No matter which way he turned, John could not outrun the branches tearing at his hair and face and arms and legs. The faster he went, the harder they scraped against him, cutting his flesh to scarlet ribbons. The light that was guiding him seemed to be slipping away, and all he could think to do was stop. Stand still. Catch his breath. Try to ride out the pain. As he did, the branches pulled back, his wounds healed and the light grew brighter. He heard a voice that seemed to come from within his own mind: Stop running from the truth, John.
As Sadie lowered herself in to the lavender fumes, she offered mental thanks to the inventor of bath bombs. Not only did they provide a bizarre kind of entertainment as they fizzed into obscurity, they were the bearers of soothing oils and scents. Which she desperately needed after the week she had.
Jerry was in a bad mood. His door slammed seven times in the past twenty minutes, not that Jane was really keeping track. The story was that he had the big guns on his case about upping the circulation and not doing enough to keep the advertisers happy. Some days she hated being part of the corporate machine. Her in tray was bulging with letters, and Roger from the mail room popped round to let her know that the Citizen Jane Fan Club, as he called it, needed its corner cleared out, pronto.
The dream always started the same way: she was searching for something. She never knew what she was looking for, but the sense of urgency about finding it would not let her stop. Once she found herself in the maelstrom of a crowd, looking at people's feet until two clogs appeared. Another time desert dunes undulated before her eyes until she spotted an oasis beyond the mirage. Now she was looking at hats at the races: some were garish, others demure. The dull clip of hooves on the grass grew louder in her head and when she thought she might scream, she saw him, in his trilby, holding a single white rose.
Walter stroked his forefinger against the ridge of his thumbnail. The naked glare of the lightbulb cast shadows as it swayed above the kitchen table. It exaggerated his wife's expression. He thought about leaving. He imagined the sound of the chair scraping the floor, the gape of his daughter's expression as he walked out and the pause before she started her litany of why he was a bad father. It felt as though the walls might close in on them. No. On him. The pressure on his chest morphed into sharp pains in his ribs. Something was going to explode. He stroked the gap between his eyebrows and cleared his throat.
Whenever he was asked to tell the story of how he met Cara, Flick could almost feel the wind in his hair and the judder of the handlebars. As a boy, he loved coasting downhill to the town square, where his presence scattered the nuns and mums like chickens. More than once he had laughed at the fists and shouts thrown in his wake.
The Taxidermist had a secret. When he toiled for hours on his
project of the cat kingdom, the secret surfaced in the small lines
between his eyebrows. All of his competitors believed the secret had
something to do with his work. Tell us, they would cry, what is it that
makes the coats so shiny and the teeth so white? As he always did, the
Taxidermist would look at them, smiling his wry smile, and say: it's the formaldehyde.
