74 Dragon Tears by Dean Koontz

Author:Dean Koontz
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Horror
ISBN: 9780425208434
Publisher: Penguin Group
Published: 2011-09-16T03:12:46+00:00

8

His kitchen was all white—white paint, white floor tile, white marble counters, white appliances. The only relief from white was polished chrome and stainless steel where metal frames or panels were required, which reflected other white surfaces.

Bedrooms should be black. Sleep was black except when dreams were unreeling in the theater of the mind. And although his dreams always seethed with color, they were also somehow dark; the skies in them were always black or churning with contusive storm clouds. Sleep was like a brief death. Death was black.

However, kitchens must be white because kitchens were about food, and food was about cleanliness and energy. Energy was white: electricity, lightning.

In a red silk robe, Bryan sat in a shell-white chair with white leather upholstery in front of a white-lacquered table with a thick glass top. He liked the robe. He had five more of the same. The fine silk felt good against his skin, slippery and cool. Red was the color of power and authority: the red of a cardinal’s cassock; the gold-and ermine-trimmed red of a king’s imperial mantle; the red of a Mandarin emperor’s dragon robe.

At home, when he chose not to be naked, he dressed only in red. He was a king in hiding, a secret god.

When he went out into the world, he wore drab clothing because he did not wish to call attention to himself. Until he had Become, he was at least marginally vulnerable, so anonymity was wise. When his power had fully developed and he had learned total control of it, he would at last be able to venture out in costumes that befitted his true station, and everyone would kneel before him or turn away in awe or flee in terror.

The prospect was exciting. To be acknowledged. To be known and venerated. Soon. At his white kitchen table, he ate chocolate ice cream in fudge sauce, smothered in maraschino cherries, sprinkled with coconut and crumbled sugar cookies. He loved sweets. Salties, too. Potato chips, cheese twirls, pretzels, peanuts, corn chips, deep-fried pork rinds. He ate sweets and salties, nothing else, because no one could tell him what to eat any more.

Grandmother Drackman would have a stroke if she could see what his diet consisted of these days. She had raised him virtually from birth until he was eighteen, and she had been uncompromisingly strict about diet. Three meals a day, no snacks. Vegetables, fruits, whole grains, breads, pasta, fish, chicken, no red meat, skim milk, frozen yogurt instead of ice cream, minimal salt, minimal sugar, minimal fat, minimal fun.

Even her hateful dog, a nervous poodle named Pierre, was forced to eat according to Grandma’s rules, which in his case required a vegetarian regimen. She believed that dogs ate meat only because they were expected to eat it, that the word “carnivore” was a meaningless label applied by knownothing scientists, and that every species—especially dogs, for some reason—had the power to rise above their natural urges and live more peaceful lives than they usually did.

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