Free Bradbury, Ray - SSC 09 by The Small Assassin (v2.1) Page B

buy now and read. How she
loved books and the smell of books. She thought of a thousand old sad things.
She’d wanted to own the Oz books all her life, yet had never bought them. Why not ? while yet
there was life! The first thing she’d do would be to buy them when she got back
to New
York !
And she’d call Lila immediately! And she’d see Bert and Jimmy and Helen and
Louise, and go back to Illinois and walk around in her childhood place and see the things to be seen
there. If she got back to the States. If. Her heart beat painfully in her, paused, held on to
itself, and beat again. If she ever got back.
                 She
lay listening to her heart, critically.
                 Thud and a thud and a thud. Pause. Thu d
and a thud and a thud. Pause.
                 What
if it should stop while she was listening?
                 There!
                 Silence
inside her.
                 “Joseph!”
                 She
leaped up. She grabbed at her breasts as if to squeeze, to pump to start the
silent heart again!
                 It
opened in her, closed, rattled and beat nervously, twenty rapid, shot-like
times!
                 She
sank on to the bed. What if it should stop again and not start? What would she
think? What would there be to do? She’d die of fright, that’s what. A joke; it
was very humorous. Die of fright if you heard your heart stop. She would have
to listen to it, keep it beating. She wanted to go home and see Lila and buy
the books and dance again and walk in Central Park and—listen—
                 Thud and a thud and a thud. Pause.
                  
                 Joseph
knocked on the door. Joseph knocked on the door and the car was not repaired
and there would be another night, and Joseph did not shave and each little hair
was perfect on his chin, and the magazine shops were closed and there were no
more magazines, and they ate supper, a little bit anyway for her, and he went
out in the evening to walk in the town.
                 She
sat once more in the chair and slow erections of hair rose as if a magnet were
passed over her neck. She was very weak and could not move from the chair, and
she had no body, she was only a heart-beat, a huge pulsation of warmth and ache
between four walls of the room. Her eyes were hot and pregnant, swollen with
child of terror behind the bellied, tautened lids.
                 Deeply
inside herself, she felt the first little cog slip. Another night, another
night, another night, she thought. And this will be longer than the last. The
first little cog slipped, the pendulum missed a stroke. Followed
by the second and third interrelated cogs. The cogs interlocked, a small with a little larger one, the little larger one with a bit larger one,
the bit larger one with a large one, the large one with a huge one, the huge
one with an immense one, the immense one with a titanic
one. . . .
                 A
red ganglion, no bigger than a scarlet thread, snapped and quivered; a nerve,
no greater than a red linen fiber twisted. Deep in her one little mech was gone and the entire machine, imbalanced, was about
to steadily shake itself to bits.
                 She
didn’t fight it. She let it quake and terrorize her and knock the sweat off her
brow and jolt down her spine and flood her mouth with horrible wine. She felt
as if a broken gyro tilted now this way, now that and blundered and trembled
and whined in her. The color fell from her face like light leaving a
clicked-off bulb, the crystal cheeks of the bulb vessel showing veins and
filaments all colorless. . . .
                 Joseph
was in the room, he had come in, but she didn’t even hear him. He was in the
room but it made no difference, he changed nothing with his coming. He was
getting ready for bed and said nothing as he moved about and she said