub along the side of his face, soothing himself. Louise stood up, never taking her eyes off Pupkin, and left the room. In the front hall she called Mark. He picked up on the first ring. “I was just about to call you,” he said in a rush, and his voice sounded clearer now, more decisive. “I know what to do.” “He wants to know where Mom is,” she said. “He thinks she’s playing hide-and-seek.” “He’s talking,” Mark said. “That’s good. Write down anything he says. It might be important.” “I can’t have him on Poppy’s arm for another minute,” she hissed. “He cut her, Mark. He got a knife and cut her, and if I try to take him off he’ll do it again.” “Come home,” Mark said. It threw her. “What?” “You need to come home,” Mark said. “We can only deal with him here.” “No,” Louise said, shaking her head from side to side even though he couldn’t see her. This was a bad idea. She thought about the house, the attic, Spider, the squirrels, the Mark and Louise dolls. She wasn’t going near any of them ever again. “Oh, no. I’m not walking into that trap.” “We’re out of our depth,” Mark said. “So we need an expert. That’s what I was going to tell you. I called Mercy.” This conversation kept taking turns Louise couldn’t follow. “What?” she asked again. “Mark, this is my daughter. Mercy sells real estate. Be serious.” “I am being serious,” he said. “I don’t know anything about talking puppets or possession or ghosts or hauntings, but Aunt Gail? This is where she lives. And family are the people who can’t say no. You need to come home.” Chapter 31 T he fun started at Security. “She needs to take her doll off her arm,” the TSA guy monotoned. “No,” Pupkin shrieked. “No! No! No!” “Hang on, Poppy, it’s okay,” Louise said sweetly, then lowered her voice to that special frequency only other adults could hear. “Is there anything you can do?” The TSA agent gave her a look that said Pampered mothers, spoiled kids. “She needs to remove her doll to go through the scanner,” he repeated. “If you could just help me out,” Louise pleaded. “She’s having a hard day.” “Ma’am, are you going to be a problem for me?” “What about a pat-down?” she asked. “No!” Pupkin shrieked. “Pupkin stay! Pupkin stay!” People looked over to see what this horrible mother was doing to her little girl. Louise felt them noticing the bandages up and down Poppy’s left arm, the scratches and bruises on Louise’s face, the bite mark on the back of her hand. “If you could let her keep

The Silmarillion.txt

a treasury of good counsel and wise lore. In that house were harboured the Heirs of Isildur, in childhood and old age, because of the kinship of their blood with Elrond himself, and because he knew in his wisdom that one should come of their line to whom a great part was appointed in the last deeds of that Age. And until that time came the shards of Elendil's sword were given into the keeping of Elrond, when the days of the Dnedain darkened and they became a wandering people. In Eriador Imladris was the chief dwelling of the High Elves; but at the Grey Havens of Lindon there abode also a remnant of the people of Gil-galad the Elvenking. At times they would wander into the lands of Eriador, but for the most part they dwelt near the shores of the sea, building and tending the elven-ships wherein those of the Firstborn who grew weary of the world set sail into the uttermost West Crdan the Shipwright was lord of the Havens and mighty among the Wise. Of the Three Rings that the Elves had preserved unsullied no open word was ever spoken among the Wise, and few even of the Eldar knew where they were bestowed. Yet after the fall of Sauron their power was ever at work, and where they abode there mirth also dwelt and all things were unstained by the griefs of time. Therefore ere the Third Age was ended the Elves perceived that the Ring of Sapphire was with Elrond, in the fair valley of Rivendell, upon whose house the stars of heaven most brightly shone; whereas the Ring of Adamant was in the Land of Lrien where dwelt the Lady Galadriel. A queen she was of the woodland Elves, the wife of Celeborn of Doriath, yet she herself was of the Noldor and remembered the Day before days in Valinor, and she was the mightiest and fairest of all the Elves that remained in Middle-earth. But the Red Ring remained hidden until the end, and none save Elrond and Galadriel and Crdan knew to whom it had been committed. Thus it was that in two domains the bliss and beauty of the Elves remained still undiminished while that Age endured: in Imladris; and in Lothlrien, the hidden land between Celebrant and Anduin, where the trees bore flowers of gold and no Orc or evil thing dared ever come. Yet many voices were heard among the Elves foreboding that, if Sauron should come again, then either he would find the Ruling Ring that was lost, or at the best his enemies would discover it and destroy it; but in either chance the powers of the Three must then fail and all things maintained by them must fade, and so the Elves should pass into the twilight and the Dominion of Men begin. And so indeed it has since befallen: the One and the Seven and the Nine are destroyed; and the Three have passed away, and with them the Third Age is ended, and the Tales

Kate-Alice-Marshall-What-Lies-in-the-Woods.txt

saved us. I made it so we would always be tied together, we would always be friends—and Liv would never let anything happen between you that might take you two away from me. And we got to be heroes, Naomi. Do you think your life would have been anything but utterly mediocre, if I hadn’t done what I did? It all worked out. For all of us.” I thought of how brave she’d been, after. How she’d flourished, playing the spokesperson for the three of us, interviewed by serious journalists who spoke to her with deference and kindness. How she’d flung herself into the role of caretaker and protector, and everyone had bought it. Had worshipped her. And part of me wondered if she was right. If I had never been attacked, had never turned into the miracle girl, where would I be? In Chester, probably. In a dead-end job, a drunk like my father. But Liv would be alive. “She was going to tell. She was going to ruin everything I worked so hard to make,” Cass said, as if imploring me to understand. As if she truly believed I might. “I’ve got it,” Cody said brusquely, and Cass glanced toward him. He’d laid out the tarp. The handle of a hacksaw stuck out of the duffel. I looked away quickly, my stomach roiling at the thought of what that was meant for. “All right. Enough talk. Stand up,” Cass said, gesturing with the gun. It was like something she’d seen in a movie. I pushed to my feet. She directed me over to the tarp. “Kneel down,” she ordered. Her voice shook now. She wasn’t as tough as she wanted to think she was, I thought. This version of Cass was like all the others. Something that she’d decided on, constructed piece by piece. Friend, protector, mother, cold-blooded killer. A false front, and absolutely nothing behind it. I wondered if she even understood why she did the things she did, or if she was acting on pure instinct and filling in logic after the fact. And she’d always been like that. The day we met, she hadn’t chosen us because she thought we were special. She’d chosen us because one glance was enough to tell her that we were so damaged we wouldn’t see the rot already festering inside her. “I spent my whole life trying to heal from something that never happened,” I said. “You were my friend. You stayed my friend. You told me you cared about me. You made yourself part of my life after you’d done that to me. What were you thinking when you saw my scars and knew they were your fault? When I told you about my nightmares? When you promised me that Stahl wasn’t going to get me? Was it funny to you?” “A little,” she said viciously. Her teeth flashed once. Her eyes were empty and cold, and something primal surged within me, an ancestral instinct birthed before we had words for the thing she was. Ethan had seen it, I

A Game of Thrones.txt

and left him there in the dark beneath the oak, amidst the quiet of the godswood, under a blue-black sky. The stars were coming out. DAENERYS The heart was steaming in the cool evening air when Khal Drogo set it before her, raw and bloody. His arms were red to the elbow. Behind him, his bloodriders knelt on the sand beside the corpse of the wild stallion, stone knives in their hands. The stallion's blood looked black in the flickering orange glare of the torches that ringed the high chalk walls of the pit. Dany touched the soft swell of her belly. Sweat beaded her skin and trickled down her brow. She could feel the old women watching her, the ancient crones of Vaes Dothrak, with eyes that shone dark as polished flint in their wrinkled faces. She must not flinch or look afraid. I am the blood of the dragon, she told herself as she took the stallion's heart in both hands, lifted it to her mouth, and plunged her teeth into the tough, stringy flesh. Warm blood filled her mouth and ran down over her chin. The taste threatened to gag her, but she made herself chew and swallow. The heart of a stallion would make her son strong and swift and fearless, or so the Dothraki believed, but only if the mother could eat it all. If she choked on the blood or retched up the flesh, the omens were less favorable; the child might be stillborn, or come forth weak, deformed, or female. Her handmaids had helped her ready herself for the ceremony. Despite the tender mother's stomach that had afflicted her these past A GAME OF THRONES 431 two moons, Dany had dined on bowls of half-clotted blood to accustom herself to the taste, and Irri made her chew strips of dried horseflesh until her jaws were aching. She had starved herself for a day and a night before the ceremony in the hopes that hunger would help her keep down the raw meat. The wild stallion's heart was all muscle, and Dany had to worry it with her teeth and chew each mouthful a long time. No steel was permitted within the sacred confines of Vaes Dothrak, beneath the shadow of the Mother of Mountains; she had to rip the heart apart with teeth and nails. Her stomach roiled and heaved, yet she kept on, her face smeared with the heartsblood that sometimes seemed to explode against her lips. Khal Drogo stood over her as she ate, his face as hard as a bronze shield. His long black braid was shiny with oil. He wore gold rings in his mustache, gold bells in his braid, and a heavy belt of solid gold medallions around his waist, but his chest was bare. She looked at him whenever she felt her strength failing; looked at him, and chewed and swallowed, chewed and swallowed, chewed and swallowed. Toward the end, Dany thought she glimpsed a fierce pride in his dark, almondshaped eyes, but she could not be sure. The

Fahrenheit 451.txt

talk to my wife; she listens to the walls. I just want someone to hear what I have to say. And maybe if I talk long enough, it'll make sense. And I want you to teach me to understand what I read." Faber examined Montag's thin, blue-jowled face. "How did you get shaken up? What knocked the torch out of your hands?" "I don't know. We have everything we need to be happy, but we aren't happy. Something's missing. I looked around. The only thing I positively knew was gone was the books I'd burned in ten or twelve years. So I thought books might help." "You're a hopeless romantic," said Faber. "It would be funny if it were not serious. It's not books you need, it's some of the things that once were in books. The same things could be in the `parlour families' today. The same infinite detail and awareness could be projected through the radios and televisors, but are not. No, no, it's not books at all you're looking for! Take it where you can find it, in old phonograph records, old motion pictures, and in old friends; look for it in nature and look for it in yourself. Books were only one type of receptacle where we stored a lot of things we were afraid we might forget. There is nothing magical in them at all. The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us. Of course you couldn't know this, of course you still can't understand what I mean when I say all this. You are intuitively right, that's what counts. Three things are missing. "Number one: Do you know why books such as this are so important? Because they have quality. And what does the word quality mean? To me it means texture. This book has pores. It has features. This book can go under the microscope. You'd find life under the glass, streaming past in infinite profusion. The more pores, the more truthfully recorded details of life per square inch you can get on a sheet of paper, the more `literary' you are. That's my definition, anyway. Telling detail. Fresh detail. The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies. "So now do you see why books are hated and feared? They show the pores in the face of life. The comfortable people want only wax moon faces, poreless, hairless, expressionless. We are living in a time when flowers are trying to live on flowers, instead of growing on good rain and black loam. Even fireworks, for all their prettiness, come from the chemistry of the earth. Yet somehow we think we can grow, feeding on flowers and fireworks, without completing the cycle back to reality. Do you know the legend of Hercules and Antaeus, the giant wrestler, whose strength was incredible so long as he stood firmly on the earth. But when he was

Things Fall Apart.txt

small house, the "medicine house" or shrine where Okonkwo kept the wooden symbols of his personal god and of his ancestral spirits. He worshipped them with sacrifices of kola nut, food and palm-wine, and offered prayers to them on behalf of himself, his three wives and eight children. So when the daughter of Umuofia was killed in Mbaino, Ikemefuna came into Okonkwo's household. When Okonkwo brought him home that day he called his most senior wife and handed him over to her. "He belongs to the clan," he told her. "So look after him." "Is he staying long with us?" she asked. "Do what you are told, woman," Okonkwo thundered, and stammered. "When did you become one of the ndichie of Umuofia?" And so Nwoye's mother took Ikemefuna to her hut and asked no more questions. As for the boy himself, he was terribly afraid. He could not understand what was happening to him or what he had done. How could he know that his father had taken a hand in killing a daughter of Umuofia? All he knew was that a few men had arrived at their house, conversing with his father in low tones, and at the end he had been taken out and handed over to a stranger. His mother had wept bitterly, but he had been too surprised to weep. And so the stranger had brought him, and a girl, a long, long way from home, through lonely forest paths. He did not know who the girl was, and he never saw her again. CHAPTER THREE Okonkwo did not have the start in life which many young men usually had. He did not inherit a barn from his father. There was no barn to inherit. The story was told in Umuofia, of how his father, Unoka, had gone to consult the Oracle of the Hills and the Caves to find out why he always had a miserable harvest. The Oracle was called Agbala, and people came from far and near to consult it. They came when misfortune dogged their steps or when they had a dispute with their neighbours. They came to discover what the future held for them or to consult the spirits of their departed fathers. The way into the shrine was a round hole at the side of a hill, just a little bigger than the round opening into a henhouse. Worshippers and those who came to seek knowledge from the god crawled on their belly through the hole and found themselves in a dark, endless space in the presence of Agbala. No one had ever beheld Agbala, except his priestess. But no one who had ever crawled into his awful shrine had come out without the fear of his power. His priestess stood by the sacred fire which she built in the heart of the cave and proclaimed the will of the god. The fire did not burn with a flame. The glowing logs only served to light up vaguely the dark figure of the priestess. Sometimes a man came to consult the spirit

Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy.txt

at them in one solid blaze wherever they looked. "Very pretty," said Zaphod petulantly. In the sky a huge green catalogue number appeared. It flickered and changed, and when they looked around again so had the land. As with one voice they all went, "Yuch." The sea was purple. The beach they were on was composed of tiny yellow and green pebbles - presumably terribly precious stones. The mountains in the distance seemed soft and undulating with red peaks. Nearby stood a solid silver beach table with a frilly mauve parasol and silver tassles. In the sky a huge sign appeared, replacing the catalogue number. It said, Whatever your tastes, Magrathea can cater for you. We are not proud. And five hundred entirely naked women dropped out of the sky on parachutes. In a moment the scene vanished and left them in a springtime meadow full of cows. "Ow!" said Zaphod. "My brains!" "You want to talk about it?" said Ford. "Yeah, OK," said Zaphod, and all three sat down and ignored the scenes that came and went around them. "I figure this," said Zaphod. "Whatever happened to my mind, I did it. And I did it in such a way that it wouldn't be detected by the government screening tests. And I wasn't to know anything about it myself. Pretty crazy, right?" The other two nodded in agreement. "So I reckon, what's so secret that I can't let anybody know I know it, not the Galactic Government, not even myself? And the answer is I don't know. Obviously. But I put a few things together and I can begin to guess. When did I decide to run for President? Shortly after the death of President Yooden Vranx. You remember Yooden, Ford?" "Yeah," said Ford, "he was that guy we met when we were kids, the Arcturan captain. He was a gas. He gave us conkers when you bust your way into his megafreighter. Said you were the most amazing kid he'd ever met." "What's all this?" said Trillian. "Ancient history," said Ford, "when we were kids together on Betelgeuse. The Arcturan megafreighters used to carry most of the bulky trade between the Galactic Centre and the outlying regions The Betelgeuse trading scouts used to find the markets and the Arcturans would supply them. There was a lot of trouble with space pirates before they were wiped out in the Dordellis wars, and the megafreighters had to be equipped with the most fantastic defence shields known to Galactic science. They were real brutes of ships, and huge. In orbit round a planet they would eclipse the sun. "One day, young Zaphod here decides to raid one. On a tri-jet scooter designed for stratosphere work, a mere kid. I mean forget it, it was crazier than a mad monkey. I went along for the ride because I'd got some very safe money on him not doing it, and didn't want him coming back with fake evidence. So what happens? We got in his tri-jet which he had souped up into something totally other,

Dune.txt

Around them, she recognized the cellar room where Paul had slept, saw his cot at one side--empty. Suspensor lamps were brought in by guards, distributed near the open door. There was a glare of light in the hallway beyond that hurt her eyes. She looked up at the Baron. He wore a yellow cape that bulged over his portable suspensors. The fat cheeks were two cherubic mounds beneath spider-black eyes. "The drug was timed," he rumbled. "We knew to the minute when you'd be coming out of it." How could that be? she wondered. They 'd have to know my exact weight, my metabolism, my . . . Yueh! "Such a pity you must remain gagged," the Baron said. "We could have such an interesting conversation." Yueh's the only one it could be, she thought. How? The Baron glanced behind him at the door. "Come in, Piter." She had never before seen the man who entered to stand beside the Baron, but the face was known--and the man: Piter de Vries, the Mentat-Assassin. She studied him--hawk features, blue-ink eyes that suggested he was a native of Arrakis, but subtleties of movement and stance told her he was not. And his flesh was too well firmed with water. He was tall, though slender, and something about him suggested effeminacy. "Such a pity we cannot have our conversation, my dear Lady Jessica." the Baron said. "However, I'm aware of your abilities." He glanced at the Mentat. "Isn't that true, Piter?" "As you say, Baron," the man said. The voice was tenor. It touched her spine with a wash of coldness. She had never heard such a chill voice. To one with the Bene Gesserit training, the voice screamed: Killer! "I have a surprise for Piter," the Baron said. "He thinks he has come here to collect his reward--you, Lady Jessica. But I wish to demonstrate a thing: that he does not really want you." "You play with me, Baron?" Piter asked, and he smiled. Seeing that smile, Jessica wondered that the Baron did not leap to defend himself from this Piter. Then she corrected herself. The Baron could not read that smile. He did not have the Training. "In many ways, Piter is quite naive," the Baron said. "He doesn't admit to himself what a deadly creature you are, Lady Jessica. I'd show him, but it'd be a foolish risk." The Baron smiled at Piter, whose face had become a waiting mask. "I know what Piter really wants. Piter wants power." "You promised I could have her," Piter said. The tenor voice had lost some of its cold reserve. Jessica heard the clue-tones in the man's voice, allowed herself an inward shudder. How could the Baron have made such an animal out of a Mentat? "I give you a choice, Piter," the Baron said. "What choice?" The Baron snapped fat fingers. "This woman and exile from the Imperium, or the Duchy of Atreides on Arrakis to rule as you see fit in my name." Jessica watched the Baron's spider eyes study Piter. "You could

David Copperfield.txt

hand, my trusty frere', we all joined hands round the table; and when we declared we would 'take a right gude Willie Waught', and hadn't the least idea what it meant, we were really affected. In a word, I never saw anybody so thoroughly jovial as Mr. Micawber was, down to the very last moment of the evening, when I took a hearty farewell of himself and his amiable wife. Consequently, I was not prepared, at seven o'clock next morning, to receive the following communication, dated half past nine in the evening; a quarter of an hour after I had left him: - 'My DEAR YOUNG FRIEND, 'The die is cast - all is over. Hiding the ravages of care with a sickly mask of mirth, I have not informed you, this evening, that there is no hope of the remittance! Under these circumstances, alike humiliating to endure, humiliating to contemplate, and humiliating to relate, I have discharged the pecuniary liability contracted at this establishment, by giving a note of hand, made payable fourteen days after date, at my residence, Pentonville, London. When it becomes due, it will not be taken up. The result is destruction. The bolt is impending, and the tree must fall. 'Let the wretched man who now addresses you, my dear Copperfield, be a beacon to you through life. He writes with that intention, and in that hope. If he could think himself of so much use, one gleam of day might, by possibility, penetrate into the cheerless dungeon of his remaining existence - though his longevity is, at present (to say the least of it), extremely problematical. 'This is the last communication, my dear Copperfield, you will ever receive 'From 'The 'Beggared Outcast, 'WILKINS MICAWBER.' I was so shocked by the contents of this heart-rending letter, that I ran off directly towards the little hotel with the intention of taking it on my way to Doctor Strong's, and trying to soothe Mr. Micawber with a word of comfort. But, half-way there, I met the London coach with Mr. and Mrs. Micawber up behind; Mr. Micawber, the very picture of tranquil enjoyment, smiling at Mrs. Micawber's conversation, eating walnuts out of a paper bag, with a bottle sticking out of his breast pocket. As they did not see me, I thought it best, all things considered, not to see them. So, with a great weight taken off my mind, I turned into a by-street that was the nearest way to school, and felt, upon the whole, relieved that they were gone; though I still liked them very much, nevertheless. CHAPTER 18 A RETROSPECT My school-days! The silent gliding on of my existence - the unseen, unfelt progress of my life - from childhood up to youth! Let me think, as I look back upon that flowing water, now a dry channel overgrown with leaves, whether there are any marks along its course, by which I can remember how it ran. A moment, and I occupy my place in the Cathedral, where we all went together, every Sunday morning,

Lisa-See-Lady-Tan_s-Circle-of-Women.txt

see Lady Huang,” Grandmother adds. At this, Grandfather pauses and looks sternly at Grandmother. “You know I don’t approve of midwives.” When he turns to me, I know I’m about to be tested. “Tell me why.” I don’t want to answer, because whatever I say will irritate Grandmother. But what else can I do? “There is no place for the Three Aunties and Six Grannies in a gentry family’s home,” I recite, my head down so I don’t have to see Grandmother’s reaction. “And who are they?” he asks. I stare at my slippers, torn between the two people who care for me. A finger lifts my chin. Grandmother says, “Answer your grandfather.” “The Three Aunties are Buddhist nuns, Taoist nuns, and fortune-tellers. The Six Grannies are matchmakers, shamans, drug sellers, brokers, procuresses, and midwives.” I recite the list from memory without knowing what some of those on it are. “Respectable families don’t allow religious women into our homes because we follow Confucian ideals,” Grandfather says. “As for the others, they are snakes and scorpions to be avoided at all costs.” “Husband, you know perfectly well that—” “Beyond this,” Grandfather grumbles, “midwives are linked to wicked deeds like abortion and infanticide. Who hasn’t heard of the sort of midwife who, when confronted by a baby who refuses to leave the child palace, cuts off its arm so she might bring it into the world?” Grandmother shakes her head. “This happens on the rarest occasions and is done only to save a mother’s life—” “Their standing is further lowered,” Grandfather continues, “because they’re often called upon to check a woman’s virginity in court cases and perform corpse inspections in instances of unnatural deaths—” “Husband!” Grandmother snaps. “This is too much for Yunxian to hear.” She turns to me and modulates her voice. “Child, look at me,” she says softly. “Respect your grandfather in all things but know as well that midwives are a necessity. A more pleasing phrase we use for a midwife is she who collects the newborn.” Her eyes glide back to Grandfather. “You do not touch blood. I do not touch blood. We consult from afar. I might attend to a woman in labor—giving her herbs to speed delivery and make the baby slippery—and after birth provide the decoctions that will rebuild her vitality, but I would never try to catch an infant—” “Confucius made clear that any profession in which blood is involved is considered to be beneath us,” Grandfather agrees. “A midwife’s contact with blood places her on the same base level as a butcher. Furthermore, midwives are disreputable. They are too much in the world.” “Perhaps.” Grandmother sighs. “But since we physicians acknowledge blood as corrupt and corrupting, then how can a woman give birth without the aid of a midwife?” “Peasant women—” “Work in the fields all day, have their babies in the corners of their shacks, and then cook dinner for their families,” Grandmother finishes for him. “So—” “So nothing!” Grandmother is starting to lose her temper. “Have you seen that with your own eyes?

Divine Rivals.txt

her. She wondered if she had just inadvertently given the promotion to Roman Kitt. {9} One Piece of Armor Her mother was gone that evening. Don’t panic, Iris told herself as she stood in the quiet flat. Over and over, she thought those words. Like a record playing on a phonograph. Aster would be home soon. Occasionally she stayed late at a club, drinking and dancing. But she always returned when the money ran out or the establishment closed at midnight. There was no need to panic. And she had promised Iris that she was going to be better. Perhaps she wasn’t at a club at all but trying to get her old job back at the Revel Diner. Yet the worry remained, pinching Iris’s lungs every time she breathed. She knew how to tamp down the anxious feelings that were boiling within her. It was currently hiding beneath her bed—the typewriter her Nan had once created poetry with. The typewriter Iris had inherited and had since been using to write to This isn’t Forest. She left the front door unlocked for her mother and carried a candle into her room, where she was surprised to find a piece of paper lying on her floor. Her mysterious pen pal had written again, even though she had yet to respond to their myth-filled letter. She was beginning to wonder if they were from another time. Perhaps they had lived in this very room, long before her. Perhaps they were destined to live here, years from now. Perhaps their letters were somehow slipping through a fissure of time, but it was this place that was causing it. Iris retrieved the paper and sat on the edge of her bed, reading: Do you ever feel as if you wear armor, day after day? That when people look at you, they see only the shine of steel that you’ve so carefully encased yourself in? They see what they want to see in you—the warped reflection of their own face, or a piece of the sky, or a shadow cast between buildings. They see all the times you’ve made mistakes, all the times you’ve failed, all the times you’ve hurt them or disappointed them. As if that is all you will ever be in their eyes. How do you change something like that? How do you make your life your own and not feel guilt over it? While she was reading it a second time, soaking in their words and pondering how to respond to something that felt so intimate it could have been whispered from her own mouth, another letter came over the threshold. Iris stood to fetch it, and that was the first time she truly tried to envision who this person was. She tried, but they were nothing more than stars and smoke and words pressed on a page. She knew absolutely nothing about them. But after reading something like this, as if they had bled themselves on the paper … she longed to know more. She opened the second letter, which was a

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.txt

states. If your state is not listed and you would like to know if we have added it since the list you have, just ask. While we cannot solicit donations from people in states where we are not yet registered, we know of no prohibition against accepting donations from donors in these states who approach us with an offer to donate. International donations are accepted, but we don't know ANYTHING about how to make them tax-deductible, or even if they CAN be made deductible, and don't have the staff to handle it even if there are ways. All donations should be made to: Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation PMB 113 1739 University Ave. Oxford, MS 38655-4109 Contact us if you want to arrange for a wire transfer or payment method other than by check or money order. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation has been approved by the US Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c)(3) organization with EIN [Employee Identification Number] 64-622154. Donations are tax-deductible to the maximum extent permitted by law. As fundraising requirements for other states are met, additions to this list will be made and fundraising will begin in the additional states. We need your donations more than ever! You can get up to date donation information at: http://www.gutenberg.net/donation.html *** If you can't reach Project Gutenberg, you can always email directly to: Michael S. Hart <[email protected]> Prof. Hart will answer or forward your message. We would prefer to send you information by email. **The Legal Small Print** (Three Pages) ***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS**START*** Why is this "Small Print!" statement here? You know: lawyers. They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with your copy of this etext, even if you got it for free from someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our fault. So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement disclaims most of our liability to you. It also tells you how you may distribute copies of this etext if you want to. *BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS ETEXT By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept this "Small Print!" statement. If you do not, you can receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this etext by sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person you got it from. If you received this etext on a physical medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request. ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM ETEXTS This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etexts, is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor Michael S. Hart through the Project Gutenberg Association (the "Project"). Among other things, this means that no one owns a United States copyright on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this etext under the

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.txt

were Huck's first words when he got in. "Please don't -- I'd be killed, sure -- but the widow's been good friends to me sometimes, and I want to tell -- I will tell if you'll promise you won't ever say it was me." "By George, he has got something to tell, or he wouldn't act so!" exclaimed the old man; "out with it and nobody here'll ever tell, lad." Three minutes later the old man and his sons, well armed, were up the hill, and just entering the sumach path on tiptoe, their weapons in their hands. Huck accompanied them no further. He hid behind a great bowlder and fell to listening. There was a lagging, anxious silence, and then all of a sudden there was an explosion of firearms and a cry. Huck waited for no particulars. He sprang away and sped down the hill as fast as his legs could carry him. --------------------------------------------------------- -270- Chapter XXX AS the earliest suspicion of dawn appeared on Sunday morning, Huck came groping up the hill and rapped gently at the old Welshman's door. The inmates were asleep, but it was a sleep that was set on a hair-trigger, on account of the exciting episode of the night. A call came from a window: "Who's there!" Huck's scared voice answered in a low tone: "Please let me in! It's only Huck Finn!" "It's a name that can open this door night or day, lad! -- and welcome!" These were strange words to the vagabond boy's ears, and the pleasantest he had ever heard. He could not recollect that the closing word had ever been applied in his case before. The door was quickly unlocked, and he entered. Huck was given a seat and the old man and his brace of tall sons speedily dressed themselves. "Now, my boy, I hope you're good and hungry, because breakfast will be ready as soon as the sun's up, and we'll have a piping hot one, too -- make yourself easy about that! I and the boys hoped you'd turn up and stop here last night." --------------------------------------------------------- -271- "I was awful scared," said Huck, "and I run. I took out when the pistols went off, and I didn't stop for three mile. I've come now becuz I wanted to know about it, you know; and I come before daylight becuz I didn't want to run across them devils, even if they was dead." "Well, poor chap, you do look as if you'd had a hard night of it -- but there's a bed here for you when you've had your breakfast. No, they ain't dead, lad -- we are sorry enough for that. You see we knew right where to put our hands on them, by your description; so we crept along on tiptoe till we got within fifteen feet of them -- dark as a cellar that sumach path was -- and just then I found I was going to sneeze. It was the meanest kind of luck! I tried to keep it back, but no

Frankenstein.txt

is obstinate and clings closest where it is most hated. For a moment only did I lose recollection; I fell senseless on the ground. When I recovered I found myself surrounded by the people of the inn; their countenances expressed a breathless terror, but the horror of others appeared only as a mockery, a shadow of the feelings that oppressed me. I escaped from them to the room where lay the body of Elizabeth, my love, my wife, so lately living, so dear, so worthy. She had been moved from the posture in which I had first beheld her, and now, as she lay, her head upon her arm and a handkerchief thrown across her face and neck, I might have supposed her asleep. I rushed towards her and embraced her with ardour, but the deadly languor and coldness of the limbs told me that what I now held in my arms had ceased to be the Elizabeth whom I had loved and cherished. The murderous mark of the fiend's grasp was on her neck, and the breath had ceased to issue from her lips. While I still hung over her in the agony of despair, I happened to look up. The windows of the room had before been darkened, and I felt a kind of panic on seeing the pale yellow light of the moon illuminate the chamber. The shutters had been thrown back, and with a sensation of horror not to be described, I saw at the open window a figure the most hideous and abhorred. A grin was on the face of the monster; he seemed to jeer, as with his fiendish finger he pointed towards the corpse of my wife. I rushed towards the window, and drawing a pistol from my bosom, fired; but he eluded me, leaped from his station, and running with the swiftness of lightning, plunged into the lake. The report of the pistol brought a crowd into the room. I pointed to the spot where he had disappeared, and we followed the track with boats; nets were cast, but in vain. After passing several hours, we returned hopeless, most of my companions believing it to have been a form conjured up by my fancy. After having landed, they proceeded to search the country, parties going in different directions among the woods and vines. I attempted to accompany them and proceeded a short distance from the house, but my head whirled round, my steps were like those of a drunken man, I fell at last in a state of utter exhaustion; a film covered my eyes, and my skin was parched with the heat of fever. In this state I was carried back and placed on a bed, hardly conscious of what had happened; my eyes wandered round the room as if to seek something that I had lost. After an interval I arose, and as if by instinct, crawled into the room where the corpse of my beloved lay. There were women weeping around; I hung over it and joined my sad tears to

The Call of the Wild.txt

Hal did not know this. They had worked the trip out with a pencil, so much to a dog, so many dogs, so many days, Q.E.D. Mercedes looked over their shoulders and nodded comprehensively, it was all so very simple. Late next morning Buck led the long team up the street. There was nothing lively about it, no snap or go in him and his fellows. They were starting dead weary. Four times he had covered the distance between Salt Water and Dawson, and the knowledge that, jaded and tired, he was facing the same trail once more, made him bitter. His heart was not in the work, nor was the heart of any dog. The Outsides were timid and frightened, the Insides without confidence in their masters. Buck felt vaguely that there was no depending upon these two men and the woman. They did not know how to do anything, and as the days went by it became apparent that they could not learn. They were slack in all things, without order or discipline. It took them half the night to pitch a slovenly camp, and half the morning to break that camp and get the sled loaded in fashion so slovenly that for the rest of the day they were occupied in stopping and rearranging the load. Some days they did not make ten miles. On other days they were unable to get started at all. And on no day did they succeed in making more than half the distance used by the men as a basis in their dog-food computation. It was inevitable that they should go short on dog-food. But they hastened it by overfeeding, bringing the day nearer when underfeeding would commence. The Outside dogs, whose digestions had not been trained by chronic famine to make the most of little, had voracious appetites. And when, in addition to this, the worn- out huskies pulled weakly, Hal decided that the orthodox ration was too small. He doubled it. And to cap it all, when Mercedes, with tears in her pretty eyes and a quaver in her throat, could not cajole him into giving the dogs still more, she stole from the fish-sacks and fed them slyly. But it was not food that Buck and the huskies needed, but rest. And though they were making poor time, the heavy load they dragged sapped their strength severely. Then came the underfeeding. Hal awoke one day to the fact that his dog-food was half gone and the distance only quarter covered; further, that for love or money no additional dog-food was to be obtained. So he cut down even the orthodox ration and tried to increase the day's travel. His sister and brother-in-law seconded him; but they were frustrated by their heavy outfit and their own incompetence. It was a simple matter to give the dogs less food; but it was impossible to make the dogs travel faster, while their own inability to get under way earlier in the morning prevented them from travelling longer hours. Not only did they not

Happy Place.txt

fancy books?” I ask. “She means he’s looking for something the New York Times has described as ‘revelatory,’ ” Sabrina says. “Actually . . .” Parth walks up with a paper bag already in hand. “I picked this because the Wall Street Journal gave it such a cranky review I needed to read it myself. It’s by this married couple who usually publish separately. One of them writes literary doorstop novels and the other writes romance.” “What!” Kimmy snatches the book. “I know them!” “Seriously?” Parth asks. “I went to college with them in Michigan,” she says. “They weren’t together yet, though. Her books are really horny. Is this one horny?” “The Wall Street Journal review didn’t touch on the horniness,” Parth says. “Is Wyn done?” Sabrina asks. “Checking out now,” Parth confirms “What’d he get, a Steinbeck novel?” she asks. Parth shrugs. “Dunno.” There’s no way Wyn’s getting a Steinbeck novel. I’m surprised he’s buying a book, period, since we never have time to read on these trips and he’s cautious with his spending. But if he was going to get a book, it wouldn’t be about the American West. He would’ve felt like too much of a caricature. Parth and Sabrina herd us toward the register. Cleo gets her mushroom book and I buy Death by Design, and then we step out onto the cobbled street. The sun is high in the sky, no trace of mist left, only dazzling blue. Across the street, Kimmy spots a flower cart in front of the florist and, with a squeal of delight, pulls Cleo after her. “Parth and I are gonna grab more coffee.” Sabrina tilts her head toward the Warm Cup, the café next door with the awning-sheltered walk-up window. We’ve already been twice today. Once before the market, once after. “Want anything?” she asks. “I’m good, thanks,” I tell her. “Wyn?” He shakes his head. As they wander off, we stand in silence, avoiding gazes. “I meant to tell you,” he says finally. “I talked to Parth last night.” “And?” He clears his throat a little. “You’re right. We’ll have to tell them after this week.” I’m not sure why that floods me with relief. The rest of my week is now guaranteed to be torturous. But at least Parth and Sabrina will get their perfect day. Wyn gets a text. He’s not usually so attentive to his phone. While he’s checking it, I lean toward him a little, trying to peer into his paper Murder, She Read bag. He stuffs his phone back into his pocket. “You can just ask.” “Ask what?” I say. His brow lifts. I stare back at him, impassive. Slowly, he slides his purchase from the bag and holds it out to me. It’s huge. The Eames Way: The Life and Love Behind the Iconic Chair. “This is a coffee-table book,” I say. “Is it?” He leans over to look at it. “Shit. I thought it was an airplane.” “Since when do you buy coffee-table books?” I ask. “Is this some kind of trick question,

Romantic-Comedy.txt

going on to strip clubs rumored to be the sites of after-after-after parties. A few times, I’d found myself at a diner around 7 or 8 a.m., but that was the extent of my adventurousness. And in the past couple years, I often skipped the after-after-party altogether because I was more enticed by my own bed. But Viv was already wearing her jacket, looking at me expectantly, still waiting to hear if I wanted a ride. “Sure,” I said. Sunday, 3:09 a.m. At Blosca, I went straight to the bar for a drink, turned around, and almost collided with Noah Brewster. “Hey!” He smiled broadly. “Hey!” I said back. “Congratulations! You were great.” Though I wasn’t drunk, I’d just taken a large, reassuring sip of vodka tonic, following two drinks at the earlier party. Noah leaned over the bar and asked for a club soda—presumably, he was completely sober—and I heard the bartender say, “Love your music, man,” and Noah said, “Thanks, man,” and then he turned back to me and said, “I wasn’t sure if you’d be here.” Even in the dim lighting, his eyes were bright blue, and his blond surfer hair was, well, convincingly hairlike. Sometimes at after-parties, the hosts would still be wearing their TV makeup, but it looked like he’d wiped his off. “I wasn’t sure if you’d be here,” I said and held out my arms. “But here we both are.” Not that he’d know it, but this was as theatrical, and as tipsy, as I got. “Are you exhausted or still running on adrenaline?” “I don’t know how you guys do it week in and week out.” “But being the host and the musical guest is the craziest of all possible worlds. I could never do either, let alone both. And you really were awesome. Choreographer was fantastic.” “Well, you were right about the Cheesemonger.” “No, you get credit,” I said. “It’s all in the delivery.” Tipsiness notwithstanding, I already was aware of monopolizing a celebrity’s time when I was no longer professionally useful. This was when Noah said, “Now will you admit you’ve never really listened to my music?” I genuinely laughed. “If I hadn’t, how would I have written the sketch? Also, I’m a human being in the world. Do you think there’s any man, woman, or child who hasn’t heard ‘Making Love in July’ while lying in the chair at the dentist’s office?” “Yeah, exactly. I mean that you haven’t listened beyond the bare minimum. You haven’t listened on purpose.” He still seemed to be good-naturedly teasing as opposed to needily grasping for a compliment. “Also not true,” I said. “I love ‘The Bishop’s Garden’ and ‘All Regrets.’ ” He squinted a little, scrutinizing me. “Here’s what I’ll admit,” I said. “There are two categories of pop songs I’m not crazy about, and because ‘Making Love in July,’ through no fault of its own, is in one of the categories, it biased me against you early on. I mean almost twenty years ago. But I’ve realized that I underestimated the range of

Cold People.txt

became waterlogged and she’d lose her ability to fly. By necessity she’d return to the vessel unless she found dry land. He fed her some scraps of dried fish skin and set her free. After so many days of being trapped, she didn’t understand her freedom, remaining motionless until he nudged her, and she flew into the sky. He stood at the bow, studying her direction of flight. She slowly circled the boat and then set off. She must have seen land. She must have seen Iraro. After many hours following the bird he entered a strange ocean consisting of countless small islands, smooth and white as the clouds. The air was so cold his breath turned to mist. He dropped the sail and, using the steering paddle, brought himself to the nearest island. There were no plants or trees, no creatures of any kind. Scraping the surface with the edge of his paddle produced a fine white dust which turned to water between his fingers. Ui dabbed the dust on his tongue. It wasn’t salty ocean water; it was fresh like rain, as though these islands were clouds that had crashed into the sea. Perhaps this was the place where clouds crashed after they’d finished flying, or perhaps this was where clouds were born and if he stayed here long enough, he’d see these islands puff up and rise into the sky. Ui climbed the mast and perched at the top, perfectly balanced, assessing the view. Far away he saw white cliffs, high and smooth, stretching from one side of the horizon to the other. He wondered how they’d come to be this way. Perhaps set back from the white cliffs, there were white volcanoes, and instead of red, hot lava they spewed cold, white lava. Perhaps there were white forests with white tree trunks and white leaves. Perhaps there were herds of white-fur animals and tribes of white-skinned men and women. He wondered what kind of person could live in a land like this. It must be a different kind of people – a savage tribe; only a savage people could survive in such cold. ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY YEARS AGO SOUTH GEORGIA ISLAND TWO THOUSAND KILOMETRES NORTH OF ANTARCTICA ONLY SOCIETY’S OUTCASTS COULD SURVIVE in these freezing waters and over the years Captain Moray had concluded there were no exceptions to this rule. Some of his crew could pass among civilized society for a while, they could entertain a room with tales of their adventures, but they’d pull a knife if they took a dislike to someone, and they took a dislike to a great many people. As the captain of the most successful sealing vessel operating off South Georgia Island, Moray was an expert in choosing his crew from the variety of outcasts on offer, his preference being for the melancholic, the sexual deviants and the thieves. For the thieves there was nothing to steal, for the melancholic there was the ocean to meditate upon and for the deviants there were other deviants. Moray never shared the secrets

The Mysteries of Udolpho.txt

woody glen, on the margin of a rivulet that descended from the Pyrenees, and, after foaming among their rocks, wound its silent way beneath the shades it reflected. Above the woods, that screened this glen, rose the lofty summits of the Pyrenees, which often burst boldly on the eye through the glades below. Sometimes the shattered face of a rock only was seen, crowned with wild shrubs; or a shepherd's cabin seated on a cliff, overshadowed by dark cypress, or waving ash. Emerging from the deep recesses of the woods, the glade opened to the distant landscape, where the rich pastures and vine-covered slopes of Gascony gradually declined to the plains; and there, on the winding shores of the Garonne, groves, and hamlets, and villas--their outlines softened by distance, melted from the eye into one rich harmonious tint. This, too, was the favourite retreat of St. Aubert, to which he frequently withdrew from the fervour of noon, with his wife, his daughter, and his books; or came at the sweet evening hour to welcome the silent dusk, or to listen for the music of the nightingale. Sometimes, too, he brought music of his own, and awakened every fairy echo with the tender accents of his oboe; and often have the tones of Emily's voice drawn sweetness from the waves, over which they trembled. It was in one of these excursions to this spot, that she observed the following lines written with a pencil on a part of the wainscot: SONNET Go, pencil! faithful to thy master's sighs! Go--tell the Goddess of the fairy scene, When next her light steps wind these wood-walks green, Whence all his tears, his tender sorrows, rise; Ah! paint her form, her soul-illumin'd eyes, The sweet expression of her pensive face, The light'ning smile, the animated grace-- The portrait well the lover's voice supplies; Speaks all his heart must feel, his tongue would say: Yet ah! not all his heart must sadly feel! How oft the flow'ret's silken leaves conceal The drug that steals the vital spark away! And who that gazes on that angel-smile, Would fear its charm, or think it could beguile! These lines were not inscribed to any person; Emily therefore could not apply them to herself, though she was undoubtedly the nymph of these shades. Having glanced round the little circle of her acquaintance without being detained by a suspicion as to whom they could be addressed, she was compelled to rest in uncertainty; an uncertainty which would have been more painful to an idle mind than it was to hers. She had no leisure to suffer this circumstance, trifling at first, to swell into importance by frequent remembrance. The little vanity it had excited (for the incertitude which forbade her to presume upon having inspired the sonnet, forbade her also to disbelieve it) passed away, and the incident was dismissed from her thoughts amid her books, her studies, and the exercise of social charities. Soon after this period, her anxiety was awakened by the indisposition of her father, who was attacked with a

The-Housekeepers.txt

night. She felt invisible cracks running through the house, felt the walls riven from top to toe, blood pounding in her chest. Cheated, she thought. I’ve been cheated out of my rights. She was the rightful inheritress. She always had been. And yet she’d been put in a frilly cap and a starched collar, trained to answer bells and take orders. To sit, stay, be silent. And she had allowed it. She had permitted it to be done. It made her as angry with herself as with the world. The following morning she faced Mr. Shepherd. Being dismissed didn’t frighten her. She was ready for it. Her plans required her to be outside the house, at liberty to circle it, correct it, tilt it, push it all the way over. Besides, she recognized her dismissal for what it was: a shot being fired right back at her. A message from Madam: Get out. It pleased her. It gave her exactly what she needed. Permission to do her worst. 31 Now “You know he’d been married before,” said Mrs. King. Miss de Vries said nothing. She sipped her champagne. “I suppose he had the same set of choices as all the other men who take secret wives.” Mrs. King counted on her fingers. “Come clean. Start running. Or say nothing. He picked the last option, didn’t he? Even Lockwood didn’t know.” She smiled, a pitying glance. “Men like him, they so nearly get away with things. But then they let the cat out of the bag. It’s as if they want to be caught. As if they can’t help themselves.” Miss de Vries raised her chin to the ceiling. She pressed her lips together. “And he unburdened himself, didn’t he?” continued Mrs. King. “On his nearest and dearest, his own flesh and blood, his own kith and kin. On you and me.” She’d looked forward to this moment, regardless of the risk. It would have been more prudent to keep her counsel, stay out of sight. But the urge to face Miss de Vries, bring everything out in the open, was too great. Besides, she had one fear, one deep concern. Had Mr. de Vries told his other daughter of the letter? Had she found it? If Miss de Vries had destroyed it, then Mrs. King needed to know. Mrs. King wished Miss de Vries would show something in her face, her eyes. But Miss de Vries didn’t. Her voice was entirely controlled. “I’m famished. Let’s eat.” She moved faster this time, champagne sloshing in her glass, and she tucked her hand into the crook of Mrs. King’s elbow. Lockwood sprang, following. The supper room was on the other side of the ballroom, opening onto the balcony, steps hurtling down to the garden. Lights leaping in the trees. Walls gagged with white silk. The tables had been laid out Parisian style on long buffets. Fowls sliced and stacked on silver dishes. Fruit plunged in bowls of ice. Mrs. King touched a peach, felt the chill like a burn. Miss de Vries took a

Great Expectations.txt

Wemmick, not at all addressing himself to me. "So, here's to Mrs. Bentley Drummle," said Mr. Jaggers, taking a decanter of choicer wine from his dumb-waiter, and filling for each of us and for himself, "and may the question of supremacy be settled to the lady's satisfaction! To the satisfaction of the lady and the gentleman, it never will be. Now, Molly, Molly, Molly, Molly, how slow you are to-day!" She was at his elbow when he addressed her, putting a dish upon the table. As she withdrew her hands from it, she fell back a step or two, nervously muttering some excuse. And a certain action of her fingers as she spoke arrested my attention. "What's the matter?" said Mr. Jaggers. "Nothing. Only the subject we were speaking of," said I, "was rather painful to me." The action of her fingers was like the action of knitting. She stood looking at her master, not understanding whether she was free to go, or whether he had more to say to her and would call her back if she did go. Her look was very intent. Surely, I had seen exactly such eyes and such hands, on a memorable occasion very lately! He dismissed her, and she glided out of the room. But she remained before me, as plainly as if she were still there. I looked at those hands, I looked at those eyes, I looked at that flowing hair; and I compared them with other hands, other eyes, other hair, that I knew of, and with what those might be after twenty years of a brutal husband and a stormy life. I looked again at those hands and eyes of the housekeeper, and thought of the inexplicable feeling that had come over me when I last walked - not alone - in the ruined garden, and through the deserted brewery. I thought how the same feeling had come back when I saw a face looking at me, and a hand waving to me, from a stage-coach window; and how it had come back again and had flashed about me like Lightning, when I had passed in a carriage - not alone - through a sudden glare of light in a dark street. I thought how one link of association had helped that identification in the theatre, and how such a link, wanting before, had been riveted for me now, when I had passed by a chance swift from Estella's name to the fingers with their knitting action, and the attentive eyes. And I felt absolutely certain that this woman was Estella's mother. Mr. Jaggers had seen me with Estella, and was not likely to have missed the sentiments I had been at no pains to conceal. He nodded when I said the subject was painful to me, clapped me on the back, put round the wine again, and went on with his dinner. Only twice more, did the housekeeper reappear, and then her stay in the room was very short, and Mr. Jaggers was sharp with her. But her hands were

Tess of the d'Urbervilles.txt

And now there be only two Sundays left between." Tess felt her cheek paling; Izz was right; of course there must be three. Perhaps he had forgotten! If so, there must be a week's postponement, and that was unlucky. How could she remind her lover? She who had been so backward was suddenly fired with impatience and alarm lest she should lose her dear prize. A natural incident relieved her anxiety. Izz mentioned the omission of the banns to Mrs Crick, and Mrs Crick assumed a matron's privilege of speaking to Angel on the point. "Have ye forgot 'em, Mr Clare? The banns, I mean." "No, I have not forgot 'em," says Clare. As soon as he caught Tess alone he assured her: "Don't let them tease you about the banns. A licence will be quieter for us, and I have decided on a licence without consulting you. So if you go to church on Sunday morning you will not hear your own name, if you wished to." "I didn't wish to hear it, dearest," she said proudly. But to know that things were in train was an immense relief to Tess notwithstanding, who had well-nigh feared that somebody would stand up and forbid the banns on the ground of her history. How events were favouring her! "I don't quite feel easy," she said to herself. "All this good fortune may be scourged out of me afterwards by a lot of ill. That's how Heaven mostly does. I wish I could have had common banns!" But everything went smoothly. She wondered whether he would like her to be married in her present best white frock, or if she ought to buy a new one. The question was set at rest by his forethought, disclosed by the arrival of some large packages addressed to her. Inside them she found a whole stock of clothing, from bonnet to shoes, including a perfect morning costume, such as would well suit the simple wedding they planned. He entered the house shortly after the arrival of the packages, and heard her upstairs undoing them. A minute later she came down with a flush on her face and tears in her eyes. "How thoughtful you've been!" she murmured, her cheek upon his shoulder. "Even to the gloves and handkerchief! My own love--how good, how kind!" "No, no, Tess; just an order to a tradeswoman in London--nothing more." And to divert her from thinking too highly of him he told her to go upstairs, and take her time, and see if it all fitted; and, if not, to get the village sempstress to make a few alterations. She did return upstairs, and put on the gown. Alone, she stood for a moment before the glass looking at the effect of her silk attire; and then there came into her head her mother's ballad of the mystic robe--- That never would become that wife That had once done amiss, which Mrs Durbeyfield had used to sing to her as a child, so blithely and so archly, her foot on the

Cold People.txt

above the deck of the oil tanker as if caught in some sort of primitive jungle trap. Liza was seated back-to-back with Atto, since there was no other form of support in the raft and the space was too crowded to lay down. Many hours after they’d said goodbye to their families, she felt the vibrations of his body as he cried. Only now was the sadness sinking in. Leaving Lisbon, he’d gathered everyone important to him in his family’s fishing boat, many of his friends and all of his family. This was his first experience of loss. True, one of his brothers was aboard, aloft in another of these strange, suspended structures, but his parents were too old to make the cut. Atto’s parents had stayed behind in the fishing boat with Liza’s parents as the tanker set sail. Unable to hug him or console him, she said nothing as he wept, holding his hand. Resting her head on his shoulder, she looked up at the night sky filled with thousands of stars except in one area, a patch of darkness where an alien vessel blocked the sky. Liza mused: ‘When the Polynesians explored the remote islands of Henderson and Lisianski, islands that had never seen human activity, two thousand species of birds, species that had survived for many millennia, disappeared in a few years. On the island of Guam, brown tree snakes, which were accidentally brought on cargo vessels from other lands, had, in a decade, eliminated the entire population of native land birds – the Micronesian starling and kingfisher, the Mariana crow, the Guam flycatcher and the white-throated ground dove.’ ‘Why do you know all these facts?’ ‘I read a lot. I never did very well in social situations. I never felt comfortable around people. I always preferred books.’ ‘Do you think we’ll ever get the chance to read another book?’ ‘If we’re alive, we’ll be reading.’ ‘You think we can make it, don’t you?’ ‘We are going to make it. I promised my parents.’ At some point, they fell asleep, back-to-back. The next morning at sunrise, somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic, they saw the scale of the global armada traveling south – a thousand times the size of Dunkirk. There were French and American aircraft carriers, Dutch cargo ships, British destroyers and Norwegian cruise ships. When the tropical rains began, Atto told them to drink as much as possible, fresh water was in short supply, and they sat with their mouths open, catching raindrops, like newly hatched chicks waiting to be fed. It was funny for a time, until the rains stopped and they began to shiver. This wasn’t even close to the kinds of cold they were about to experience. DRAKE PASSAGE THE ANTARCTIC PENINSULA 4 SEPTEMBER ELEVEN HOURS REMAINING HAVING COMPLETED A SEVEN-THOUSAND-MILE JOURNEY due south, the super-tanker was now backed up in shipping traffic that filled Drake Passage, a notorious stretch of water, feared for its thirty-metre waves powered by the uninterrupted circumpolar ocean current and seventy-knot winds. The polar coastline had been

The Silmarillion.txt

chapters (from the death of Trin Turambar) introduced peculiar difficulties, in that they had remained unchanged for many years, and were in some respects in serious disharmony with more developed conceptions in other parts of the book. A complete consistency (either within the compass of The Silmarillion itself or between The Silmarillion and other published writings of my father's) is not to be looked for, and could only be achieved, if at all at heavy and needless cost. Moreover, my father came to conceive The Silmarillion as a compilation, a compendious narrative, made long afterwards from sources of great diversity (poems, and annals, and oral tales) that had survived in agelong tradition; and this conception has indeed its parallel in the actual history of the book, for a great deal of earlier prose and poetry does underlie it, and it is to some extent a compendium in fact and not only in theory. To this may be ascribed the varying speed of the narrative and fullness of detail in different parts, the contrast (for example) of the precise recollections of place and motive in the legend of Trin Turambar beside the high and remote account of the end of the First Age, when Thangorodrim was broken and Morgoth overthrown; and also some differences of tone and portrayal, some obscurities, and, here and there, some lack of cohesion. In the case of the Valaquenta, for instance, we have to assume that while it contains much that must go back to the earliest days of the Eldar in Valinor, it was remodelled in later times; and thus explain its continual shifting of tense and viewpoint, so that the divine powers seem now present and active in the world, now remote, a vanished order known only to memory. The book, though entitled as it must be The Silmarillion, contains not only the Quenta Silmarillion, or Silmarillion proper, but also four other short works. The Ainulindal and Valaquenta, which are given at the beginning, are indeed closely related with The Silmarillion; but the Akallabth and Of the Rings of Power, which appear at the end, are (it must to emphasised) wholly separate and independent. They are included according to my father's explicit intention; and by their inclusion is set forth the entire history is set forth from the Music of the Ainur in which the world began to the passing of the Ringbearers from the havens of Mithlond at the end of the Third Age. The number of names that occur in the book is very large, and I have provided a full index; but the number of persons (Elves and Men) who play an important part in the narrative of the First Age is very much smaller, and all of these will be found in the genealogical tables. In addition I have provided a table setting out the rather complex naming of the different Elvish peoples; a note on the pronunciation of Elvish names, and a list of some of the chief elements found in these names; and a map. It may be noted that

Little Women.txt

swept a path all round the garden, for Beth to walk in when the sun came out and the invalid dolls needed air. Now, the garden separated the Marches' house from that of Mr. Laurence. Both stood in a suburb of the city, which was still countrylike, with groves and lawns, large gardens, and quiet streets. A low hedge parted the two estates. On one side was an old, brown house, looking rather bare and shabby, robbed of the vines that in summer covered its walls and the flowers, which then surrounded it. On the other side was a stately stone mansion, plainly betokening every sort of comfort and luxury, from the big coach house and well-kept grounds to the conservatory and the glimpses of lovely things one caught between the rich curtains. Yet it seemed a lonely, lifeless sort of house, for no children frolicked on the lawn, no motherly face ever smiled at the windows, and few people went in and out, except the old gentleman and his grandson. To Jo's lively fancy, this fine house seemed a kind of enchanted palace, full of splendors and delights which no one enjoyed. She had long wanted to behold these hidden glories, and to know the Laurence boy, who looked as if he would like to be known, if he only knew how to begin. Since the party, she had been more eager than ever, and had planned many ways of making friends with him, but he had not been seen lately, and Jo began to think he had gone away, when she one day spied a brown face at an upper window, looking wistfully down into their garden, where Beth and Amy were snow-balling one another. "That boy is suffering for society and fun," she said to herself. "His grandpa does not know what's good for him, and keeps him shut up all alone. He needs a party of jolly boys to play with, or somebody young and lively. I've a great mind to go over and tell the old gentleman so!" The idea amused Jo. who liked to do daring things and was always scandalizing Meg by her queer performances. The plan of `going over' was not forgotten. And when the snowy afternoon came, Jo resolved to try what could be done. She saw Mr. Lawrence drive off, and then sallied out to dig her way down to the hedge, where she paused and took a survey. All quiet, curtains down at the lower windows, servants out of sight, and nothing human visible but a curly black head leaning on a thin hand at the upper window. "There he is," thought Jo, "Poor boy! All alone and sick this dismal day. It's a shame! I'll toss up a snowball and make him look out, and then say a kind word to him." Up went a handful of soft snow, and the head turned at once, showing a face which lost its listless look in a minute, as the big eyes brightened and the mouth began to smile. Jo nodded and

The Secret Garden.txt

few moments and then she began again. "I suppose you might as well be told something--to prepare you. You are going to a queer place." Mary said nothing at all, and Mrs. Medlock looked rather discomfited by her apparent indifference, but, after taking a breath, she went on. "Not but that it's a grand big place in a gloomy way, and Mr. Craven's proud of it in his way--and that's gloomy enough, too. The house is six hundred years old and it's on the edge of the moor, and there's near a hundred rooms in it, though most of them's shut up and locked. And there's pictures and fine old furniture and things that's been there for ages, and there's a big park round it and gardens and trees with branches trailing to the ground--some of them." She paused and took another breath. "But there's nothing else," she ended suddenly. Mary had begun to listen in spite of herself. It all sounded so unlike India, and anything new rather attracted her. But she did not intend to look as if she were interested. That was one of her unhappy, disagreeable ways. So she sat still. "Well," said Mrs. Medlock. "What do you think of it?" "Nothing," she answered. "I know nothing about such places." That made Mrs. Medlock laugh a short sort of laugh. "Eh!" she said, "but you are like an old woman. Don't you care?" "It doesn't matter" said Mary, "whether I care or not." "You are right enough there," said Mrs. Medlock. "It doesn't. What you're to be kept at Misselthwaite Manor for I don't know, unless because it's the easiest way. He's not going to trouble himself about you, that's sure and certain. He never troubles himself about no one." She stopped herself as if she had just remembered something in time. "He's got a crooked back," she said. "That set him wrong. He was a sour young man and got no good of all his money and big place till he was married." Mary's eyes turned toward her in spite of her intention not to seem to care. She had never thought of the hunchback's being married and she was a trifle surprised. Mrs. Medlock saw this, and as she was a talkative woman she continued with more interest. This was one way of passing some of the time, at any rate. "She was a sweet, pretty thing and he'd have walked the world over to get her a blade o' grass she wanted. Nobody thought she'd marry him, but she did, and people said she married him for his money. But she didn't--she didn't," positively. "When she died--" Mary gave a little involuntary jump. "Oh! did she die!" she exclaimed, quite without meaning to. She had just remembered a French fairy story she had once read called "Riquet a la Houppe." It had been about a poor hunchback and a beautiful princess and it had made her suddenly sorry for Mr. Archibald Craven. "Yes, she died," Mrs. Medlock answered. "And it made him queerer than ever.

Titanium-Noir.txt

all that’s good naturally rolls down a slope to the warm towers of Chersenesos. It’s a fairy-tale world where no one thinks about money and there’s only a couple of thousand real people on earth. The rest of us are flickering fairy lights: cheap, disposable and fragile. The doorway belongs to the Tonfamecasca Company, and the daylight and the shadow worlds line up on their lawn, hoping to be let in. They do, very occasionally, let people in. You can buy entry, but the cost is ridiculously high because Stefan Tonfamecasca isn’t sure yet just how many Titans the world can sustain, and he has no intention of making too many, ruining that post-scarcity for the few. You can trade your way in if you have something impossibly valuable: legislative power, or science on the same order of magnitude. You can be given a dose if someone inside loves you and is willing to go to bat with the Titan king on your behalf. There’s even a piece of emergency legislation for senior government and witnesses in high-profile trials: if you get assassinated, and T7 can save you, they might dose you up. Might, if there’s time, and they really care, but don’t count on it. Or sometimes, just sometimes, Stefan will walk out in the street and pick someone who catches his eye. Three times ever, that I know of. One chance in eight billion during the course of a human lifespan. And because people are superstitious in the face of what they fear—and there’s plenty to fear for all of us, even Titans, because once you’ve seen the heavenly city you have always to fear being kicked out of it—there are myths and ghost stories here in the city. The same ones from Chersenesos to Tappeny Bridge; the same ones in penthouses and poorhouses; the same ghosts seen over different shoulders in different mirrors. There’s the mad Titan called Mr. Streetlight, grown impossibly tall and thin and trailing silken threads like a spider as he walks through the suburbs, lifting people up and away by the neck and dropping them strangled by the side of the road. There’s the Drowners, also called the Fates, the three weird sisters of Lake Othrys, so big and old they can only stay alive underwater, who snack on passing swimmers and pleasure boats that wake them in the reeds. Over on the other shore, there’s the Devil Dogs, escaped test subjects from the T1 lab at marker 9, hounds like bears supposedly living in the desert a hundred miles to the north. There are human monsters, too: half awful and half admired, like Flens, whose husband was supposedly killed by a Titan, and who picks them off one by one in their pleasure palaces and leaves them jointed for Stefan Tonfamecasca to find. Last month I heard someone say that Titans can only get high on baseline human adrenaline. A month before that, it was that they can only have sex if they inject freshly harvested hormones. And then there’s Doublewide, the Titan victim

Hannah Whitten - The Foxglove King-Orbit (2023).txt

the head of the man sitting at its edge, deep in thought. “Anton,” King August said, glancing up from his steepled hands. “You took longer than anticipated.” “I had to inform the lady of our expectations. She took a bit of convincing.” For all his brother’s brusqueness, Anton seemed unruffled, though he toyed with his pendant again, one fingernail digging into the garnet. “Unless you’d rather I left that to you? You do excel at negotiation.” His tone made it clear this was not a compliment. “No need.” August stood up, stepping deftly over the iron bars bristling the base of the throne with the ease of practice. He and Anton were twins, but August wasn’t quite as good-looking—at least, he wouldn’t be if Anton weren’t so horribly scarred. Their hair was the same iron gray, their eyes the same deep brown. August kept a short, well-trimmed beard framing his sharp jaw, where Anton stayed clean-shaven. For all the extravagance of his palace, the King was dressed rather simply. Dark pants, dark doublet over a creamy white shirt, supple leather boots, all of it clearly the best Auverraine had to offer. The understated clothing made August’s crown that much more ostentatious, the same design Lore had seen sold in the stalls on the dock roads yesterday—a band that rested on his brow, studded with winking rubies, and another band over the top of his head that supported thick golden sun rays, making him look like Apollius himself. Lore supposed that was the point. Maybe she should’ve felt some sort of awe at being in the presence of the Sainted King. But the day already felt so surreal, so difficult to hammer into the borders of the life she knew, that all she felt was annoyance and the distant thrum of dread. “So,” the Sainted King said. “This is our deathwitch.” Lore fidgeted a moment, wondering if she should curtsy, quickly deciding that it would only lead to falling on her ass. Instead she lifted her chin and clenched her hands in her skirt. “In the flesh.” The corner of the King’s mouth flickered up and down again, a smile only in shape. “They tell me you’ve fallen in with poison runners. How did that happen to a woman of your prodigious talent?” “Too mean to charge for my company, too clumsy for barkeeping, and I’m a terrible cook. That rules out most gainful employment.” She said it pleasantly enough, an answer that gave away nothing important. “My prodigious talent isn’t good for much, honestly.” The King sniffed. “Your former employer tells us you’re an accomplished spy, in addition to your… less common qualities. Surely that’s a skill that can earn quite a lot of coin.” The mention of Val made something twist in her chest. “Being a good spy mostly comes down to knowing when to lie and when to stay quiet,” she responded. “And there’s not much coin to go around out there, regardless of how good you are at what you do.” “An unfortunate predicament,” August conceded with a nod.

Of Human Bondage.txt

pictures. Athelny had very good manners. He knew much more than Philip, both of the world and of books; he was a much older man; and the readiness of his conversation gave him a certain superiority; but he was in the hospital a recipient of charity, subject to strict rules; and he held himself between the two positions with ease and humour. Once Philip asked him why he had come to the hospital. "Oh, my principle is to profit by all the benefits that society provides. I take advantage of the age I live in. When I'm ill I get myself patched up in a hospital and I have no false shame, and I send my children to be educated at the board-school." "Do you really?" said Philip. "And a capital education they get too, much better than I got at Winchester. How else do you think I could educate them at all? I've got nine. You must come and see them all when I get home again. Will you?" "I'd like to very much," said Philip. CHAPTER LXXXVII TEN days later Thorpe Athelny was well enough to leave the hospital. He gave Philip his address, and Philip promised to dine with him at one o'clock on the following Sunday. Athelny had told him that he lived in a house built by Inigo Jones; he had raved, as he raved over everything, over the balustrade of old oak; and when he came down to open the door for Philip he made him at once admire the elegant carving of the lintel. It was a shabby house, badly needing a coat of paint, but with the dignity of its period, in a little street between Chancery Lane and Holborn, which had once been fashionable but was now little better than a slum: there was a plan to pull it down in order to put up handsome offices; meanwhile the rents were small, and Athelny was able to get the two upper floors at a price which suited his income. Philip had not seen him up before and was surprised at his small size; he was not more than five feet and five inches high. He was dressed fantastically in blue linen trousers of the sort worn by working men in France, and a very old brown velvet coat; he wore a bright red sash round his waist, a low collar, and for tie a flowing bow of the kind used by the comic Frenchman in the pages of _Punch_. He greeted Philip with enthusiasm. He began talking at once of the house and passed his hand lovingly over the balusters. "Look at it, feel it, it's like silk. What a miracle of grace! And in five years the house-breaker will sell it for firewood." He insisted on taking Philip into a room on the first floor, where a man in shirt sleeves, a blousy woman, and three children were having their Sunday dinner. "I've just brought this gentleman in to show him your ceiling. Did you ever see anything so wonderful? How are

Quietly-Hostile.txt

at my silly Instagram grid of shitty memes, pictures of my dog’s costumed shame, and books I’ve read a quarter of the way through should have let homeboy know on sight that I am not the person making executive casting decisions on this iconic television program. That daunting task is reserved for my father, Mr. HBO Max. The second message, sent by a woman with a private profile whose tortured, bleached-blond hair in her profile picture looked extremely stressed out, went something like this: “hey u fuckin bitch if u put carrie back with aiden [sic] and ruin my favorite show i’ll fucking kill u.” Um, okay? My kingdom for this murderous threat to become a reality! I would love to die, and I especially would love to die at the hands of this deranged woman over the choices a fictional character I did not invent makes on a show that is not real regarding a man who absolutely does not exist. My funeral would be such a party, because I am a funny and likable person, plus my murder would probably be splashed across the tabloids in a sleazy John Hinckley Jr. kind of way, and people would want to be seen mourning me. Maybe Sarah Jessica Parker would come! The internet is so gross, I wish I never had to look at anything scary or weird or mean on there, but my sincerest wish is that one day it will evolve to the point where none of its more brain-poisoned, terminally online denizens could talk to me without having to first upload their verified state-issued identification so I know exactly who I’m out here dealing with. I’ll do mine! I would love to!!!!! You know why? Because I don’t threaten to murder strangers online, and if the FBI needed to trace a meme I’d reposted of a repost of a repost without proper attribution back to me, that’s cool and I’d happily pay the fine to Sad Kermit for my crimes. I had to deactivate my Twitter for my sanity’s sake because everyone has incurable fucking brain worms, and I saw someone whom I’d previously thought to be a very smart lady criticize a promotional photo from the forthcoming And Just Like That…series I had been working on for months in a tweet that went something like, “this show looks so bad, Miranda has a child, she would never wear white pants” and I felt my fingers start to itch as I attempted to simply scroll past as if I did not see it. I try to conduct myself decently on social media because (1) drama is boring and (2) they make you upload your driver’s license to get verified and I don’t know enough about how IP addresses work to feel comfortable making a burner. Also, Miranda is fifty-five and her eighteen-year-old son/man FUCKS within the first five minutes of the first episode. She can wear whatever kind of pants she pleases! DEATH THREATS!!!!! OVER THE TUTU LADY!!!!!!!!! Is this a real thing? Do people really feel this strongly

The Call of the Wild.txt

later, in him, quickened and become alive again. Sometimes as he crouched there, blinking dreamily at the flames, it seemed that the flames were of another fire, and that as he crouched by this other fire he saw another and different man from the half-breed cook before him. This other man was shorter of leg and longer of arm, with muscles that were stringy and knotty rather than rounded and swelling. The hair of this man was long and matted, and his head slanted back under it from the eyes. He uttered strange sounds, and seemed very much afraid of the darkness, into which he peered continually, clutching in his hand, which hung midway between knee and foot, a stick with a heavy stone made fast to the end. He was all but naked, a ragged and fire-scorched skin hanging part way down his back, but on his body there was much hair. In some places, across the chest and shoulders and down the outside of the arms and thighs, it was matted into almost a thick fur. He did not stand erect, but with trunk inclined forward from the hips, on legs that bent at the knees. About his body there was a peculiar springiness, or resiliency, almost catlike, and a quick alertness as of one who lived in perpetual fear of things seen and unseen. At other times this hairy man squatted by the fire with head between his legs and slept. On such occasions his elbows were on his knees, his hands clasped above his head as though to shed rain by the hairy arms. And beyond that fire, in the circling darkness, Buck could see many gleaming coals, two by two, always two by two, which he knew to be the eyes of great beasts of prey. And he could hear the crashing of their bodies through the undergrowth, and the noises they made in the night. And dreaming there by the Yukon bank, with lazy eyes blinking at the fire, these sounds and sights of another world would make the hair to rise along his back and stand on end across his shoulders and up his neck, till he whimpered low and suppressedly, or growled softly, and the half-breed cook shouted at him, "Hey, you Buck, wake up!" Whereupon the other world would vanish and the real world come into his eyes, and he would get up and yawn and stretch as though he had been asleep. It was a hard trip, with the mail behind them, and the heavy work wore them down. They were short of weight and in poor condition when they made Dawson, and should have had a ten days' or a week's rest at least. But in two days' time they dropped down the Yukon bank from the Barracks, loaded with letters for the outside. The dogs were tired, the drivers grumbling, and to make matters worse, it snowed every day. This meant a soft trail, greater friction on the runners, and heavier pulling for the dogs; yet the drivers were fair

Katherine-Center-Hello-Stranger.txt

relax. Then I could dance the night away with Daniel and his adorable friends. Then I could let this whole weird chapter of my life go at last—and move the hell on. Thirty-One BUT JOE DIDN’T leave. He stayed. He lurked around the party long after dinner and well into the dancing—watching me with such purpose as I boogied defiantly with Sue and Daniel and all their cousins that he felt like a predator stalking his prey. I didn’t care that he was here. I didn’t care that he was here, damn it. He couldn’t just stare me down into giving up all my joy. I had moved on. And bounced back. And if he didn’t understand what he’d lost, then I was better off on my own. I was fine, I was fine, I was fine. But you can dance your ass off with bold, hysterical, can’t-touch-this energy for only so long. Eventually, you have to take a breather. As soon as I stepped off the dance floor, Joe moved in for the kill. I didn’t want to talk to him. That should have been perfectly clear. What other message could ignoring him all night possibly convey? And yet there he was, as soon as I’d separated from the herd, moving toward me—with purpose. But I didn’t have to just stand frozen there like a gazelle and let him pounce. I wasn’t some prey animal. As soon as I saw him making his way toward me, I started making my way toward … what? We were on a roof. It wasn’t like I could catch a city bus and disappear into the night. But I had to try, anyway. I headed off toward the far corner, like maybe if I could dart around behind the mechanical room and break his line of sight, he might lose me. As I sped up, he sped up. I’d gotten pretty good at speed-walking in these postsurgery weeks, so for a minute there, I was actually starting to lose him … until he broke into a run. “Sadie!” he called, like that might slow me down. Wrong. It sped me up. “Sadie! Wait!” he called again as I rounded the corner. Rounding the corner did help—for about one second. Until, as soon as I got there, I realized it was a dead end. A dark dead end with—actually—a fabulous view of the downtown skyline. I didn’t come to this side very often. I slowed down, defeated, and then walked to the far edge of the roof, leaning against the railing as if gazing at the view had been my urgent purpose all along. No escape now, I thought as I heard Joe’s running footsteps approaching behind me. I took a long-overdue deep breath, felt it swirl in my lungs, and willed it to give me peace. And then … Joe showed up next to me at the railing. I felt him land before I turned. “Hey,” he said, a little breathless. I pretended I didn’t hear him. Like that glittering skyline had so enraptured me

Silvia-Moreno-Garcia-Silver-Nitr.txt

station. “Abel said Clarimonde published Ewers’s book, and she kept it in print for a long time. Could be the publisher that printed it is still in business. As for José López, I’m thinking I could pay Nando Melgar a visit.” “You told me Nando was a creep.” “He is. But he tried to sell me a script of one of Abel’s films a few years ago. He said it had notes by Romeo Donderis in the margins, and he offered to have it authenticated by the man himself. I’ll talk to Nando tomorrow.” “Listen, tomorrow I’m booked all day. I have this publicity thing for the new role. But if you postpone it, I’ll tag along.” “I won’t be in any mortal danger.” “So, I need you to ask questions properly, but you don’t need me?” he asked without bothering to conceal his irritation. “I don’t need you, no.” He frowned. She was his co-conspirator, his best and truest friend, but sometimes she annoyed the hell out of him. Montserrat let out a laugh. She placed a hand on his arm, as if trying to soothe his feelings. “I can handle Nando. He tries to pinch my ass, I punch him in the nuts. He knows how it goes with me.” “What if he’s a masochist who enjoys having his nuts squeezed?” “You worry too much.” “I do, not all about Nando, either,” Tristán said, warily eyeing the crosswalk signal. “This talk of runes has me scared.” “You should never be afraid of magic. That’s what Ewers said in his book. Fear gives others power over you and clouds your mind. It makes the magic go sour. Which makes sense, if you think you’ve been hexed, you live looking for signs of danger.” “I would think that is logical.” “Not the way he saw it. You had to be fearless.” “Why are you following this guy’s advice?” he asked, irked by the way she spoke. She sounded almost pleased. “I’m trying to understand the logic he employed, the underlying mechanism. Like Abel said, Ewers wasn’t coming up with these ideas out of nowhere. He was mixing and matching. He wasn’t that original.” “What is original? Every soap I was ever on was another soap with different names.” “Precisely. So even if Ewers thought a little much about himself, he might have stumbled onto a few good tips.” Tristán paused at a corner and looked down at Montserrat, taking off his sunglasses and staring into her eyes. “Be careful. I mean it, Momo,” he said, dropping his voice. “This shit is dangerous.” She didn’t blink, tilting up her determined chin, and spoke with a polished brashness. “I was caught off guard at Abel’s apartment, but I won’t be caught again.” “You’re a terror,” he muttered, and he meant it. 16 It was colder that morning, and Montserrat’s leg ached. She could do nothing about it except rub the limb and plug in the electric blanket. She dallied in bed, comforted by its warmth, and went through the notes she had gathered. Her

Little Women.txt

loved, she put both arms round his neck and kissed him. If the roof of the house had suddenly flown off, the old gentleman wouldn't have been more astonished. But he liked it. Oh, dear, yes, he liked it amazingly! And was so touched and pleased by that confiding little kiss that all his crustiness vanished, and he just set her on his knee, and laid his wrinkled cheek against her rosy one, feeling as if he had got his own little grand daughter back again. Beth ceased to fear him from that moment, and sat there talking to him as cozily as if she had known him all her life, for love casts out fear, and gratitude can conquer pride. When she went home, he walked with her to her own gate, shook hands cordially, and touched his hat as he marched back again, looking very stately and erect, like a handsome, soldierly old gentleman, as he was. When the girls saw that performance, Jo began to dance a jig, by way of expressing her satisfaction, Amy nearly fell out of the window in her surprise, and Meg exclaimed, with up-lifted hands, "Well, I do believe the world is coming to an end. -------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Chapter" I.7 Amy's Valley of Humiliation "That boy is a perfect cyclops, isn't he?" said Amy one day, as Laurie clattered by on horseback, with a flourish of his whip as he passed. "How dare you say so, when he's got both his eyes? And very handsome ones they are, too," cried Jo, who resented any slighting remarks about her friend. "I didn't day anything about his eyes, and I don't see why you need fire up when I admire his riding." "Oh, my goodness! That little goose means a centaur, and she called him a Cyclops," exclaimed Jo, with a burst of laughter. "You needn't be so rude, it's only a `lapse of lingy', as Mr. Davis says," retorted Amy, finishing Jo with her Latin. "I just wish I had a little of the money Laurie spends on that horse," she added, as if to herself, yet hoping her sisters would hear. "Why?" asked Meg kindly, for Jo had gone off in another laugh at Amy's second blunder. "I need it so much. I'm dreadfully in debt, and it won't be my turn to have the rag money for a month." "In debt, Amy? What do you mean?" And Meg looked sober. "Why, I owe at least a dozen pickled limes, and I can't pay them, you know, till I have money, for Marmee forbade my having anything charged at the shop." "Tell me all about it. Are limes the fashion now? It used to be pricking bits of rubber to make balls." And Meg tried to keep her countenance, Amy looked so grave and important. "Why, you see, the girls are always buying them, and unless you want to be thought mean, you must do it too. It's nothing but limes now, for everyone is sucking them in their desks in schooltime, and trading

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.txt

secondly, because she was exactly the right height to rest her chin upon Alice's shoulder, and it was an uncomfortably sharp chin. However, she did not like to be rude, so she bore it as well as she could. `The game's going on rather better now,' she said, by way of keeping up the conversation a little. `'Tis so,' said the Duchess: `and the moral of that is--"Oh, 'tis love, 'tis love, that makes the world go round!"' `Somebody said,' Alice whispered, `that it's done by everybody minding their own business!' `Ah, well! It means much the same thing,' said the Duchess, digging her sharp little chin into Alice's shoulder as she added, `and the moral of THAT is--"Take care of the sense, and the sounds will take care of themselves."' `How fond she is of finding morals in things!' Alice thought to herself. `I dare say you're wondering why I don't put my arm round your waist,' the Duchess said after a pause: `the reason is, that I'm doubtful about the temper of your flamingo. Shall I try the experiment?' `HE might bite,' Alice cautiously replied, not feeling at all anxious to have the experiment tried. `Very true,' said the Duchess: `flamingoes and mustard both bite. And the moral of that is--"Birds of a feather flock together."' `Only mustard isn't a bird,' Alice remarked. `Right, as usual,' said the Duchess: `what a clear way you have of putting things!' `It's a mineral, I THINK,' said Alice. `Of course it is,' said the Duchess, who seemed ready to agree to everything that Alice said; `there's a large mustard-mine near here. And the moral of that is--"The more there is of mine, the less there is of yours."' `Oh, I know!' exclaimed Alice, who had not attended to this last remark, `it's a vegetable. It doesn't look like one, but it is.' `I quite agree with you,' said the Duchess; `and the moral of that is--"Be what you would seem to be"--or if you'd like it put more simply--"Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise."' `I think I should understand that better,' Alice said very politely, `if I had it written down: but I can't quite follow it as you say it.' `That's nothing to what I could say if I chose,' the Duchess replied, in a pleased tone. `Pray don't trouble yourself to say it any longer than that,' said Alice. `Oh, don't talk about trouble!' said the Duchess. `I make you a present of everything I've said as yet.' `A cheap sort of present!' thought Alice. `I'm glad they don't give birthday presents like that!' But she did not venture to say it out loud. `Thinking again?' the Duchess asked, with another dig of her sharp little chin. `I've a right to think,' said Alice sharply, for she was beginning to feel a little worried. `Just about as much right,'

The Mysteries of Udolpho.txt

alarmed on his account, for that he had no doubt he should be able to support himself very well; and then he talked of the accident as a slight one. The muleteer being now returned with Valancourt's horse, assisted him into the chaise; and, as Emily was now revived, they moved slowly on towards Beaujeu. St. Aubert, when he had recovered from the terror occasioned him by this accident, expressed surprise on seeing Valancourt, who explained his unexpected appearance by saying, 'You, sir, renewed my taste for society; when you had left the hamlet, it did indeed appear a solitude. I determined, therefore, since my object was merely amusement, to change the scene; and I took this road, because I knew it led through a more romantic tract of mountains than the spot I have left. Besides,' added he, hesitating for an instant, 'I will own, and why should I not? that I had some hope of overtaking you.' 'And I have made you a very unexpected return for the compliment,' said St. Aubert, who lamented again the rashness which had produced the accident, and explained the cause of his late alarm. But Valancourt seemed anxious only to remove from the minds of his companions every unpleasant feeling relative to himself; and, for that purpose, still struggled against a sense of pain, and tried to converse with gaiety. Emily meanwhile was silent, except when Valancourt particularly addressed her, and there was at those times a tremulous tone in his voice that spoke much. They were now so near the fire, which had long flamed at a distance on the blackness of night, that it gleamed upon the road, and they could distinguish figures moving about the blaze. The way winding still nearer, they perceived in the valley one of those numerous bands of gipsies, which at that period particularly haunted the wilds of the Pyrenees, and lived partly by plundering the traveller. Emily looked with some degree of terror on the savage countenances of these people, shewn by the fire, which heightened the romantic effects of the scenery, as it threw a red dusky gleam upon the rocks and on the foliage of the trees, leaving heavy masses of shade and regions of obscurity, which the eye feared to penetrate. They were preparing their supper; a large pot stood by the fire, over which several figures were busy. The blaze discovered a rude kind of tent, round which many children and dogs were playing, and the whole formed a picture highly grotesque. The travellers saw plainly their danger. Valancourt was silent, but laid his hand on one of St. Aubert's pistols; St. Aubert drew forth another, and Michael was ordered to proceed as fast as possible. They passed the place, however, without being attacked; the rovers being probably unprepared for the opportunity, and too busy about their supper to feel much interest, at the moment, in any thing besides. After a league and a half more, passed in darkness, the travellers arrived at Beaujeu, and drove up to the only inn the

The Turn of the Screw.txt

as against my own. "She persists in denying to you that she saw, or has ever seen, anything?" My visitor's trouble, truly, was great. "Ah, miss, it isn't a matter on which I can push her! Yet it isn't either, I must say, as if I much needed to. It has made her, every inch of her, quite old." "Oh, I see her perfectly from here. She resents, for all the world like some high little personage, the imputation on her truthfulness and, as it were, her respectability. `Miss Jessel indeed--SHE!' Ah, she's `respectable,' the chit! The impression she gave me there yesterday was, I assure you, the very strangest of all; it was quite beyond any of the others. I DID put my foot in it! She'll never speak to me again." Hideous and obscure as it all was, it held Mrs. Grose briefly silent; then she granted my point with a frankness which, I made sure, had more behind it. "I think indeed, miss, she never will. She do have a grand manner about it!" "And that manner"--I summed it up--"is practically what's the matter with her now!" Oh, that manner, I could see in my visitor's face, and not a little else besides! "She asks me every three minutes if I think you're coming in." "I see--I see." I, too, on my side, had so much more than worked it out. "Has she said to you since yesterday--except to repudiate her familiarity with anything so dreadful--a single other word about Miss Jessel?" "Not one, miss. And of course you know," my friend added, "I took it from her, by the lake, that, just then and there at least, there WAS nobody." "Rather! and, naturally, you take it from her still." "I don't contradict her. What else can I do?" "Nothing in the world! You've the cleverest little person to deal with. They've made them--their two friends, I mean--still cleverer even than nature did; for it was wondrous material to play on! Flora has now her grievance, and she'll work it to the end." "Yes, miss; but to WHAT end?" "Why, that of dealing with me to her uncle. She'll make me out to him the lowest creature--!" I winced at the fair show of the scene in Mrs. Grose's face; she looked for a minute as if she sharply saw them together. "And him who thinks so well of you!" "He has an odd way--it comes over me now," I laughed,"--of proving it! But that doesn't matter. What Flora wants, of course, is to get rid of me." My companion bravely concurred. "Never again to so much as look at you." "So that what you've come to me now for," I asked, "is to speed me on my way?" Before she had time to reply, however, I had her in check. "I've a better idea--the result of my reflections. My going WOULD seem the right thing, and on Sunday I was terribly near it. Yet that won't do. It's YOU who must go. You must take Flora." My visitor,

The Call of the Wild.txt

all the while whining and yelping and crying with grief and pain. The half-breed tried to drive him away with the whip; but he paid no heed to the stinging lash, and the man had not the heart to strike harder. Dave refused to run quietly on the trail behind the sled, where the going was easy, but continued to flounder alongside in the soft snow, where the going was most difficult, till exhausted. Then he fell, and lay where he fell, howling lugubriously as the long train of sleds churned by. With the last remnant of his strength he managed to stagger along behind till the train made another stop, when he floundered past the sleds to his own, where he stood alongside Sol-leks. His driver lingered a moment to get a light for his pipe from the man behind. Then he returned and started his dogs. They swung out on the trail with remarkable lack of exertion, turned their heads uneasily, and stopped in surprise. The driver was surprised, too; the sled had not moved. He called his comrades to witness the sight. Dave had bitten through both of Sol-leks's traces, and was standing directly in front of the sled in his proper place. He pleaded with his eyes to remain there. The driver was perplexed. His comrades talked of how a dog could break its heart through being denied the work that killed it, and recalled instances they had known, where dogs, too old for the toil, or injured, had died because they were cut out of the traces. Also, they held it a mercy, since Dave was to die anyway, that he should die in the traces, heart-easy and content. So he was harnessed in again, and proudly he pulled as of old, though more than once he cried out involuntarily from the bite of his inward hurt. Several times he fell down and was dragged in the traces, and once the sled ran upon him so that he limped thereafter in one of his hind legs. But he held out till camp was reached, when his driver made a place for him by the fire. Morning found him too weak to travel. At harness-up time he tried to crawl to his driver. By convulsive efforts he got on his feet, staggered, and fell. Then he wormed his way forward slowly toward where the harnesses were being put on his mates. He would advance his fore legs and drag up his body with a sort of hitching movement, when he would advance his fore legs and hitch ahead again for a few more inches. His strength left him, and the last his mates saw of him he lay gasping in the snow and yearning toward them. But they could hear him mournfully howling till they passed out of sight behind a belt of river timber. Here the train was halted. The Scotch half-breed slowly retraced his steps to the camp they had left. The men ceased talking. A revolver-shot rang out. The man came back hurriedly. The whips

Alex-Hay-The-Housekeepers.txt

Mr. Shepherd liked that, too. “Very good. Most economical.” “We are economical.” Jane-one pressed her palms to his desk again. “We’ll split our rations between us.” “Two for the price of one, ha-ha,” said Mr. Shepherd, plainly ready to have this business over and done with. “Well, consider yourselves on trial.” They nodded, stepped back. “We’ll meet the mistress now, then,” said the Jane-two. “Meet the... No, you certainly will not. Madam has delegated all downstairs matters entirely to me.” “But engaging domestics is one of those duties in which the judgment of the mistress must be keenly exercised.” “Indeed it is, indeed it is,” Shepherd said. And then, with more strength, he added, “And I am most extremely observant of Madam’s strictures on these matters.” He straightened in his chair. “So there won’t be another word about it, Miss...” Clearly he was struggling to remember their names. “Miss...” “Jane,” they said, in tandem, with force. * * * It wasn’t easy, hiding everything. The extendable poles, the rope swing, the breakaway ladder, the nets, the winches, the braces, the platforms, the joists. All those had to be stored in the attics. They were cavernous, and accessible by drainpipe, and you could winch things up from the garden if you were quick about it. Winnie had given them detailed instructions. “You’ll find porthole windows here, here, and here.” She’d pointed at them on the map. “You can easily get pulleys down to the garden.” Jane-one had thought there was something fishy about her expression. “You love this place, don’t you?” she’d said. Winnie had seemed startled by the idea. “No,” she had said, grave faced. “But I know it very well.” They began operations on that first night. The odious cook informed them that they were to be locked into their bedroom at night, which necessitated an immediate survey of the drainpipe and the guttering. They were pleased with the results. Jane-one loved modern houses. The dimensions were hopelessly vulgar, of course—everybody knew that—but the craftsmanship was tip-top. They waited until the house started to still and settle, and then they inched out of the window. They had to pause on the way up to the roof. Jane-two dug her foot into Jane-one’s shoulder. “What is it?” “Shh.” “Is it him?” “I said shh.” They’d clocked him at once: a gerbil-faced lamp-boy who ran errands all over the house. He was staring out of a window on the fourth floor, nose pressed to the glass, gazing up at the sky. Jane sighed inwardly. This was no time for stargazing. At last, Jane-two kicked her again. “He’s gone. Come on.” Jane-one took a breath. It had been a long time since she’d been up this high. That was the trouble, working for Mrs. Bone. It made you soft. Forget your training. She closed her eyes. “Are you experiencing a crisis?” whispered Jane-two. “No, I’m just experiencing your great blooming arse in my face,” muttered Jane-one. Up they went. Once they got the pulley in place, they had to lay padding to muffle the

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.txt

any influence with the savage creature, or who would venture to set him free. I slipped in in safety and lay awake half the night in my joy at the thought of seeing you. I had no difficulty in getting leave to come into Winchester this morning, but I must be back before three o'clock, for Mr. and Mrs. Rucastle are going on a visit, and will be away all the evening, so that I must look after the child. Now I have told you all my adventures, Mr. Holmes, and I should be very glad if you could tell me what it all means, and, above all, what I should do." Holmes and I had listened spellbound to this extraordinary story. My friend rose now and paced up and down the room, his hands in his pockets, and an expression of the most profound gravity upon his face. "Is Toller still drunk?" he asked. "Yes. I heard his wife tell Mrs. Rucastle that she could do nothing with him." "That is well. And the Rucastles go out to-night?" "Yes." "Is there a cellar with a good strong lock?" "Yes, the wine-cellar." "You seem to me to have acted all through this matter like a very brave and sensible girl, Miss Hunter. Do you think that you could perform one more feat? I should not ask it of you if I did not think you a quite exceptional woman." "I will try. What is it?" "We shall be at the Copper Beeches by seven o'clock, my friend and I. The Rucastles will be gone by that time, and Toller will, we hope, be incapable. There only remains Mrs. Toller, who might give the alarm. If you could send her into the cellar on some errand, and then turn the key upon her, you would facilitate matters immensely." "I will do it." "Excellent! We shall then look thoroughly into the affair. Of course there is only one feasible explanation. You have been brought there to personate someone, and the real person is imprisoned in this chamber. That is obvious. As to who this prisoner is, I have no doubt that it is the daughter, Miss Alice Rucastle, if I remember right, who was said to have gone to America. You were chosen, doubtless, as resembling her in height, figure, and the color of your hair. Hers had been cut off, very possibly in some illness through which she has passed, and so, of course, yours had to be sacrificed also. By a curious chance you came upon her tresses. The man in the road was undoubtedly some friend of hers--possibly her fiance--and no doubt, as you wore the girl's dress and were so like her, he was convinced from your laughter, whenever he saw you, and afterwards from your gesture, that Miss Rucastle was perfectly happy, and that she no longer desired his attentions. The dog is let loose at night to prevent him from endeavoring to communicate with her. So much is fairly clear. The most serious point in the case is

Romantic-Comedy.txt

stopped playing and said, “It’s weird we’ve never discussed this, but do you play any instruments?” I shook my head. “I wish.” He began to play another song and said, “You know this one?” It took me a moment, then I said, “ ‘Sultans of Swing’?” He nodded, closed his eyes, and sang. I thought about the embarrassment I had experienced watching him rehearse his songs at TNO, and it seemed in retrospect to have been a kind of foreknowledge but also a kind of misunderstanding. I didn’t feel embarrassed in his studio; I felt admiration. And my embarrassment from before now seemed like a protectiveness. “Last one,” he said, and he segued into “Ain’t No Sunshine”—the title was revealed in the first line—and his eyes were closed again and he was belting it out unabashedly, and I wondered then if there was always a loneliness to loving a very talented person because their talent was only of them, not of both of you, and then I thought, Jesus Christ, do I love Noah? I only got here yesterday! And then I thought, was there anyone who would ever feel lonely because of my talent? Was I as talented as Noah? I was competent, but nobody would want to stand still and just watch me. If you were a writer, you could be impressive in a cerebral sort of way, but if you were a musician, you got to be viscerally magical. As casually as he’d reached for the guitar, he put it back, and grabbed my hand. We returned to the main house and ate the dinner Margit had made, though we didn’t see Margit until we were halfway through eating, when she came to check if we needed anything and then came back to clear the plates. (Was it reprehensible that a couple in their sixties worked for Noah in this way? Was it fine? Was it my responsibility to decide?) Then, in Noah’s bedroom, we watched a futuristic movie about astronauts, but halfway through we began messing around and the movie was still playing on the wall-mounted screen as he peeled off my jeans and underwear and kissed the insides of my thighs, so my consciousness was split between the surreal ecstasy of his mouth on me while my eyes were closed and the characters saying things like “But the commander has no idea that the electromagnetic currents from the storm damaged the satellite!” I woke the next morning, and moved from Noah’s bed to the one in the guest room (with a long and, I hoped, surreptitious stop in the bathroom between) not at 4:15 but at 5:27, which seemed like progress. The next morning I woke and moved at 5:55. On the fourth morning, I woke at 6:10, went to the guest bathroom, then returned to his bed, and when I did, he sleepily scooted toward me and wrapped me in his arms. This was the day I had planned to depart, a plan I’d never mentioned to Noah, a plan that seemed, from the vantage point

Jane Eyre.txt

wrote to you about me; or how he knew you, or could fancy that you, living in such an out-of-the-way place, had the power to aid in my discovery." "Oh! I am a clergyman," he said; "and the clergy are often appealed to about odd matters." Again the latch rattled. "No: that does not satisfy me!" I exclaimed: and, indeed, there was something in the hasty and unexplanatory reply which, instead of allaying, piqued my curiosity more than ever. "It is a very strange piece of business," I added. "I must know more about it." "Another time." "No: to-night! to-night!" and as he turned from the door I placed myself between it and him. He looked rather embarrassed. "You certainly shall not go till you have told me all!" I said. "I would rather not, just now." "You shall! you must!" "I would rather Diana or Mary informed you." Of course these objections wrought my eagerness to a climax: gratified it must be, and that without delay; and I told him so. "But I apprised you that I was a hard man," said he; "difficult to persuade." "And I am a hard woman impossible to be put off." "And then," he pursued, "I am cold: no fervor infects me." "Whereas I am hot, and fire dissolves ice. The blaze there has thawed all the snow from your cloak; by the same token, it has streamed on to my floor, and made it like a trampled street. As you hope ever to be forgiven, Mr. Rivers, the high crime and misdemeanor of spoiling a sanded kitchen, tell me what I wish to know." "Well, then," he said, "I yield; if not to your earnestness, to your perseverance: as stone is worn by continual dropping. Besides, you must know some day as well now as later. Your name Jane Eyre?" "Of course; that was all settled before." "You are not, perhaps, aware that I am your namesake? that I was christened St. John Eyre Rivers?" "No, indeed! I member now seeing the letter E comprised in your initials written in books you have at different times lent me; but I never asked for what name it stood. But what then? Surely " I stopped. I could not trust myself to entertain, much less to express, the thought that rushed upon me that embodied itself that in a second stood out a strong, solid probability. Circumstances knit themselves, fitted themselves, shot into order. The chain that had been lying hitherto a formless lump of links was drawn out straight, every ring was perfect, the connection

Lisa-See-Lady-Tan_s-Circle-of-Women.txt

your main complaint?” I ask. “I’ve had numbness in my hands for six years.” She pulls one of her hands from the tiller, holds it up to my face, and squeezes it into a fist, then releases it, repeating the movement several times in a row. “I’m on this deck through every season. Sometimes I’m in the north during brutal freezes. Summer heat should bring relief, except that on most days I’m standing in the drenching rains of the monsoon.” “Has anyone or anything helped?” I ask. She tightens her jaw. “I have seen street doctors only.” A couple more questions and a few minutes feeling her pulse give me a possible answer. “The numbness in your hands is a Wind-Damp ailment. When we stop at the next station, come to my room.” The next time our vessel docks and the boatmen are occupied with bringing new supplies aboard, the tiller woman visits Miss Zhao and me in my cabin. The way she looks around at the modest accommodations suggests that she’s never been allowed to enter a passenger’s room, let alone sleep anywhere so nice. I have her lie down and treat her with moxibustion on eight points to warm her channels, dry her dampness, and stimulate her qi and Blood. When I announce that the treatment is complete, she sits up. “I feel better?” That she asks this as a question—as if she doesn’t believe the relief she’s feeling—confirms for me that the treatment is already working. “How can that be?” “When there is pain, the body has no freedom of movement. Without pain, the body is free. My grandmother taught me that.” The tiller woman stares at her hands uncertainly as she opens and shuts them. “Will it last?” I lift my chin. Of course. At the door, the tiller woman bows formally as if she grew up in a fine household. “A woman who helps others helps herself.” To which Miss Zhao adds, “Our dear doctor has yet to take this lesson fully into her heart.” * * * Five weeks after leaving Wuxi, we’re rowed into Beijing as night falls. On the wharf, men and animals haul heavy loads. Guards in military dress carry torches, while others stand at attention with their spears and swords on display. They are far outnumbered by beggars, who crowd every cranny. The air stinks of manure and garbage. And it’s brutally cold. Miss Zhao steps onto the dock, trying to conceal her distaste. I do not need the skills of a spiritualist to read her mind: This is not Shanghai. An hour later, we’re presented to Lin Ta, the eunuch in charge of the Lodge of Ritual and Ceremony. “You will answer to me when you are here or within the palace walls,” he says. “Do you understand?” Miss Zhao and I nod. Poppy is somewhere, already unpacking our trunks. “Those of us who run the lodge not only select doctors, midwives, and wet nurses to serve in the Forbidden City but also dispatch punishment,” he continues. I keep my eyes

Rachel-Lynn-Solomon-Business-or-Pleasure.txt

that bruise far too noticeable and dear god why. And how. And fuuuuuck. Finnegan/Drew is ashen, unsure whether to focus on the spreading fuchsia blotch or the sudden appearance of the one-night stand who wasn’t there when he woke up this morning. He seems to settle for both and neither, mouth falling open while he dabs a napkin two inches to the left of where the stain starts. “I’m so sorry,” I sputter out, wondering if it would reflect poorly on Stella if I turned and made a run for it. “Your shirt, I—” “Not your fault,” Finnegan says to the stain. It’s a different kind of voice than the one he used on me last night. Professional. Distant. The server arrives with another glass of water and a stack of cloth napkins, which Finnegan uses to attack his shirt with a newfound gusto. His manager pulls out a chair for me, and I practically collapse into it, folding my legs to hide the bruise from view. Slowly, the pieces come together. He lives in LA. He was here for a conference—that must have been Emerald City Comic Con. The way he spoke about his career, the vagueness . . . he must have been worried I’d recognize him. Hence the fake name. And when those costumed con-goers showed up, he’d acted strange, hadn’t he? “Well! What a way to break the ice,” his manager says with a laugh. He extends a hand to me. “Joe Kowalczyk.” “Chandler. And you must be Finnegan.” I place a distinct emphasis on his name. “Finn,” he says, and when he breaks from the stain long enough for a handshake, his eyes flash with suspicion. As though maybe I planned this all along. His freckles are even more pronounced in the daylight. At night, he seemed to have an air of mystery about him, but at one thirty, the September sun slanting through the greenhouse windows and turning his red hair golden, he looks every bit the Hollywood type. Defined cheekbones, microscopic pores, a my-aftershave-probably-cost-more-than-your- entire-outfit set of his jaw. This isn’t the first time I’ve touched him, of course, and it’s much less intimate than anything we did in that hotel room. The handshake should be perfunctory. Awkward, maybe. And yet somehow, the way his fingers slide against mine, thumb briefly rubbing my wrist—so slight, I’d think nothing of it if we hadn’t already met—manages to spark far more electricity than anything we did last night. Last night. The way he kissed me up against the door of the hotel room before everything went so horribly wrong. The way I moaned into his mouth and— —and faked an orgasm. I cannot work on this book. Joe sets down his menu. “Thanks for taking the time to meet with us on such short notice,” he says. “Typically, we’d have arranged a video chat before flying you out to LA, but given you live here, it seemed a little like kismet.” Finn continues to scrub at his shirt. I can’t look at him, because when I do,

Christina Lauren - The True Love Experiment.txt

joy bubble. “We’re shooting it as we go.” She groans playfully, but her friend in a UCSD sweatshirt pushes on. “I love your books and legit lost it when I saw you were doing this. I’ve read Base Paired four times.” Before I can say anything, she quickly adds, “Can we ask you something? I know you’re super busy.” “Was it the pajamas or the armload of canned rosé that gave away my hectic schedule? Go for it.” She laughs, turning her phone to face me, and points at the screen. “Do you know if this is Connor Prince’s Instagram?” * * * Connor comes up repeatedly that day: in the afternoon when my mom drags me along to H Mart and a woman recognizes me in the frozen food aisle, praising me for a moment before asking whether Connor has starred in anything else, and again in the evening, when another parent completely loses her mind in front of me and Jess at Juno’s ballet recital. Both times I find myself wanting to text him to gloat about how smart I am. I resist. I do check his Instagram, though. By Monday morning, his follower count has ballooned from his mom, Nat, Ash, and some random dude, to twenty-two thousand. I’d bet my entire canned rosé collection that it hasn’t even occurred to him to look. After hair and makeup on Monday, I am led into an industrial kitchen at the Hilton Bayfront hotel. We do the bad news first: As predicted, Arjun and Tex have been eliminated by the voting audience. But then, the remaining six—Dax, Isaac, Evan, Jude, Colby, and Nick—are called out one by one, dressed casually and wearing wide smiles as matching accessories. Isaac gives me a little wink, and I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from grinning back. Lanelle introduces this week’s plan: I get to choose which Heroes I want for each of the scheduled activities, including preparing a gourmet meal for my bed-resting sister, planting trees in Balboa Park, taking a craft cocktail class, going deep-sea fishing, pampering with mani-pedis, and a beach cruiser ride around Coronado. Viewers will see the dates compiled sequentially, of course—although the six dates will take place over the next three days, with confessionals and loved-one interviews scheduled for recording on Wednesday. First up, of course, is the meal prep date. I am given ten minutes to firm up a plan before the cameras will roll again, showing me “thinking it over” before spontaneously giving my choices. Of course, there’s the schoolyard pick vibe—whoever I choose first is the one viewers will assume I am most eager to spend time with—but I also have to be strategic about the best way to get to know each of them outside of their natural elements. I choose Colby, the Navy SEAL, to cook with. In part because I like the idea of watching his forearms flex while he chops vegetables for the lunch we’re making for Alice, but also because at our date last week he told me

Dracula.txt

ancient structure, built of heavy stones, and has not been repaired for a large number of years. The closed gates are of heavy old oak and iron, all eaten with rust. "The estate is called Carfax, no doubt a corruption of the old Quatre Face, as the house is four sided, agreeing with the cardinal points of the compass. It contains in all some twenty acres, quite surrounded by the solid stone wall above mentioned. There are many trees on it, which make it in places gloomy, and there is a deep, dark-looking pond or small lake, evidently fed by some springs, as the water is clear and flows away in a fair-sized stream. The house is very large and of all periods back, I should say, to mediaeval times, for one part is of stone immensely thick, with only a few windows high up and heavily barred with iron. It looks like part of a keep, and is close to an old chapel or church. I could not enter it, as I had not the key of the door leading to it from the house, but I have taken with my Kodak views of it from various points. The house had been added to, but in a very straggling way, and I can only guess at the amount of ground it covers, which must be very great. There are but few houses close at hand, one being a very large house only recently added to and formed into a private lunatic asylum. It is not, however, visible from the grounds." When I had finished, he said, "I am glad that it is old and big. I myself am of an old family, and to live in a new house would kill me. A house cannot be made habitable in a day, and after all, how few days go to make up a century. I rejoice also that there is a chapel of old times. We Transylvanian nobles love not to think that our bones may lie amongst the common dead. I seek not gaiety nor mirth, not the bright voluptuousness of much sunshine and sparkling waters which please the young and gay. I am no longer young, and my heart, through weary years of mourning over the dead, is attuned to mirth. Moreover, the walls of my castle are broken. The shadows are many, and the wind breathes cold through the broken battlements and casements. I love the shade and the shadow, and would be alone with my thoughts when I may." Somehow his words and his look did not seem to accord, or else it was that his cast of face made his smile look malignant and saturnine. Presently, with an excuse, he left me, asking me to pull my papers together. He was some little time away, and I began to look at some of the books around me. One was an atlas, which I found opened naturally to England, as if that map had been much used. On looking at it I found in certain places little rings

The-Lost-Bookshop.txt

She nodded towards a little drinks caddy by the fireplace and I poured us two healthy measures of amber liquid. ‘So, why have you returned?’ ‘Hang on, how do you know who I am?’ ‘Oh please, let’s not delude ourselves. She told me about you. The scholar chasing after a lost bookshop. I wasn’t sure what she saw in you, but now that I can see you in person,’ she said, adjusting her spectacles, ‘I suppose I can see a certain boyish charm. Is that what attracted your fiancée, Mr Field?’ God, she really had told her everything. ‘Do men like you ever realise the hurt you cause, flitting in and out of people’s lives? No, I suppose not. That would require some sort of intellect.’ It appeared that no response was required from me. I was simply to bear witness to my own character assassination by a woman I had just met – and the worst part was that she was terrifyingly accurate in her summation. Except for one thing. ‘I love her.’ ‘How do you know?’ ‘Sorry?’ ‘What is it you love about Martha? Is it how she makes you feel about yourself? Does she boost your’—she let her eyes fall here—‘flaccid ego? Is that it? Do you get some kind of pleasure out of having two women on the go? I know your type, Mr Field and let me tell you, my Martha is worth ten of you.’ ‘No, you see, that’s what I’ve been trying to tell her. The night we kissed I knew I had to end things with Isabelle. But I owed her more than a phone call. I had to go back to London straightaway and explain.’ I felt ridiculous explaining myself to a complete stranger. But I could see how much she cared for Martha and that gave us common ground. ‘I’ve been trying to call Martha ever since but she must have disconnected her number. My sister just had a baby and that delayed my return here, but I got back as soon as I could.’ She seemed to be considering what I had said and it seemed like an age before she spoke again. ‘Much has transpired since you last saw her. I’m not sure if she’ll want to see you.’ ‘Please, Madame Bowden. You’re right. I’ve never known or understood what it really means to love or be loved. I’m not going to blame my past, but we all have one and it follows us around like a prison, always keeping us from the person we truly wish to be. Martha is the bravest person I’ve ever met and she’s inspired what little bravery I have inside to listen to my heart for once. I don’t just love her for how she makes me feel, I love her because when she came into my life it was like the lights came on. Everything suddenly had meaning and I think, I hope, it was the same for her. We all have crap parts and good parts inside, but when you meet someone

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.txt

or the key was too small, but at any rate it would not open any of them. However, on the second time round, she came upon a low curtain she had not noticed before, and behind it was a little door about fifteen inches high: she tried the little golden key in the lock, and to her great delight it fitted! Alice opened the door and found that it led into a small passage, not much larger than a rat-hole: she knelt down and looked along the passage into the loveliest garden you ever saw. How she longed to get out of that dark hall, and wander about among those beds of bright flowers and those cool fountains, but she could not even get her head though the doorway; `and even if my head would go through,' thought poor Alice, `it would be of very little use without my shoulders. Oh, how I wish I could shut up like a telescope! I think I could, if I only know how to begin.' For, you see, so many out-of-the-way things had happened lately, that Alice had begun to think that very few things indeed were really impossible. There seemed to be no use in waiting by the little door, so she went back to the table, half hoping she might find another key on it, or at any rate a book of rules for shutting people up like telescopes: this time she found a little bottle on it, (`which certainly was not here before,' said Alice,) and round the neck of the bottle was a paper label, with the words `DRINK ME' beautifully printed on it in large letters. It was all very well to say `Drink me,' but the wise little Alice was not going to do THAT in a hurry. `No, I'll look first,' she said, `and see whether it's marked "poison" or not'; for she had read several nice little histories about children who had got burnt, and eaten up by wild beasts and other unpleasant things, all because they WOULD not remember the simple rules their friends had taught them: such as, that a red-hot poker will burn you if you hold it too long; and that if you cut your finger VERY deeply with a knife, it usually bleeds; and she had never forgotten that, if you drink much from a bottle marked `poison,' it is almost certain to disagree with you, sooner or later. However, this bottle was NOT marked `poison,' so Alice ventured to taste it, and finding it very nice, (it had, in fact, a sort of mixed flavour of cherry-tart, custard, pine-apple, roast turkey, toffee, and hot buttered toast,) she very soon finished it off. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * `What a curious feeling!' said Alice; `I must be shutting up like a telescope.' And so it was indeed: she was now only ten inches high, and her face brightened up at the thought that she was now the

The Secret Garden.txt

and shut it behind us, and no one knew any one was inside and we called it our garden and pretended that--that we were missel thrushes and it was our nest, and if we played there almost every day and dug and planted seeds and made it all come alive--" "Is it dead?" he interrupted her. "It soon will be if no one cares for it," she went on. "The bulbs will live but the roses--" He stopped her again as excited as she was herself. "What are bulbs?" he put in quickly. "They are daffodils and lilies and snowdrops. They are working in the earth now--pushing up pale green points because the spring is coming." "Is the spring coming?" he said. "What is it like? You don't see it in rooms if you are ill." "It is the sun shining on the rain and the rain falling on the sunshine, and things pushing up and working under the earth," said Mary. "If the garden was a secret and we could get into it we could watch the things grow bigger every day, and see how many roses are alive. Don't you. see? Oh, don't you see how much nicer it would be if it was a secret?" He dropped back on his pillow and lay there with an odd expression on his face. "I never had a secret," he said, "except that one about not living to grow up. They don't know I know that, so it is a sort of secret. But I like this kind better." "If you won't make them take you to the garden," pleaded Mary, "perhaps--I feel almost sure I can find out how to get in sometime. And then--if the doctor wants you to go out in your chair, and if you can always do what you want to do, perhaps--perhaps we might find some boy who would push you, and we could go alone and it would always be a secret garden." "I should--like--that," he said very slowly, his eyes looking dreamy. "I should like that. I should not mind fresh air in a secret garden." Mary began to recover her breath and feel safer because the idea of keeping the secret seemed to please him. She felt almost sure that if she kept on talking and could make him see the garden in his mind as she had seen it he would like it so much that he could not bear to think that everybody might tramp in to it when they chose. "I'll tell you what I think it would be like, if we could go into it," she said. "It has been shut up so long things have grown into a tangle perhaps." He lay quite still and listened while she went on talking about the roses which might have clambered from tree to tree and hung down--about the many birds which might have built their nests there because it was so safe. And then she told him about the robin and Ben Weatherstaff, and there was so much to tell

Wuthering Heights.txt

if conscious there could be no gratification in lavishing such marks of affection on him. On the before-named occasion he came into the house to announce his in- tention of doing nothing, while I was assisting Miss Cathy to arrange her dress. She had not reckoned on his taking it into his head to be idle, and imagining she would have the whole place to herself, she managed, by some means, to inform Mr. Edgar of her brother's absence, and was then preparing to receive him. "Cathy, are you busy this afternoon?" asked Heath- cliff. "Are you going anywhere?" "No; it is raining," she answered. "Why have you that silk frock on, then?" he said. "Nobody coming here, I hope?" "Not that I know of," stammered miss; "but you should be in the field now, Heathcliff. It is an hour past dinner-time. I thought you were gone." "Hindley does not often free us from his accursed presence," observed the boy. "I'll not work any more to-day; I'll stay with you." "Oh, but Joseph will tell," she suggested. "You'd bet- ter go." "Joseph is loading lime on the further side of Pen- iston Crag; it will take him till dark, and he'll never know." So saying, he lounged to the fire and sat down. Cath- erine reflected an instant with knitted brows; she found it needful to smooth the way for an intrusion. "Isabella and Edgar Linton talked of calling this afternoon," she said, at the conclusion of a minute's silence. "As it rains, I hardly expect them; but they may come, and if they do you run the risk of being scolded for no good." "Order Ellen to say you are engaged, Cathy," he per- sisted. "Don't turn me out for those pitiful, silly friends of yours! I'm on the point, sometimes, of complaining that they---but I'll not." "That they what?" cried Catherine, gazing at him with a troubled countenance.---"Oh, Nelly!" she added petulantly, jerking her head away from my hands, "you've combed my hair quite out of curl. That's enough; let me alone.---What are you on the point of complaining about, Heathcliff?" "Nothing---only look at the almanac on that wall." He pointed to a framed sheet hanging near the window, and continued, "The crosses are for the evenings you have spent with the Lintons, the dots for those spent with me. Do you see? I've marked every day." "Yes; very foolish---as if I took notice!" replied Catherine, in a peevish tone. "And where is the sense of that?" "To show that I do take notice," said Heathcliff. "And should I always be sitting with you?" she de- manded, growing more irritated. "What good do I get? What do you talk about? You might be dumb, or a baby, for anything you say to amuse me, or for any- thing you do either." "You never told me before that I talked too little, or that you disliked my company, Cathy," exclaimed Heathcliff in much agitation. "It's no company at all, when people know nothing, and say nothing," she muttered. Her companion rose

Great Expectations.txt

had thought well of what I was going to say. "Don't commit yourself," said Mr. Jaggers, "and don't commit any one. You understand - any one. Don't tell me anything: I don't want to know anything; I am not curious." Of course I saw that he knew the man was come. "I merely want, Mr. Jaggers," said I, "to assure myself that what I have been told, is true. I have no hope of its being untrue, but at least I may verify it." Mr. Jaggers nodded. "But did you say 'told' or 'informed'?" he asked me, with his head on one side, and not looking at me, but looking in a listening way at the floor. "Told would seem to imply verbal communication. You can't have verbal communication with a man in New South Wales, you know." "I will say, informed, Mr. Jaggers." "Good." "I have been informed by a person named Abel Magwitch, that he is the benefactor so long unknown to me." "That is the man," said Mr. Jaggers," - in New South Wales." "And only he?" said I. "And only he," said Mr. Jaggers. "I am not so unreasonable, sir, as to think you at all responsible for my mistakes and wrong conclusions; but I always supposed it was Miss Havisham." "As you say, Pip," returned Mr. Jaggers, turning his eyes upon me coolly, and taking a bite at his forefinger, "I am not at all responsible for that." "And yet it looked so like it, sir," I pleaded with a downcast heart. "Not a particle of evidence, Pip," said Mr. Jaggers, shaking his head and gathering up his skirts. "Take nothing on its looks; take everything on evidence. There's no better rule." "I have no more to say," said I, with a sigh, after standing silent for a little while. "I have verified my information, and there's an end." "And Magwitch - in New South Wales - having at last disclosed himself," said Mr. Jaggers, "you will comprehend, Pip, how rigidly throughout my communication with you, I have always adhered to the strict line of fact. There has never been the least departure from the strict line of fact. You are quite aware of that?" "Quite, sir." "I communicated to Magwitch - in New South Wales - when he first wrote to me - from New South Wales - the caution that he must not expect me ever to deviate from the strict line of fact. I also communicated to him another caution. He appeared to me to have obscurely hinted in his letter at some distant idea he had of seeing you in England here. I cautioned him that I must hear no more of that; that he was not at all likely to obtain a pardon; that he was expatriated for the term of his natural life; and that his presenting himself in this country would be an act of felony, rendering him liable to the extreme penalty of the law. I gave Magwitch that caution," said Mr. Jaggers, looking hard at me; "I wrote

Confidence_-a-Novel.txt

the direction of the Daroqol, who must have filed out of the wine cellar at the sound of the gunshot, and I either mouthed or screamed “Come on!” to Brianna and Dexter, whose traumatized faces were angled toward mine. Genial said something that was too muffled by my tinnitus to understand, but he was smiling perversely, like he’d just won a colossal game of king of the hill. We were out the door and he was behind us, still saying muffled things, the Daroqol brandishing their AK-47s, and because I couldn’t hear and could barely see I had no idea the UNA were upon us until they were, shooting at those of the Daroqol who weren’t flanking us. I climbed into the Jeep, Brianna after me, Dexter after her, his sneakers nearly falling off in his haste, and we watched as the Daroqol and UNA fell to the ground behind us. Genial was still grinning, clearly proud of himself, still talking as he hoisted himself into the Jeep, talking and talking until his eyes unfocused and he fell from the Jeep’s door and blood began to pool around his head on the ground. The driver reached back to shut the door and we sped across the lawn, away from the house. I turned to look out the side window: three UNA soldiers were upon Genial—what used to be Genial—and his body was twitching as they loaded it with bullets. There was a liquid pop in my ears and I could hear Brianna crying next to me. Dexter was looking at me like I’d betrayed him. “What the fuck was that?” he asked, sounding distant. “A coup,” I replied. “A coup that went very badly.” ELEVEN IT SEEMS NOW LIKE EVERYTHING I’ve done in my life I’ve done because of love, a useless, gutting love that left me devoured from the inside. The failed coup, Genial’s death, Brianna and Dexter’s terror: I felt these things pressing in on me from all sides. But what felt the worst was the thought of the money we’d lost and what that would mean for Orson. It didn’t seem to matter to Karl that I’d left him in Urmau in the middle of a coup. He was back in New York within days, texting me that he wanted me, that I needed to stop playing with him. I told him I would when he dropped the short. He told me that was impossible, that he had too much evidence against us. He sent me pictures of his trunk-like cock, which I deleted. His desire was thick, dizzying, distracting. But it wasn’t enough. Orson was still in his and Emily’s bedroom in the Enner house, claiming that he would spend the next two months in isolation in order to achieve his next “awakening.” Many NuLifers were doing the same thing, dispatching one unworthy member of each Enner house to do the cleaning and get the groceries while the rest tried to think in step with Orson, to predict what he would do next. I went up to the

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.txt

the same shape, but then he noticed that she was crying; smiling, but crying at the same time. The tall, thin, black-haired man standing next to her put his arm around her. He wore glasses, and his hair was very untidy. It stuck up at the back, just as Harry's did. Harry was so close to the mirror now that his nose was nearly touching that of his reflection. "Mom?" he whispered. "Dad?" They just looked at him, smiling. And slowly, Harry looked into the faces of the other people in the mirror, and saw other pairs of green eyes like his, other noses like his, even a little old man who looked as though he had Harry's knobbly knees -- Harry was looking at his family, for the first time in his life. The Potters smiled and waved at Harry and he stared hungrily back at them, his hands pressed flat against the glass as though he was hoping to fall right through it and reach them. He had a powerful kind of ache inside him, half joy, half terrible sadness. How long he stood there, he didn't know. The reflections did not fade and he looked and looked until a distant noise brought him back to his senses. He couldn't stay here, he had to find his way back to bed. He tore his eyes away from his mother's face, whispered, "I'll come back," and hurried from the room. *** "You could have woken me up," said Ron, crossly. "You can come tonight, I'm going back. I want to show you the mirror." "I'd like to see your mom and dad," Ron said eagerly. "And I want to see all your family, all the Weasleys, you'll be able to show me your other brothers and everyone." "You can see them any old time," said Ron. "Just come round my house this summer. Anyway, maybe it only shows dead people. Shame about not finding Flamel, though. Have some bacon or something, why aren't you eating anything?" Harry couldn't eat. He had seen his parents and would be seeing them again tonight. He had almost forgotten about Flamel. It didn't seem very important anymore. Who cared what the three headed dog was guarding? What did it matter if Snape stole it, really? "Are you all right?" said Ron. "You look odd." *** What Harry feared most was that he might not be able to find the mirror room again. With Ron covered in the cloak, too, they had to walk much more slowly the next night. They tried retracing Harry's route from the library, wandering around the dark passageways for nearly an hour. "I'm freezing," said Ron. "Let's forget it and go back." "No!" Harry hissed. "I know it's here somewhere." They passed the ghost of a tall witch gliding in the opposite direction, but saw no one else, just as Ron started moaning that his feet were dead with cold, Harry spotted the suit of armor. "It's here -- just here -- yes!" They pushed the door open. Harry dropped the

Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy.txt

odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with. Hence a phrase which has passed into hitch hiking slang, as in "Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There's a frood who really knows where his towel is." (Sass: know, be aware of, meet, have sex with; hoopy: really together guy; frood: really amazingly together guy.) Nestling quietly on top of the towel in Ford Prefect's satchel, the Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic began to wink more quickly. Miles above the surface of the planet the huge yellow somethings began to fan out. At Jodrell Bank, someone decided it was time for a nice relaxing cup of tea. "You got a towel with you?" said Ford Prefect suddenly to Arthur. Arthur, struggling through his third pint, looked round at him. "Why? What, no ... should I have?" He had given up being surprised, there didn't seem to be any point any longer. Ford clicked his tongue in irritation. "Drink up," he urged. At that moment the dull sound of a rumbling crash from outside filtered through the low murmur of the pub, through the sound of the jukebox, through the sound of the man next to Ford hiccupping over the whisky Ford had eventually bought him. Arthur choked on his beer, leapt to his feet. "What's that?" he yelped. "Don't worry," said Ford, "they haven't started yet." "Thank God for that," said Arthur and relaxed. "It's probably just your house being knocked down," said Ford, drowning his last pint. "What?" shouted Arthur. Suddenly Ford's spell was broken. Arthur looked wildly around him and ran to the window. "My God they are! They're knocking my house down. What the hell am I doing in the pub, Ford?" "It hardly makes any difference at this stage," said Ford, "let them have their fun." "Fun?" yelped Arthur. "Fun!" He quickly checked out of the window again that they were talking about the same thing. "Damn their fun!" he hooted and ran out of the pub furiously waving a nearly empty beer glass. He made no friends at all in the pub that lunchtime. "Stop, you vandals! You home wreckers!" bawled Arthur. "You half crazed Visigoths, stop will you!" Ford would have to go after him. Turning quickly to the barman he asked for four packets of peanuts. "There you are sir," said the barman, slapping the packets on the bar, "twenty-eight pence if you'd be so kind." Ford was very kind - he gave the barman another five-pound note and told him to keep the change. The barman looked at it and then looked at Ford. He suddenly shivered: he experienced a momentary sensation that he didn't understand because no one on Earth had ever experienced it before. In moments of great stress, every life form that exists gives out a tiny sublimal signal. This signal simply communicates an exact and almost pathetic sense of how far that being is from the place of his birth. On Earth it is never possible to be further than sixteen thousand miles

Love Theoretically.txt

have stupidly suspected. This is about him and me. And the possibility of something that goes far beyond the both of us. “Elsie,” he mouths when he comes. He seems to retreat into himself, to dig deep into his head to deal with the shocking pleasure of it and avoid losing his mind, and all I need to do is hold him tight to remind him that yes. I’m here. With him. I’m here. It’s downright terrifying, what this could be. What I want it to be. It makes me tear up, and then it makes me sob, and then it makes me clutch at Jack for dear life, the splotch of his semen sticking to his shirt and my stomach, pooling in my belly button. To his credit, he doesn’t ask me what’s wrong. He doesn’t beg for explanations. He just holds me close, both arms wrapped around me, even when my tears morph into giggles, like I’m some crazy, unstable girl who doesn’t know what to be or what to feel. Wait. That’s exactly who I am. I laugh. Then I laugh some more. Then I cannot stop. The movie is over, “15 Step” by Radiohead bafflingly plays during the black-and-white end credits, and I’m laughing again. “You’re ruining the moment.” His lips curve into my throat, winded like he just finished an Olympic race. “I’m so sorry. I just—” “What?” “Just wondering if you still think it’s ‘too soon.’ ” He slaps my butt. I yelp and then keep on laughing. “Yes.” He maneuvers back and angles my head so that I’m looking at him. “It’s really soon. But the only person who can slow us down is you, so . . .” “So what?” He pushes a strand of sweaty hair behind my ear. His eyes are worried, and warm, and empty of everything that’s not us. “Be gentle with me, Elsie. That’s all I ask.” 20 FA L L I N G B O D I E S From: [email protected] Re: Thermodynamics Essay Doctor Hannaway, ma’am, it’s been 23 hours, have you graded my essay yet? Saturday’s a daze. I shuffle around my room gingerly, full of distant stares and hands stopping midaction, like I cannot remember what I opened my closet for, how to squeeze the tube to get the right amount of toothpaste. It’s a first. I sense that some paradigmatic shift has happened within me, but I cannot justify it. Jack and I did a bunch of things that high schoolers today would barely consider a quarter of first base—so what? I try to cognitively reframe last night as two adults having casual fun, but my head is full of aggressive, intrusive, embarrassing thoughts that make it hard to concentrate on grading. As though the sheer nature of grading didn’t do it on its own. “When did you get back last night?” Cece asks when I emerge in the kitchen. As usual, she’s engaged in a mix of activities: teaching Hedgie an obstacle course, listening to an audiobook on the women of the Plantagenets,

The-Silver-Ladies-Do-Lunch.txt

basket, perching on the saddle. Her foot found the pedal and Felix was beside her again, grasping the handlebars. ‘Just give me one chance, Minnie. Love between two such as we must be watered like a precious flower…’ ‘I don’t think so,’ Minnie began, launching herself and the bicycle forwards. She stood hard on the pedals and made for the road, hearing Felix’s sharp breath behind her, panting. He was in hot pursuit. ‘Minnie, Minnie…’ She could hear him running. She called over her shoulder. ‘I’m sorry, Felix.’ ‘One… more… chance…’ Then she was away, cycling down High Street towards Magdalen College. She glanced back to where he was running, his face red as he seemed to recede into the distance. She passed the ancient buildings of Magdalen, cycling on towards St Hilda’s, and she felt something in her heart cry out: the stone walls, the big square windows and the high gables, the spires and the tall tower, it was all as familiar as her own skin. Over the years, she had become a part of the fabric, the tradition: she’d loved strolling round the beautiful gardens, a book in her hand. The cloisters, the chapel and medieval bell tower had been beloved companions. She’d had a boyfriend or two from Magdalen, conveniently just down the road from St Hilda’s – women were not allowed to be students there in those days, but she’d visited the grounds many times. Oxford had held her in its safe hands, quenched her thirst for knowledge and offered her even more. She’d spent years researching; she’d joined in with the choral singing; she’d gazed at roaming deer in the park; she had fallen in love countless times sitting on the banks of the Thames. Oxford had moulded her into the person she was now, a respected authority on classics who had lectured for thirty years at St Hilda’s, whose life was framed by the dreaming spires, whose knowledge unfolded like the pages of books. She was no longer skinny Minnie Moore, she was a confident adult, maturing and improving with each changing season. Felix was far behind her now. Minnie had always had this effect on men; they fell in love with her easily. Poor Felix was a friend of a friend she’d accompanied to the theatre, to a party. She hadn’t intended to have a relationship with him, let alone break his heart. But she knew the reason, it was always the same: the more she distanced herself, the more men pursued her. There was no space for a significant other in her life. She preferred the company of a good book. It fulfilled her thirst for knowledge and it never interrupted her concentration. Minnie pushed her feet on the pedals; the Doc Martens boots felt heavy now. She wanted to put them up on a comfortable bar stool and drink half a pint of best. The Slug and Lettuce was in the other direction, and she’d promised herself lunch. Minnie never broke promises that she made to herself. She’d turn around and head

Of Human Bondage.txt

particular, but allowed the magnificence of their colour, the beauty of their lines, to work upon his soul. His imagination was busy with Sally. It would be pleasant to take her away from that London in which she seemed an unusual figure, like a cornflower in a shop among orchids and azaleas; he had learned in the Kentish hop-field that she did not belong to the town; and he was sure that she would blossom under the soft skies of Dorset to a rarer beauty. She came in, and he got up to meet her. She was in black, with white cuffs at her wrists and a lawn collar round her neck. They shook hands. "Have you been waiting long?" "No. Ten minutes. Are you hungry?" "Not very." "Let's sit here for a bit, shall we?" "If you like." They sat quietly, side by side, without speaking. Philip enjoyed having her near him. He was warmed by her radiant health. A glow of life seemed like an aureole to shine about her. "Well, how have you been?" he said at last, with a little smile. "Oh, it's all right. It was a false alarm." "Was it?" "Aren't you glad?" An extraordinary sensation filled him. He had felt certain that Sally's suspicion was well-founded; it had never occurred to him for an instant that there was a possibility of error. All his plans were suddenly overthrown, and the existence, so elaborately pictured, was no more than a dream which would never be realised. He was free once more. Free! He need give up none of his projects, and life still was in his hands for him to do what he liked with. He felt no exhilaration, but only dismay. His heart sank. The future stretched out before him in desolate emptiness. It was as though he had sailed for many years over a great waste of waters, with peril and privation, and at last had come upon a fair haven, but as he was about to enter, some contrary wind had arisen and drove him out again into the open sea; and because he had let his mind dwell on these soft meads and pleasant woods of the land, the vast deserts of the ocean filled him with anguish. He could not confront again the loneliness and the tempest. Sally looked at him with her clear eyes. "Aren't you glad?" she asked again. "I thought you'd be as pleased as Punch." He met her gaze haggardly. "I'm not sure," he muttered. "You are funny. Most men would." He realised that he had deceived himself; it was no self-sacrifice that had driven him to think of marrying, but the desire for a wife and a home and love; and now that it all seemed to slip through his fingers he was seized with despair. He wanted all that more than anything in the world. What did he care for Spain and its cities, Cordova, Toledo, Leon; what to him were the pagodas of Burmah and the lagoons of South Sea Islands? America was here

Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy.txt

on an enormous executive desk of finest ultramahagony topped with rich ultrared leather. The dark carpeting was discreetly sumptuous, exotic pot plants and tastefully engraved prints of the principal computer programmers and their families were deployed liberally about the room, and stately windows looked out upon a tree-lined public square. On the day of the Great On-Turning two soberly dressed programmers with brief cases arrived and were shown discreetly into the office. They were aware that this day they would represent their entire race in its greatest moment, but they conducted themselves calmly and quietly as they seated themselves deferentially before the desk, opened their brief cases and took out their leather-bound notebooks. Their names were Lunkwill and Fook. For a few moments they sat in respectful silence, then, after exchanging a quiet glance with Fook, Lunkwill leaned forward and touched a small black panel. The subtlest of hums indicated that the massive computer was now in total active mode. After a pause it spoke to them in a voice rich resonant and deep. It said: "What is this great task for which I, Deep Thought, the second greatest computer in the Universe of Time and Space have been called into existence?" Lunkwill and Fook glanced at each other in surprise. "Your task, O Computer ..." began Fook. "No, wait a minute, this isn't right," said Lunkwill, worried. "We distinctly designed this computer to be the greatest one ever and we're not making do with second best. Deep Thought," he addressed the computer, "are you not as we designed you to be, the greatest most powerful computer in all time?" "I described myself as the second greatest," intoned Deep Thought, "and such I am." Another worried look passed between the two programmers. Lunkwill cleared his throat. "There must be some mistake," he said, "are you not a greatest computer than the Milliard Gargantubrain which can count all the atoms in a star in a millisecond?" "The Milliard Gargantubrain?" said Deep Thought with unconcealed contempt. "A mere abacus - mention it not." "And are you not," said Fook leaning anxiously forward, "a greater analyst than the Googleplex Star Thinker in the Seventh Galaxy of Light and Ingenuity which can calculate the trajectory of every single dust particle throughout a five-week Dangrabad Beta sand blizzard?" "A five-week sand blizzard?" said Deep Thought haughtily. "You ask this of me who have contemplated the very vectors of the atoms in the Big Bang itself? Molest me not with this pocket calculator stuff." The two programmers sat in uncomfortable silence for a moment. Then Lunkwill leaned forward again. "But are you not," he said, "a more fiendish disputant than the Great Hyperlobic Omni-Cognate Neutron Wrangler of Ciceronicus 12, the Magic and Indefatigable?" "The Great Hyperlobic Omni-Cognate Neutron Wrangler," said Deep Thought thoroughly rolling the r's, "could talk all four legs off an Arcturan MegaDonkey - but only I could persuade it to go for a walk afterwards." "Then what," asked Fook, "is the problem?" "There is no problem," said Deep Thought with magnificent ringing tones. "I am

Lisa-See-Lady-Tan_s-Circle-of-Women.txt

was mainly concerned with my own condition, but I remember how familiar their conversation was. Miss Chen said to the doctor, ‘You know me. Have you helped me become full with child?’ ” “That could mean anything. Maybe he gave her a formula—” “Maybe, but there’s something else, and I suspect it’s related.” I hesitate, nervous to voice what I’ve come to believe. I take a breath and let the words rush out. “The night Miss Chen had her baby, Spinster Aunt came to see me. I could tell she was upset, but she wouldn’t say what was wrong.” “So?” “Even back then, I thought she saw or heard something when Miss Chen was in labor. Maybe Spinster Aunt was killed to keep her from telling me, from telling anyone.” Meiling gives me a doubtful look. “Her death was an accident.” “But what if it wasn’t?” Before she can ask, I volunteer, “No, I don’t have proof she was murdered. But something happened in the labor room that disturbed Spinster Aunt enough that she wouldn’t confide in me. I think it also caused her to enter the courtyard at night alone, which is not something she would have ordinarily done. Perhaps she went to meet someone.” I pause. Again, I worry I’m going too fast. “There’s a witness to what happened during Manzi’s birth.” Meiling nods slowly as understanding comes to her. “My mother was in the room to catch Miss Chen’s baby.” She stands. “Wait here. I’ll get her.” A few minutes later, Meiling and her mother return. I don’t know what Meiling told her, but the midwife regards me warily. I take her measure too. After all these years, Midwife Shi finally looks like a granny. She’s rounder, and gray threads through her hair. It takes much prodding and cajoling, but eventually Midwife Shi confesses what she knows. When she’s done, we sit in silence for several minutes. Finally, Meiling takes a breath. “If all this is true—” “It is,” her mother says. “Then why didn’t Doctor Wong try to end Yunxian’s second and third pregnancies?” “Daughter, you’re a midwife. You know the answer. Many children don’t live to seven years. What need of a plan for the future could there be until Manzi reached that age? Better yet, until he was eight years old?” “By that time,” I cut in, “I had three daughters. They offered no threat. And who knows? What may have started out as an unlikely seed of an idea took years to grow. Maybe Doctor Wong thought fate would intervene and bring me a son the fourth time I was full with child. In the end, you were the victim.” Several emotions wash over Meiling’s features as she considers all this. At last, she asks, her voice tremulous, “What should we do?” “If we act,” I answer, “there could be repercussions for my husband’s family. And for the two of you.” “I’m afraid,” my friend admits, “but can we in good conscience do nothing?” Midwife Shi and I remain silent as Meiling rises. She crosses

Maame.txt

burn, and I don’t know if I can move without being heard. Somehow if I’m discovered, the embarrassment will definitely be mine to bear. I take another step and the landing creaks, but they don’t stop. I take the opportunity to run to my room and close the door behind me. Great. I need to use the toilet. Chapter Thirteen I’m nervously tapping my foot on Tuesday when, during our catch-up, I ask Kris, “How was last week’s Creative?” “It was all right.” She shoves her hair back with a headband. “It was shit, actually.” “What happened?” “I think we’re all in a bit of a creative funk,” she says. “We don’t have any fresh ideas and all the new stuff we keep losing.” “Ideas?” I repeat. “So the team can come up with ideas instead of waiting for agents to bring us their titles?” “It’s something Penny started when we were really struggling,” Kris answers. “Instead of continuously trying to outbid other publishers, we’d focus on food writers already on our list and come up with exciting things for them to write about. For example, getting Carmen to write about her stay in Italy was Penny’s idea.” Wow. Carmen Loremo’s Sardinia is one of OTP’s bestsellers. “I didn’t know that was an option.” I write down: What do we want and which of our writers can do it? “It’s a good idea.” “It’s a good idea when we have good ideas,” Kris says. “It’s not easy getting a book about foreign cuisine from our list of writers who are … well, limited in foreign experience.” In other words, homogenous in culture. I nod. “Of course.” “It only worked for Carmen because her husband is from Sardinia so they travel there a lot. We’ll think of something.” She closes her notebook. “Did you manage to get that list of titles up on MDX?” “Yes, but, actually, I’ve had an idea about something.” I pitch her my practiced paragraph on Cooking Combos, a book focused on classic and unique pairings, what you can do with them and why. It would discuss the science behind the flavor combination, as text-heavy, informative cookbooks are popular now, and how to cook classic or unexpected dishes with what you’ve got at home. Kris listens patiently and at the end says she’ll think about it but well done me for bringing ideas to the table already. I smile at this and, after, print out a list of our authors going back a decade. Like Kris hinted, we have a lot of white, middle-aged men writing about pies, potatoes, and bread. The majority of our female authors specialize in comfort cooking and family meals. I try not to pull a face. On the train ride home, I think about that list. We need something different, a quiet, undiscussed cuisine; we need recipes we wouldn’t have thought to try or even search for, but no one on our list seems qualified. I get home and, whilst my pasta boils, I google the rest of OTP’s food writers. On one man’s

The Call of the Wild.txt

besetting sin. He loved to play Chinese lottery. Also, in his gambling, he had one besetting weakness--faith in a system; and this made his damnation certain. For to play a system requires money, while the wages of a gardener's helper do not lap over the needs of a wife and numerous progeny. The Judge was at a meeting of the Raisin Growers' Association, and the boys were busy organizing an athletic club, on the memorable night of Manuel's treachery. No one saw him and Buck go off through the orchard on what Buck imagined was merely a stroll. And with the exception of a solitary man, no one saw them arrive at the little flag station known as College Park. This man talked with Manuel, and money chinked between them. "You might wrap up the goods before you deliver 'm," the stranger said gruffly, and Manuel doubled a piece of stout rope around Buck's neck under the collar. "Twist it, an' you'll choke 'm plentee," said Manuel, and the stranger grunted a ready affirmative. Buck had accepted the rope with quiet dignity. To be sure, it was an unwonted performance: but he had learned to trust in men he knew, and to give them credit for a wisdom that outreached his own. But when the ends of the rope were placed in the stranger's hands, he growled menacingly. He had merely intimated his displeasure, in his pride believing that to intimate was to command. But to his surprise the rope tightened around his neck, shutting off his breath. In quick rage he sprang at the man, who met him halfway, grappled him close by the throat, and with a deft twist threw him over on his back. Then the rope tightened mercilessly, while Buck struggled in a fury, his tongue lolling out of his mouth and his great chest panting futilely. Never in all his life had he been so vilely treated, and never in all his life had he been so angry. But his strength ebbed, his eyes glazed, and he knew nothing when the train was flagged and the two men threw him into the baggage car. The next he knew, he was dimly aware that his tongue was hurting and that he was being jolted along in some kind of a conveyance. The hoarse shriek of a locomotive whistling a crossing told him where he was. He had travelled too often with the Judge not to know the sensation of riding in a baggage car. He opened his eyes, and into them came the unbridled anger of a kidnapped king. The man sprang for his throat, but Buck was too quick for him. His jaws closed on the hand, nor did they relax till his senses were choked out of him once more. "Yep, has fits," the man said, hiding his mangled hand from the baggageman, who had been attracted by the sounds of struggle. "I'm takin' 'm up for the boss to 'Frisco. A crack dog-doctor there thinks that he can cure 'm." Concerning that night's ride, the

Emily Wildes Encyclopaedia of Faeries.txt

The sunlight turned everything to silver and pearl. I wore the green dress Wendell had made; he had sent it to me that morning with a note saying that he’d decided it was inappropriate for a wedding, and so why didn’t I wear it today? There had been other things in the note, of course, and I had torn it to shreds and tossed it down the mountainside after I’d finished reading. The dress was perfect, every inch of it, covering me in emerald green drapery that flowed like the boughs of a weeping willow, the bodice embellished with crushed pearls that made a whispery sound when I moved. And with it was a matching veil which I wore pushed back from my face. My hair had been swept up by my servants and woven with jewels, but several pieces were already falling into my eyes, proving once again that even magic is not enough to keep me neat. The pearls lining the veil brushed against my forehead, cold and hard. A faerie woman as tall and slender as evening shadow placed a cage at the king’s feet. He motioned to a servant, who opened the cage door, and out sprang a white raven. “An albino!” the king exclaimed, leaning forward onto his hand, his elbows on his knees. He had a childlike manner about him in such moments that made me wonder at Wendell’s description of him—older than the mountains. But I never wondered for long. These moments were only flashes, the drops of sunlight winnowed through the deepest and darkest woods. He settled back in his throne, growing far too still again, his magic enveloping us all like wind. He is more magic than person, that is the truth of it. Is this what happens to all the Folk as they age, their power hollowing them out like the fissures in an ancient glacier? Many of the gifts were for me. There were jewels and gowns and furs and paintings—done on ice canvases that made everything bleed together far more than watercolours—and a strange, empty box with a base of some sort of pale velvet that the faerie claimed would sprout white roses with diamonds in them if left outside at midday, and blue roses with rubies if left outside at midnight. There were other nonsensical presents along these lines, including a saddle of shapeless grey leather that would allow me to ride the mountain fog, though no explanation was given as to why I should wish to do this. The only presents I truly appreciated came in the form of ice cream, which the Hidden Ones are obsessed with and cover with sea salt and nectar from their winter flowers. The king turned to beam at me lovingly every few moments, and I forced a smile in return while my hands, hidden in my sleeves, clenched into fists. The brief clarity I had felt during Wendell’s visit was gone, and my thoughts were foggy. I always felt worse in the king’s presence, by which I mean that it was

Things Fall Apart.txt

kotma and made to work every morning clearing the government compound and fetching wood for the white Commissioner and the court messengers. Some of these prisoners were men of title who should be above such mean occupation. They were grieved by the indignity and mourned for their neglected farms. As they cut grass in the morning the younger men sang in time with the strokes of their machetes: "Kotma of the ashy buttocks, He is fit to be a slave. The white man has no sense, He is fit to be a slave." The court messengers did not like to be called Ashy-Buttocks, and they beat the men. But the song spread in Umuofia. Okonkwo's head was bowed in sadness as Obierika told him these things. "Perhaps I have been away too long," Okonkwo said, almost to himself. "But I cannot understand these things you tell me. What is it that has happened to our people? Why have they lost the power to fight?" "Have you not heard how the white man wiped out Abame?" asked Obierika. "I have heard," said Okonkwo. "But I have also heard that Abame people were weak and foolish. Why did they not fight back? Had they no guns and machetes? We would be cowards to compare ourselves with the men of Abame. Their fathers had never dared to stand before our ancestors. We must fight these men and drive them from the land." "It is already too late," said Obierika sadly. "Our own men and our sons have joined the ranks of the stranger. They have joined his religion and they help to uphold his government. If we should try to drive out the white men in Umuofia we should find it easy. There are only two of them. But what of our own people who are following their way and have been given power? They would go to Umuru and bring the soldiers, and we would be like Abame." He paused for a long time and then said: "I told you on my last visit to Mbanta how they hanged Aneto." "What has happened to that piece of land in dispute?" asked Okonkwo. "The white man's court has decided that it should belong to Nnama's family, who had given much money to the white man's messengers and interpreter." "Does the white man understand our custom about land?" "How can he when he does not even speak our tongue? But he says that our customs are bad, and our own brothers who have taken up his religion also say that our customs are bad. How do you think we can fight when our own brothers have turned against us? The white man is very clever. He came quietly and peaceably with his religion. We were amused at his foolishness and allowed him to stay. Now he has won our brothers, and our clan can no longer act like one. He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart." "How did they get hold of Ancto to hang him?"

The Hunger Games.txt

I stop. I give up and climb back down to the stream thinking, He must have moved on. Somewhere farther down. 247 My foot has just broken the surface of the water when I hear a voice. “You here to finish me off, sweetheart?” I whip around. It’s come from the left, so I can’t pick it up very well. And the voice was hoarse and weak. Still, it must have been Peeta. Who else in the arena would call me swee- theart? My eyes peruse the bank, but there’s nothing. Just mud, the plants, the base of the rocks. “Peeta?” I whisper. “Where are you?” There’s no answer. Could I just have imagined it? No, I’m certain it was real and very close at hand, too. “Peeta?” I creep along the bank. “Well, don’t step on me.” I jump back. His voice was right under my feet. Still there’s nothing. Then his eyes open, unmistakably blue in the brown mud and green leaves. I gasp and am rewarded with a hint of white teeth as he laughs. It’s the final word in camouflage. Forget chucking weights around. Peeta should have gone into his private session with the Gamemakers and painted himself into a tree. Or a boulder. Or a muddy bank full of weeds. “Close your eyes again,” I order. He does, and his mouth, too, and completely disappears. Most of what I judge to be his body is actually under a layer of mud and plants. His face and arms are so artfully disguised as to be invisible. I kneel beside him. “I guess all those hours decorating cakes paid off.” Peeta smiles. “Yes, frosting. The final defense of the dying.” 248 “You’re not going to die,” I tell him firmly. “Says who?” His voice is so ragged. “Says me. We’re on the same team now, you know,” I tell him. His eyes open. “So, I heard. Nice of you to find what’s left of me.” I pull out my water bottle and give him a drink. “Did Cato cut you?” I ask. “Left leg. Up high,” he answers. “Let’s get you in the stream, wash you off so I can see what kind of wounds you’ve got,” I say. “Lean down a minute first,” he says. “Need to tell you some- thing.” I lean over and put my good ear to his lips, which tickle as he whispers. “Remember, we’re madly in love, so it’s all right to kiss me anytime you feel like it.” I jerk my head back but end up laughing. “Thanks, I’ll keep it in mind.” At least, he’s still able to joke around. But when I start to help him to the stream, all the levity disappears. It’s only two feet away, how hard can it be? Very hard when I real- ize he’s unable to move an inch on his own. He’s so weak that the best he can do is not to resist. I try to drag him, but despite the fact that I know he’s doing all he can to keep

Silvia-Moreno-Garcia-Silver-Nitr.txt

that she could not breathe, but it still hurt, and she could feel the terrible strength in him. “I warned you. One way or another,” he said. He was silver and black-blue smoke, he was ash that was reshaped into sinews. He was real. But he shouldn’t be. He shouldn’t. They had not finished the spell. Yet he flickered into existence before her wide eyes. She stepped backward. “How?” she asked. “You gave me a voice. You drew my runes. You even joined the audience in watching me,” he said, his mouth curling in glee, ash and smoke somehow able to smile. “You made me real.” She shook her head. “Say it now, say I’m alive, and you’ll follow me into the night.” “You can’t—” “No, you can’t. Those are my runes, this is my magic, this is my power. Give in. Say it.” “You’re choking—” She tried to shove him away, but his grip on her throat grew more vicious. She squeezed her eyes shut. He released his hold on her, instead sliding his hands down her shoulders and holding her in place like that. “Better?” he asked, almost innocently. She coughed and opened her eyes, shocked to see he was indeed alive. No, not quite. For a moment he looked to be flesh and blood, nostrils flaring, and then he flickered. The edges of him were smudged one second, crisp the next. He was still a half-thing, existing between spaces. Oh, but he was more real than she’d ever seen him before. She could almost taste the power of the sorcerer, trace the edges of the magic holding him in place. She was afraid she’d inhaled some of this power, of Ewers, that it would settle in her lungs like the smoke of tobacco. “I’m already there,” he said and pressed a finger against the hollow of her throat. “Make me live.” She was tired and he was right. It was as José López had explained. All she and Tristán had done was essentially cause an explosion and they’d been exposed to a radioactive element, to poison, because of it. This magic she commanded wasn’t hers. It was his. Bits of Ewers, his runes and his spells, channeled and making their way around them. It was heady, this well of strength, it made her head spin. “Will me to life. Say it. Say I live.” “Words are ritual, gestures are spells,” she muttered, dazed. “Yes.” Her pulse drummed madly. They’d done exactly what he wanted anyway. Drawn his runes, played his game. She had not given in to fear but still she’d bent to his will. One way or another, as he’d promised. Dancing to his tune, following the steps he traced… “Momo!” “Complete my ritual.” A thought cleaved her mind. His runes, his ritual. He’d stolen bits of knowledge, remade it, remixed it, took from here and there. He’d painted a canvas, but he had not invented colors. Even now, even this spell they were completing was not how the original ritual would have gone. It was not the

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.txt

just time to begin lessons: you'd only have to whisper a hint to Time, and round goes the clock in a twinkling! Half-past one, time for dinner!' (`I only wish it was,' the March Hare said to itself in a whisper.) `That would be grand, certainly,' said Alice thoughtfully: `but then--I shouldn't be hungry for it, you know.' `Not at first, perhaps,' said the Hatter: `but you could keep it to half-past one as long as you liked.' `Is that the way YOU manage?' Alice asked. The Hatter shook his head mournfully. `Not I!' he replied. `We quarrelled last March--just before HE went mad, you know--' (pointing with his tea spoon at the March Hare,) `--it was at the great concert given by the Queen of Hearts, and I had to sing "Twinkle, twinkle, little bat! How I wonder what you're at!" You know the song, perhaps?' `I've heard something like it,' said Alice. `It goes on, you know,' the Hatter continued, `in this way:-- "Up above the world you fly, Like a tea-tray in the sky. Twinkle, twinkle--"' Here the Dormouse shook itself, and began singing in its sleep `Twinkle, twinkle, twinkle, twinkle--' and went on so long that they had to pinch it to make it stop. `Well, I'd hardly finished the first verse,' said the Hatter, `when the Queen jumped up and bawled out, "He's murdering the time! Off with his head!"' `How dreadfully savage!' exclaimed Alice. `And ever since that,' the Hatter went on in a mournful tone, `he won't do a thing I ask! It's always six o'clock now.' A bright idea came into Alice's head. `Is that the reason so many tea-things are put out here?' she asked. `Yes, that's it,' said the Hatter with a sigh: `it's always tea-time, and we've no time to wash the things between whiles.' `Then you keep moving round, I suppose?' said Alice. `Exactly so,' said the Hatter: `as the things get used up.' `But what happens when you come to the beginning again?' Alice ventured to ask. `Suppose we change the subject,' the March Hare interrupted, yawning. `I'm getting tired of this. I vote the young lady tells us a story.' `I'm afraid I don't know one,' said Alice, rather alarmed at the proposal. `Then the Dormouse shall!' they both cried. `Wake up, Dormouse!' And they pinched it on both sides at once. The Dormouse slowly opened his eyes. `I wasn't asleep,' he said in a hoarse, feeble voice: `I heard every word you fellows were saying.' `Tell us a story!' said the March Hare. `Yes, please do!' pleaded Alice. `And be quick about it,' added the Hatter, `or you'll be asleep again before it's done.' `Once upon a time there were three little sisters,' the Dormouse began in a great hurry; `and their names were Elsie, Lacie, and Tillie; and they lived at the bottom of a well--' `What did they live on?' said Alice, who always took a great interest in questions of eating and drinking. `They lived on treacle,' said the Dormouse, after thinking a minute

Oliver Twist.txt

to look back at his pursuers. There was little to be made out, in the mist and darkness; but the loud shouting of men vibrated through the air, and the barking of the neighbouring dogs, roused by the sound of the alarm bell, resounded in every direction. 'Stop, you white-livered hound!' cried the robber, shouting after Toby Crackit, who, making the best use of his long legs, was already ahead. 'Stop!' The repetition of the word, brought Toby to a dead stand-still. For he was not quite satisfied that he was beyond the range of pistol-shot; and Sikes was in no mood to be played with. 'Bear a hand with the boy,' cried Sikes, beckoning furiously to his confederate. 'Come back!' Toby made a show of returning; but ventured, in a low voice, broken for want of breath, to intimate considerable reluctance as he came slowly along. 'Quicker!' cried Sikes, laying the boy in a dry ditch at his feet, and drawing a pistol from his pocket. 'Don't play booty with me.' At this moment the noise grew louder. Sikes, again looking round, could discern that the men who had given chase were already climbing the gate of the field in which he stood; and that a couple of dogs were some paces in advance of them. 'It's all up, Bill!' cried Toby; 'drop the kid, and show 'em your heels.' With this parting advice, Mr. Crackit, preferring the chance of being shot by his friend, to the certainty of being taken by his enemies, fairly turned tail, and darted off at full speed. Sikes clenched his teeth; took one look around; threw over the prostrate form of Oliver, the cape in which he had been hurriedly muffled; ran along the front of the hedge, as if to distract the attention of those behind, from the spot where the boy lay; paused, for a second, before another hedge which met it at right angles; and whirling his pistol high into the air, cleared it at a bound, and was gone. 'Ho, ho, there!' cried a tremulous voice in the rear. 'Pincher! Neptune! Come here, come here!' The dogs, who, in common with their masters, seemed to have no particular relish for the sport in which they were engaged, readily answered to the command. Three men, who had by this time advanced some distance into the field, stopped to take counsel together. 'My advice, or, leastways, I should say, my ORDERS, is,' said the fattest man of the party, 'that we 'mediately go home again.' 'I am agreeable to anything which is agreeable to Mr. Giles,' said a shorter man; who was by no means of a slim figure, and who was very pale in the face, and very polite: as frightened men frequently are. 'I shouldn't wish to appear ill-mannered, gentlemen,' said the third, who had called the dogs back, 'Mr. Giles ought to know.' 'Certainly,' replied the shorter man; 'and whatever Mr. Giles says, it isn't our place to contradict him. No, no, I know my sitiwation! Thank my stars, I

Blowback.txt

120, 122–23 military powers of president as potentially exploited in future by, 217, 218, 225, 226, 227–28 politics as performative in, 154–56 potential weaponization of intelligence agencies in future by, 85–86 potential weaponizing of justice system in future by, 113, 115, 117–20, 124 in silencing and punishing of opposition, 10, 11, 35–38, 41–42, 45, 77, 80, 118–20, 153–54, 155–57, 192–93, 307, 308, 309 as threat to career civil service, 82–83, 84–86 in 2022 midterms, 309 VA as target of, 72–74 “Make Trump Better Plan,” 21, 23 Mar-a-Lago, 71, 186 Marco Island, author’s sojourn on, 202–5, 210 Maria, Hurricane (2017), 126, 127 Maricopa County, Ariz., 38–41 Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, 39, 40, 41 Marine One, 63, 174 Marines, U.S., 30, 64, 268, 282 Marquardt, Kristen, 189 Marshall, John, 123 Marshall Plan, 227 Martini (dog), 312 Matthews, Chris, 15 Mattis, Jim, 6, 29, 52, 53, 60, 61, 72, 96, 142, 143, 163, 196 Atlantic reproach of Trump by, 226 resignation of, 146–47 May, Theresa, 50 McAleenan, Kevin, 184 McCabe, Andrew, 102, 110–12, 123–24 McCain, John, 16, 38, 132, 137, 295 death of, 130–32 McCarthy, Andy, 22 McCarthy, Kevin, 19, 128–29 McCaul, Michael, 22, 24–25, 28, 29 McConnell, Mitch, 101 McCool, Mike, 178 McEnany, Kayleigh, 242, 243 McGinley, Bill, 150 McMaster, H. R., 102 McMullin, Evan, 24, 260, 294, 297 Meadows, Mark, 36, 81 Messages to the World (bin Laden), 263 Mexico, 52, 80, 146, 162–63, 169–70, 171, 173, 181, 188, 217, 226 U.S. Embassy in, 176 Michigan, 173, 244, 257, 258, 259 Middle East, 21, 32, 50, 56–57, 189 Mill, John Stuart, 298–99, 301 Millennium Development Goals, 14 Miller, Stephen, 74, 75, 92, 94, 108, 109, 122, 143, 162, 170–71, 234 unlawful immigration proposals of, 187–88, 190 Mitch (pseud., Secret Service agent), 165–66 Mitnick, John, 118, 247 Mnuchin, Steve, 178–79 Moldova, 224 MoveOn.org, 206 MSNBC, 15, 294 Mueller Report (2019), 214 Mukasey, Michael, 22 Mulvaney, Mick, 20, 162, 173 Murphy, Brian, 85–86, 116 Murray, Bill, 183 Muslims, 20, 21, 22, 29, 91, 92, 188, 206 MyPillow, 171 N Nakasone, Paul, 134 National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, 247 National Journal, 154 National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), 83, 84 National Rifle Association (NRA), 78–79, 80 National Security Agency (NSA), 47, 48, 134 National Security Council (NSC), 52, 54, 75, 80, 85, 116, 133, 219, 224, 226, 264 Trump in attempt to install Christina Bobb at, 185–86 National Weather Service (NWS), 83, 84 Navarro, Peter, 75, 216 NBC News, 138, 199, 276, 284 Netherlands, 190 Neumann, Elizabeth, 51, 52, 53, 55, 69, 100, 184, 243 in public opposition to Trump, 240, 242, 247, 250 New York Post, 288 New York Times, 134, 196, 201, 211, 231, 263, 276, 280 author’s anonymous op-ed in, 3, 4–5, 132–33, 135–40, 144, 164, 196, 197–98, 200–201, 210, 231, 249, 272, 294 Stephens’s “Dear Anonymous” letter in, 147 Nick (DHS military aide), 174 Nielsen, Kirstjen, 49, 50, 51, 53, 55, 61, 67, 68, 69, 95, 99, 102, 103, 105, 126, 127, 128, 129, 131, 136, 138–39, 144–45, 162, 166, 232, 233, 244 in cybersecurity trip to London (2019), 174–76 family separation

Titanium-Noir.txt

“You about to go and show these pretty children a good time? You don’t look like their type, but maybe they like their evenings a little rough sometimes. That about it, honey?” She looks at the woman, who grins. “Oh, yes. I think so.” “No,” I say. “Misunderstanding. I was declining politely, but some offence was taken. I’m not polished like some of your other customers.” “No, I’d say it’s pretty clear all the original edges are still on you,” Vic murmurs, stroking the oiled arm. “Come on, kids. Let me find you someone a little more suitable.” Kids. Suitable. Grandma voice. Thanks, Vic. The guy pushes her away. Vic staggers theatrically into the bar, and a little pyramid of champagne glasses crashes to the floor. The smashing echoes and people stop talking and look. Vic uncoils off the copper top like she’s made of plastic, smiling wide enough to swallow an entire cat. No one in the whole place isn’t looking now. The heroes know it. The woman stretches slightly, pushing her shoulder blades together. Her boyfriend turns his hands in so that his deltoids ripple, and leans in my face. He’s about to speak but Vic gets there first. She pulls a cord mic down from the ceiling and lets out a rebel yell. “LAAAADIIIES AND GENTLEMENNNNN! AND OTHERS MORE INTRIGUINGLY COMPLEX! WELCOME! GOOD EVENING AND WELCOME! I’M VICTOR DEVINE AND THIS IS MY PLACE, AND AS YOU KNOW IT IS THE OOOOONLY PLACE TO FIND. WHAT. YOU. NEED! “With all due respect to Mick—and we all love Mick—I done went and created a place where—whatEVER you like, whatEVER you crave—you can, you can, YOU CAN GET…SATISFACTION!” There’s something happening on the stage level that I’ve never seen before. The tables are sliding apart and an object is rising up out of the floor. An enclosed metal frame four metres by four. Or, no. Not a frame. A cage. Oh, for fuck’s sake. Vic has one hand flung out over her head like a prophet. “Here at Victor’s we like to think we can make anything happen for you, make everyone happy…but dis-agree-ments. Do. Arise. “I love it when something tasty ARISES. Don’t you?” A fat wink, white teeth flashing. She only comes alive in front of the crowd. Vic was never a hooker. She was never a hitman either, whatever you may have heard. She never ran guns out of Lisbon and she never divorced a billionaire. She was a televangelist. It’s not even a secret, yet somehow no one knows but me. “AND TONIGHT…we have something a little special to whet your appetite. Oh YES WE DO.” The cage slides into place, and the door opens with a massive crash. “A DUEL! For the honour of—well now. I wonder. WHICH OF YOU WILL STEP INTO THE CAGE?” The spotlight picks out the heroes and they love it. She jumps on him, wraps her legs around his hips and drives her tongue into his mouth, then bucks off again and raises his hand in hers: “WE DO EVERYTHING…TOGETHER!” Vic

Quietly-Hostile.txt

if I still have to get the approval of weird booze snobs rather than buy what I actually want? If I gotta be outside my house and drinking, then I want that drink to be called something like a “Sunset Passion Colada,” not a “Poet’s Lament” or whatever these fancy-ass places name their drinks. If I order a Frozen Favorites™ Bahama Mama, I know it’s gonna taste like orange pineapple juice from the store with a splash of watered-down rum on top; but if I make my way down to the bespoke artisanal modern-day speakeasy (WHAT), and order a “Smirking Priest”? I have no idea what the fuck that drink is gonna taste like. I went to a bachelorette party at a Red Lobster a few years ago and it was a busy Saturday night, so our large, shrieking party had to wait at the bar for a couple of tables to open up, so they could push them together for us to scatter with penis straws and paper crowns. While we waited, I noticed that the bartender looked like a dude I’d grown up with, like a kid-who-was-in-my-kindergarten-class-with-me kind of grown up with, and I walked over to say hi. There were several older women seated at the bar, dressed like they were trying to get fucked that night, and I was instantly smitten. This is what I want for my future. My man was giving these ladies the full Cocktail experience: shaking his tightly pants’ed ass, flipping and twirling a bottle of mango Malibu rum, really emphasizing the ASS when he delivered one of them her Tiki Passion Punch™ as she squealed in delight. I need to remind you that this isn’t a sultry beachside cocktail lounge in Jamaica. I was standing in a too-bright mall bar in Lincolnwood, Illinois. And it was still somehow sexy and glamorous! As the women whispered conspiratorially over their drinks, I went to the other end of the bar and said, “Oh my God, [paste-eating child friend], you are gonna get your dick sucked!!” And he was like, “Sam, I fuck at least three women a week? And you should see my tips!” I resisted making a joke about giving me some tip and mourned a future in which I would not be tits up to a Red Lobster bar, slurping seductively on a Berry Mango Daiquiri, trying to bone a dude who smells like Clamato and is young enough to be my son. The hot bar “What kind of person am I going to be today?” I think to myself as I sidle up to the salad bar at the local Overpriced Fresh Vegetable Emporium, my single seltzer (do I wish it was a Diet Coke? I absolutely do, but they don’t sell that poison here) and modestly sized square of wholesome dark chocolate (revolting!) rolling around my basket. Salad bars offer the opportunity to reinvent yourself in the time it takes to wolf down a bowl of damp lettuce while hunched over the important papers strewn across your desk, or during the

Great Expectations.txt

I dare say we took too much to drink, and I know we talked too much. we became particularly hot upon some boorish sneer of Drummle's, to the effect that we were too free with our money. It led to my remarking, with more zeal than discretion, that it came with a bad grace from him, to whom Startop had lent money in my presence but a week or so before. "Well," retorted Drummle; "he'll be paid." "I don't mean to imply that he won't," said I, "but it might make you hold your tongue about us and our money, I should think." "You should think!" retorted Drummle. "Oh Lord!" "I dare say," I went on, meaning to be very severe, "that you wouldn't lend money to any of us, if we wanted it." "You are right," said Drummle. "I wouldn't lend one of you a sixpence. I wouldn't lend anybody a sixpence." "Rather mean to borrow under those circumstances, I should say." "You should say," repeated Drummle. "Oh Lord!" This was so very aggravating - the more especially as I found myself making no way against his surly obtuseness - that I said, disregarding Herbert's efforts to check me: "Come, Mr. Drummle, since we are on the subject, I'll tell you what passed between Herbert here and me, when you borrowed that money." "I don't want to know what passed between Herbert there and you," growled Drummle. And I think he added in a lower growl, that we might both go to the devil and shake ourselves. "I'll tell you, however," said I, "whether you want to know or not. We said that as you put it in your pocket very glad to get it, you seemed to be immensely amused at his being so weak as to lend it." Drummle laughed outright, and sat laughing in our faces, with his hands in his pockets and his round shoulders raised: plainly signifying that it was quite true, and that he despised us, as asses all. Hereupon Startop took him in hand, though with a much better grace than I had shown, and exhorted him to be a little more agreeable. Startop, being a lively bright young fellow, and Drummle being the exact opposite, the latter was always disposed to resent him as a direct personal affront. He now retorted in a coarse lumpish way, and Startop tried to turn the discussion aside with some small pleasantry that made us all laugh. Resenting this little success more than anything, Drummle, without any threat or warning, pulled his hands out of his pockets, dropped his round shoulders, swore, took up a large glass, and would have flung it at his adversary's head, but for our entertainer's dexterously seizing it at the instant when it was raised for that purpose. "Gentlemen," said Mr. Jaggers, deliberately putting down the glass, and hauling out his gold repeater by its massive chain, "I am exceedingly sorry to announce that it's half-past nine." On this hint we all rose to depart. Before we got to the street door,

The Turn of the Screw.txt

bedtime having come and gone, I had, before my final retirement, a small interval alone. Much as I liked my companions, this hour was the thing in the day I liked most; and I liked it best of all when, as the light faded--or rather, I should say, the day lingered and the last calls of the last birds sounded, in a flushed sky, from the old trees-- I could take a turn into the grounds and enjoy, almost with a sense of property that amused and flattered me, the beauty and dignity of the place. It was a pleasure at these moments to feel myself tranquil and justified; doubtless, perhaps, also to reflect that by my discretion, my quiet good sense and general high propriety, I was giving pleasure-- if he ever thought of it!--to the person to whose pressure I had responded. What I was doing was what he had earnestly hoped and directly asked of me, and that I COULD, after all, do it proved even a greater joy than I had expected. I daresay I fancied myself, in short, a remarkable young woman and took comfort in the faith that this would more publicly appear. Well, I needed to be remarkable to offer a front to the remarkable things that presently gave their first sign. It was plump, one afternoon, in the middle of my very hour: the children were tucked away, and I had come out for my stroll. One of the thoughts that, as I don't in the least shrink now from noting, used to be with me in these wanderings was that it would be as charming as a charming story suddenly to meet someone. Someone would appear there at the turn of a path and would stand before me and smile and approve. I didn't ask more than that-- I only asked that he should KNOW; and the only way to be sure he knew would be to see it, and the kind light of it, in his handsome face. That was exactly present to me--by which I mean the face was-- when, on the first of these occasions, at the end of a long June day, I stopped short on emerging from one of the plantations and coming into view of the house. What arrested me on the spot-- and with a shock much greater than any vision had allowed for-- was the sense that my imagination had, in a flash, turned real. He did stand there!--but high up, beyond the lawn and at the very top of the tower to which, on that first morning, little Flora had conducted me. This tower was one of a pair--square, incongruous, crenelated structures-- that were distinguished, for some reason, though I could see little difference, as the new and the old. They flanked opposite ends of the house and were probably architectural absurdities, redeemed in a measure indeed by not being wholly disengaged nor of a height too pretentious, dating, in their gingerbread antiquity, from a romantic revival that was already a respectable past. I

Pride And Prejudice.txt

this confusion, Charlotte Lucas came to spend the day with them. She was met in the vestibule by Lydia, who, flying to her, cried in a half whisper, ``I am glad you are come, for there is such fun here! -- What do you think has happened this morning? -- Mr. Collins has made an offer to Lizzy, and she will not have him.'' Charlotte had hardly time to answer, before they were joined by Kitty, who came to tell the same news, and no sooner had they entered the breakfast-room, where Mrs. Bennet was alone, than she likewise began on the subject, calling on Miss Lucas for her compassion, and entreating her to persuade her friend Lizzy to comply with the wishes of all her family. ``Pray do, my dear Miss Lucas,'' she added in a melancholy tone, ``for nobody is on my side, nobody takes part with me, I am cruelly used, nobody feels for my poor nerves.'' Charlotte's reply was spared by the entrance of Jane and Elizabeth. ``Aye, there she comes,'' continued Mrs. Bennet, ``looking as unconcerned as may be, and caring no more for us than if we were at York, provided she can have her own way. -- But I tell you what, Miss Lizzy, if you take it into your head to go on refusing every offer of marriage in this way, you will never get a husband at all -- and I am sure I do not know who is to maintain you when your father is dead. -- _I_ shall not be able to keep you -- and so I warn you. -- I have done with you from this very day. -- I told you in the library, you know, that I should never speak to you again, and you will find me as good as my word. I have no pleasure in talking to undutiful children, -- Not that I have much pleasure indeed in talking to any body. People who suffer as I do from nervous complaints can have no great inclination for talking. Nobody can tell what I suffer! -- But it is always so. Those who do not complain are never pitied.'' Her daughters listened in silence to this effusion, sensible that any attempt to reason with or sooth her would only increase the irritation. She talked on, therefore, without interruption from any of them till they were joined by Mr. Collins, who entered with an air more stately than usual, and on perceiving whom, she said to the girls, ``Now, I do insist upon it, that you, all of you, hold your tongues, and let Mr. Collins and me have a little conversation together.'' Elizabeth passed quietly out of the room, Jane and Kitty followed, but Lydia stood her ground, determined to hear all she could; and Charlotte, detained first by the civility of Mr. Collins, whose inquiries after herself and all her family were very minute, and then by a little curiosity, satisfied herself with walking to the window and pretending not to hear. In a

Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy.txt

more intelligent than man - for precisely the same reasons. Curiously enough, the dolphins had long known of the impending destruction of the planet Earth and had made many attempts to alert mankind of the danger; but most of their communications were misinterpreted as amusing attempts to punch footballs or whistle for tidbits, so they eventually gave up and left the Earth by their own means shortly before the Vogons arrived. The last ever dolphin message was misinterpreted as a surprisingly sophisticated attempt to do a double-backwards- somersault through a hoop whilst whistling the "Star Sprangled Banner", but in fact the message was this: So long and thanks for all the fish. In fact there was only one species on the planet more intelligent than dolphins, and they spent a lot of their time in behavioural research laboratories running round inside wheels and conducting frighteningly elegant and subtle experiments on man. The fact that once again man completely misinterpreted this relationship was entirely according to these creatures' plans. ================================================================= Chapter 24 Silently the aircar coasted through the cold darkness, a single soft glow of light that was utterly alone in the deep Magrathean night. It sped swiftly. Arthur's companion seemed sunk in his own thoughts, and when Arthur tried on a couple of occasions to engage him in conversation again he would simply reply by asking if he was comfortable enough, and then left it at that. Arthur tried to gauge the speed at which they were travelling, but the blackness outside was absolute and he was denied any reference points. The sense of motion was so soft and slight he could almost believe they were hardly moving at all. Then a tiny glow of light appeared in the far distance and within seconds had grown so much in size that Arthur realized it was travelling towards them at a colossal speed, and he tried to make out what sort of craft it might be. He peered at it, but was unable to discern any clear shape, and suddenly gasped in alarm as the aircraft dipped sharply and headed downwards in what seemed certain to be a collision course. Their relative velocity seemed unbelievable, and Arthur had hardly time to draw breath before it was all over. The next thing he was aware of was an insane silver blur that seemed to surround him. He twisted his head sharply round and saw a small black point dwindling rapidly in the distance behind them, and it took him several seconds to realize what had happened. They had plunged into a tunnel in the ground. The colossal speed had been their own relative to the glow of light which was a stationary hole in the ground, the mouth of the tunnel. The insane blur of silver was the circular wall of the tunnel down which they were shooting, apparently at several hundred miles an hour. He closed his eyes in terror. After a length of time which he made no attempt to judge, he sensed a slight subsidence in their speed and some while

The-Lost-Bookshop.txt

coats. I suddenly became very aware of my own thoughts – this constant stream of ridicule. As Martha pointed out, wasn’t I the one who had walked straight into the bookshop on my first night here? Yet I had immediately dismissed it as some kind of drunken mirage. My mind wouldn’t let me believe. Martha suffered no such resistance and I decided that if I could not necessarily believe, I could at least believe in her. ‘The soul of the night turned upside down.’ ‘Sorry?’ ‘That line from the book. It said that you have to trust you will end up exactly where you’re meant to be.’ ‘I feel like I already have,’ I said, but I wasn’t sure if she heard me. No sooner had I spoken the words than I saw a literal light at the end of the tunnel. My heart began to race. Chapter Fifty-Five OPALINE Dublin, 1952 ‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers – That perches in the soul – And sings the tune without the words – And never stops – at all – I let Emily Dickinson’s poetry book fall on to my lap and spied the stained-glass windows of the shop, the colours of which now painted the image of a bird and an open cage. I made a kind of pact with the universe that if I kept the door to my heart open, one day my little girl would walk through it. In the meantime, I found an occupation that created the illusion of doing something to bring that day ever closer. I began writing a book. A children’s book. A Place Called Lost. I knew there was a strange kind of magic in these walls. Maybe not the kind you’d find in travelling shows or under the big top, but something far subtler than that. I began to switch off the lights, lingering over the task. I had an undefinable sense that something, or someone, was close. Someone I knew. Someone I loved. But I couldn’t trust it. Wouldn’t. Even when I heard the knock on the glass door, I didn’t turn to look. Couldn’t face the disappointment of being wrong. I placed my hands on the desk and let my weight lean against it, squeezing my eyes shut. My heart was disobeying my mind and without consciously making the decision, I turned around. He was there. Josef. The snow falling gently on his head and shoulders. A sigh of relief escaped my lips and I could have sworn the books on the shelves sighed too. The bookshop had let him in when I had first escaped St Agnes’s and needed him the most. Now he had returned, everything felt hopeful again. He stepped closer to the window and I followed. We were separated only by the thinnest pane of glass. My eyes searched his eyes, his lips, his entire frame. Was he real? ‘Are you going to let me in?’ he asked, a lopsided smile on his face. ‘It’s a little cold.’ I burst out laughing and it sounded like

The Call of the Wild.txt

when he lay down, and dreaming with him and beyond him and becoming themselves the stuff of his dreams. So peremptorily did these shades beckon him, that each day mankind and the claims of mankind slipped farther from him. Deep in the forest a call was sounding, and as often as he heard this call, mysteriously thrilling and luring, he felt compelled to turn his back upon the fire and the beaten earth around it, and to plunge into the forest, and on and on, he knew not where or why; nor did he wonder where or why, the call sounding imperiously, deep in the forest. But as often as he gained the soft unbroken earth and the green shade, the love for John Thornton drew him back to the fire again. Thornton alone held him. The rest of mankind was as nothing. Chance travellers might praise or pet him; but he was cold under it all, and from a too demonstrative man he would get up and walk away. When Thornton's partners, Hans and Pete, arrived on the long-expected raft, Buck refused to notice them till he learned they were close to Thornton; after that he tolerated them in a passive sort of way, accepting favors from them as though he favored them by accepting. They were of the same large type as Thornton, living close to the earth, thinking simply and seeing clearly; and ere they swung the raft into the big eddy by the saw- mill at Dawson, they understood Buck and his ways, and did not insist upon an intimacy such as obtained with Skeet and Nig. For Thornton, however, his love seemed to grow and grow. He, alone among men, could put a pack upon Buck's back in the summer travelling. Nothing was too great for Buck to do, when Thornton commanded. One day (they had grub-staked themselves from the proceeds of the raft and left Dawson for the head-waters of the Tanana) the men and dogs were sitting on the crest of a cliff which fell away, straight down, to naked bed-rock three hundred feet below. John Thornton was sitting near the edge, Buck at his shoulder. A thoughtless whim seized Thornton, and he drew the attention of Hans and Pete to the experiment he had in mind. "Jump, Buck!" he commanded, sweeping his arm out and over the chasm. The next instant he was grappling with Buck on the extreme edge, while Hans and Pete were dragging them back into safety. "It's uncanny," Pete said, after it was over and they had caught their speech. Thornton shook his head. "No, it is splendid, and it is terrible, too. Do you know, it sometimes makes me afraid." "I'm not hankering to be the man that lays hands on you while he's around," Pete announced conclusively, nodding his head toward Buck. "Py Jingo!" was Hans's contribution. "Not mineself either." It was at Circle City, ere the year was out, that Pete's apprehensions were realized. "Black" Burton, a man evil-tempered and malicious, had been picking a quarrel with

Wuthering Heights.txt

ever watched. She must have had a warm heart, when she Ioved her father so, to give so much to me. I said her days were divided between us; but the master retired early, and I generally needed nothing after six o'clock; thus the evening was her own. Poor thing! I never considered what she did with herself after tea. And though fre- quently, when she looked in to bid me good-night, I remarked a fresh colour in her cheeks and a pinkness over her slender fingers, instead of fancying the hue borrowed from a cold ride across the moors, I laid it to the charge of a hot fire in the library. CHAPTER XXIV. At the close of three weeks I was able to quit my chamber and move about the house; and on the first occasion of my sitting up in the evening I asked Catherine to read to me, because my eyes were weak. We were in the library, the master having gone to bed. She consented, rather unwillingly, I fancied; and imag- ining my sort of books did not suit her, I bade her please herself in the choice of what she perused. She selected one of her own favourites, and got forward steadily about an hour; then came frequent questions. "Ellen, are not you tired? Hadn't you better lie down now? You'll be sick keeping up so long, Ellen." "No, no, dear; I'm not tired," I returned continually. Perceiving me immovable, she essayed another method of showing her disrelish for her occupation. It changed to yawning and stretching, and--- "Ellen, I'm tired." "Give over, then, and talk," I answered. That was worse. She fretted and sighed, and looked at her watch till eight, and finally went to her room, com- pletely overdone with sleep, judging by her peevish, heavy look, and the constant rubbing she inflicted on her eyes. The following night she seemed more impa- tient still, and on the third from recovering my com- pany she complained of a headache and left me. I thought her conduct odd; and having remained alone a long while, I resolved on going and inquiring whether she were better, and asking her to come and lie on the sofa, instead of upstairs in the dark. No Catherine could I discover upstairs, and none below. The servants af- firmed they had not seen her. I listened at Mr. Edgar's door; all was silence. I returned to her apartment, ex- tinguished my candle, and seated myself in the window. The moon shone bright; a sprinkling of snow cov- ered the ground, and I reflected that she might possibly have taken it into her head to walk about the garden for refreshment. I did detect a figure creeping along the inner fence of the park, but it was not my young mistress. On its merging into the light I recognized one of the grooms. He stood a considerable period, viewing the carriage-road through the grounds, then started off at a brisk pace, as if he had detected something, and re- appeared presently

The Hunger Games.txt

charming and then utterly winning as the boy in love. And there I am, blushing and confused, made beautiful by Cinna’s hands, desirable by Peeta’s confession, tragic by circumstance, and by all accounts, unforgettable. 136 When the anthem finishes and the screen goes dark, a hush falls on the room. Tomorrow at dawn, we will be roused and prepared for the arena. The actual Games don’t start until ten because so many of the Capitol residents rise late. But Peeta and I must make an early start. There is no telling how far we will travel to the arena that has been prepared for this year’s Games. I know Haymitch and Effie will not be going with us. As soon as they leave here, they’ll be at the Games Headquarters, hopefully madly signing up our sponsors, working out a strat- egy on how and when to deliver the gifts to us. Cinna and Por- tia will travel with us to the very spot from which we will be launched into the arena. Still final good-byes must be said here. Effie takes both of us by the hand and, with actual tears in her eyes, wishes us well. Thanks us for being the best tributes it has ever been her privilege to sponsor. And then, because it’s Effie and she’s apparently required by law to say some- thing awful, she adds “I wouldn’t be at all surprised if I finally get promoted to a decent district next year!” Then she kisses us each on the cheek and hurries out, over- come with either the emotional parting or the possible im- provement of her fortunes. Haymitch crosses his arms and looks us both over. “Any final words of advice?” asks Peeta. “When the gong sounds, get the hell out of there. You’re neither of you up to the blood bath at the Cornucopia. Just 137 clear out, put as much distance as you can between yourselves and the others, and find a source of water,” he says. “Got it?” “And after that?” I ask. “Stay alive,” says Haymitch. It’s the same advice he gave us on the train, but he’s not drunk and laughing this time. And we only nod. What else is there to say? When I head to my room, Peeta lingers to talk to Portia. I’m glad. Whatever strange words of parting we exchange can wait until tomorrow. My covers are drawn back, but there is no sign of the redheaded Avox girl. I wish I knew her name. I should have asked it. She could write it down maybe. Or act it out. But perhaps that would only result in punishment for her. I take a shower and scrub the gold paint, the makeup, the scent of beauty from my body. All that remains of the design- team’s efforts are the flames on my nails. I decide to keep them as reminder of who I am to the audience. Katniss, the girl who was on fire. Perhaps it will give me something to hold on to in the days to

The Secret Garden.txt

any child. I cannot give you time or attention. I am too ill, and wretched and distracted; but I wish you to be happy and comfortable. I don't know anything about children, but Mrs. Medlock is to see that you have all you need. I sent for you to-day because Mrs. Sowerby said I ought to see you. Her daughter had talked about you. She thought you needed fresh air and freedom and running about." "She knows all about children," Mary said again in spite of herself. "She ought to," said Mr. Craven. "I thought her rather bold to stop me on the moor, but she said--Mrs. Craven had been kind to her." It seemed hard for him to speak his dead wife's name. "She is a respectable woman. Now I have seen you I think she said sensible things. Play out of doors as much as you like. It's a big place and you may go where you like and amuse yourself as you like. Is there anything you want?" as if a sudden thought had struck him. "Do you want toys, books, dolls?" "Might I," quavered Mary, "might I have a bit of earth?" In her eagerness she did not realize how queer the words would sound and that they were not the ones she had meant to say. Mr. Craven looked quite startled. "Earth!" he repeated. "What do you mean?" "To plant seeds in--to make things grow--to see them come alive," Mary faltered. He gazed at her a moment and then passed his hand quickly over his eyes. "Do you--care about gardens so much," he said slowly. "I didn't know about them in India," said Mary. "I was always ill and tired and it was too hot. I sometimes made littlebeds in the sand and stuck flowers in them. But here it is different." Mr. Craven got up and began to walk slowly across the room. "A bit of earth," he said to himself, and Mary thought that somehow she must have reminded him of something. When he stopped and spoke to her his dark eyes looked almost soft and kind. "You can have as much earth as you want," he said. "You remind me of some one else who loved the earth and things that grow. When you see a bit of earth you want," with something like a smile, "take it, child, and make it come alive." "May I take it from anywhere--if it's not wanted?" "Anywhere," he answered. "There! You must go now, I am tired." He touched the bell to call Mrs. Medlock. "Good-by. I shall be away all summer." Mrs. Medlock came so quickly that Mary thought she must have been waiting in the corridor. "Mrs. Medlock," Mr. Craven said to her, "now I have seen the child I understand what Mrs. Sowerby meant. She must be less delicate before she begins lessons. Give her simple, healthy food. Let her run wild in the garden. Don't look after her too much. She needs liberty and fresh air and romping about. Mrs. Sowerby is to

Bartleby the Scrivener A Story of Wall Street.txt

Reference was going on, and the room full of lawyers and witnesses and business was driving fast; some deeply occupied legal gentleman present, seeing Bartleby wholly unemployed, would request him to run round to his (the legal gentleman’s) office and fetch some papers for him. Thereupon, Bartleby would tranquilly decline, and yet remain idle as before. Then the lawyer would give a great stare, and turn to me. And what could I say? At last I was made aware that all through the circle of my professional acquaintance, a whisper of wonder was running round, having reference to the strange creature I kept at my office. This worried me very much. And as the idea came upon me of his possibly turning out a long-lived man, and keep occupying my chambers, and denying my authority; and perplexing my visitors; and scandalizing my professional reputation; and casting a general gloom over the premises; keeping soul and body together to the last upon his savings (for doubtless he spent but half a dime a day), and in the end perhaps outlive me, and claim possession of my office by right of his perpetual occupancy: as all these dark anticipations crowded upon me more and more, and my friends continually intruded their relentless remarks upon the apparition in my room; a great change was wrought in me. I resolved to gather all my faculties together, and for ever rid me of this intolerable incubus. Ere revolving any complicated project, however, adapted to this end, I first simply suggested to Bartleby the propriety of his permanent departure. In a calm and serious tone, I commended the idea to his careful and mature consideration. But having taken three days to meditate upon it, he apprised me that his original determination remained the same in short, that he still preferred to abide with me. What shall I do? I now said to myself, buttoning up my coat to the last button. What shall I do? what ought I to do? what does conscience say I should do with this man, or rather ghost. Rid myself of him, I must; go, he shall. But how? You will not thrust him, the poor, pale, passive mortal,—you will not thrust such a helpless creature out of your door? you will not dishonor yourself by such cruelty? No, I will not, I cannot do that. Rather would I let him live and die here, and then mason up his remains in the wall. What then will you do? For all your coaxing, he will not budge. Bribes he leaves under your own paperweight on your table; in short, it is quite plain that he prefers to cling to you. Then something severe, something unusual must be done. What! surely you will not have him collared by a constable, and commit his innocent pallor to the common jail? And upon what ground could you procure such a thing to be done?—a vagrant, is he? What! he a vagrant, a wanderer, who refuses to budge? It is because he will not be a vagrant,

Katherine-Center-Hello-Stranger.txt

continued. “But it did reveal a neurovascular issue.” Okay, that didn’t sound good. “A neurovascular issue?” The word neurovascular felt like a foreign language in my mouth. “A lesion,” he explained, “that should be treated.” “A lesion?” I asked, like he’d said something obscene. Dr. Estrera put some images from the MRI up onto a lightboard. He pointed to an area with a tiny dark dot and said, “The scan revealed a cavernoma.” He waited for recognition, like I might know what that was. I did not. So I just waited for him to go on. “It’s a malformed blood vessel in the brain,” he explained next. “You’ve had it all your life. An inherited condition.” I glanced at Lucinda, like that didn’t seem right. But Lucinda lifted her hands and said, “Don’t blame me. I’m just the stepmother.” I looked back at the scan—and that menacing little dot. Could he have gotten my scan mixed up with someone else’s? I mean, I just didn’t feel like a person walking around with a malformed blood vessel in her brain. I frowned at Dr. Estrera. “Are you sure?” “It’s plain as day right here,” he said, pointing at the image. Plain as day? More like a fuzzy blur, but okay. “Cavernomas frequently cause seizures,” he went on. “They can be neurologically silent. You could go your whole life without ever having a problem. But they can also start to leak. So your best option is to get it surgically resected.” “It’s leaking?” I asked. “It is. That’s what brought on the seizure.” “The nonconvulsive seizure,” Lucinda noted, like that made it better. “I thought you said there was no bleed in the brain,” I said. “No significant bleed,” he clarified. Why was I arguing with him? He went on, “We need to go in and resect that blood vessel.” Huh. “By go in,” I said, “do you mean go in … to my brain?” “Exactly,” he said, pleased I was getting it now. I was definitely getting it now. “You’re telling me I need brain surgery?” I looked at Lucinda again. There was no one else to look at. Lucinda leaned toward the doctor like she had a juicy secret. “Her father is a very prominent cardiothoracic surgeon,” she said, as if that might somehow earn me a pass. Then, with all the confidence of a woman whose biggest accomplishment was being married to a very prominent cardiothoracic surgeon, she stated: “Richard Montgomery.” Dr. Estrera took that in like a random pleasantry he was too polite to ignore. “Yes. I’ve met him on several occasions.” He turned back to me. “It’s an elective procedure, in the sense that you can schedule it at your convenience. But I’d recommend sooner rather than later.” “How can brain surgery be an elective procedure?” I asked. Botox was an elective procedure. Tummy tucks. Tonsillectomies. “I’ll have to refer you to scheduling,” Dr. Estrera went on, “but we can probably get it done in the next few weeks.” The next few weeks! Uh, no. That wouldn’t work. I

Confidence_-a-Novel.txt

of a bin of loose Easter candy. I held it up to him. “How much do you think this costs?” He raised his eyebrows delightedly. “I have no idea,” he said. “Yeah, me neither,” I said. “We’re gonna find out.” The cashier was clean-shaven with an emo haircut and black nail polish. I put the single Kiss down in front of him. “Can we buy these individually?” I asked. His name tag read “Steven.” He looked at me dazedly. I had intruded on his private fantasies with an incredibly stupid request. “You want to buy that just on its own?” I looked over at Orson, who was pretending to read a tabloid with Jennifer Aniston’s crying face on it. I looked back at Steven. “Yes.” “It’s forty-three cents,” Steven said. I opened my wallet and made a show of looking through my cash. “Shit,” I said. “Shit, I’m sorry.” I produced a ten. “This is the smallest bill I have.” Steven took the bill, unable to conceal his disgust, and proceeded to count out nine dollars and fifty-seven cents. After he handed me the change, I magically found a single. “Sorry!” I said. “I missed this. Listen, can I get the ten back and I’ll give you all the singles?” Steven began to make a calculation in his head that he clearly lost interest in, because he handed me the ten, which I added to my hand of bills. Then I counted out nine singles and slipped the ten underneath. Steven took the wad from me, looking almost curious now, and began counting what I’d given him. “You gave me the ten back,” he sighed. “Oh, did I?” Orson made a little snorting noise behind the tabloid that I hoped Steven couldn’t hear. “Listen,” I said. “I just gave you nineteen there. How about I give you this extra dollar here and you give me back twenty?” Steven now seemed torn between doing what I said and calling his manager. I continued to make eye contact with him, my face even, my stare maybe a little impatient. After a few seconds of this, Steven took the bills back and gave me the twenty. “Holy shit!” Orson crowed when we were outside again. “What was that?” I unwrapped the Kiss and popped it in my mouth. “I saw it in an old movie,” I said, chewing. “What’re you going to do with your eight dollars?” “I dunno. Maybe take in a moving picture show?” He laughed—loud, resounding—and then made an effort to quiet himself when he realized we weren’t yet out of the strip mall parking lot. “Maybe seduce a nice broad into showing you her ankles?” “I do love me some gams,” I said, and he broke into laughter again. There was nothing in the world like pleasing him. TWO MY MOM WAS PERHAPS MORE ashamed of her parents’ Evangelical faith than she was of their alcoholism. Because of this, she kept all details of her religious past from me until I was ten and she mentioned on the drive home from

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.txt

had died away into the silence from which it rose. "What can it mean?" I gasped. "It means that it is all over," Holmes answered. "And perhaps, after all, it is for the best. Take your pistol, and we will enter Dr. Roylott's room." With a grave face he lit the lamp and led the way down the corridor. Twice he struck at the chamber door without any reply from within. Then he turned the handle and entered, I at his heels, with the cocked pistol in my hand. It was a singular sight which met our eyes. On the table stood a dark-lantern with the shutter half open, throwing a brilliant beam of light upon the iron safe, the door of which was ajar. Beside this table, on the wooden chair, sat Dr. Grimesby Roylott clad in a long gray dressing-gown, his bare ankles protruding beneath, and his feet thrust into red heelless Turkish slippers. Across his lap lay the short stock with the long lash which we had noticed during the day. His chin was cocked upward and his eyes were fixed in a dreadful, rigid stare at the corner of the ceiling. Round his brow he had a peculiar yellow band, with brownish speckles, which seemed to be bound tightly round his head. As we entered he made neither sound nor motion. "The band! the speckled band!" whispered Holmes. I took a step forward. In an instant his strange headgear began to move, and there reared itself from among his hair the squat diamond-shaped head and puffed neck of a loathsome serpent. "It is a swamp adder!" cried Holmes; "the deadliest snake in India. He has died within ten seconds of being bitten. Violence does, in truth, recoil upon the violent, and the schemer falls into the pit which he digs for another. Let us thrust this creature back into its den, and we can then remove Miss Stoner to some place of shelter and let the county police know what has happened." As he spoke he drew the dog-whip swiftly from the dead man's lap, and throwing the noose round the reptile's neck he drew it from its horrid perch and, carrying it at arm's length, threw it into the iron safe, which he closed upon it. Such are the true facts of the death of Dr. Grimesby Roylott, of Stoke Moran. It is not necessary that I should prolong a narrative which has already run to too great a length by telling how we broke the sad news to the terrified girl, how we conveyed her by the morning train to the care of her good aunt at Harrow, of how the slow process of official inquiry came to the conclusion that the doctor met his fate while indiscreetly playing with a dangerous pet. The little which I had yet to learn of the case was told me by Sherlock Holmes as we travelled back next day. "I had," said he, "come to an entirely erroneous conclusion which shows, my dear Watson, how dangerous it always is

Tessa-Bailey-Unfortunately-Yours.txt

over barriers he didn’t even know existed inside him. She’d started helping him bring Sam’s dream to life . . . and slowly it was becoming their dream, too. Yeah, it was becoming theirs, and that was more than okay. It was his life now and he desperately wanted to go on living it forever. August dropped down from the doorframe after a few more pull-ups, his brow knitting over the arrival of a second car. Who was that? When he walked out of the barn, the person he needed to see was Natalie—and he did. Briefly. She glanced at him with a strange look on her face as she slipped into the house with a bunch of roses in her arms, shutting the door behind her. What the hell was that? He started after her, stopping short when his CO climbed out of the second car. “Cates.” As always, his spine snapped straight at the sound of his commanding officer’s voice, but his mind didn’t follow. Not this time. Something was up with his wife. Why was his neck tingling like danger was imminent? Commander Zelnick approached with his hands clasped behind his back. “I don’t mean to keep surprising you like this, Cates, but I never know when I’m going to get enough free time to drive up from Coronado.” He nodded at the barn. “I trust things are on their way to improving.” “Yes, sir,” he said automatically—and it was the truth—but a hundred-pound weight had dropped in his stomach and something was prodding the edges of his consciousness. “Sir, would you mind waiting here a moment while I figure out my wife?” He didn’t mean it to sound ridiculous, but his mouth wasn’t connecting with his brain. She’d stopped to buy flowers? For their house? Why did that make him feel like there was a potato sack race happening inside his chest? And why hadn’t she smiled at him? Was something wrong? Yes. Something is wrong. He’d been avoiding thinking about it during their week of bliss, but with the appearance of his commanding officer, the monumental thing he’d been keeping from Natalie jumped up and dug its teeth into his jugular. Every time he thought he had gathered enough courage to tell her about the investment, he recalled the way her father and ex-fiancé had manipulated her with the contents of their bank accounts. Or her trust fund. Not to mention, the investor she’d met with in New York. How she resented their refusal to be straightforward about money. A little longer, he kept thinking. I’ll tell her about the investment once some time has passed since my last fuckup. Really, it had been just over a week since he’d sent her running to the other side of the country. They were so happy. He’d just wanted more things about their marriage in the pro column before he added deceptive about money to the con side. “Of course, go greet your wife,” the CO answered, laughing. “Didn’t recognize her at the flower stand. She looks different. Good