A Natural History of Hell: Stories by Jeffrey Ford

Author:Jeffrey Ford [Ford, Jeffrey]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9781618731180
Publisher: Small Beer Press
Published: 2016-06-27T06:00:00+00:00

“When I strapped myself in and opened the book, something floated out of it. I grabbed it as it drifted overhead: a green square of paper. Then I remembered it was the fifty I’d gotten from Max. I’d put it in the book as a good-luck token for the trip. I unfolded it and looked at the face. For the first time I noticed that there was writing on it. In a very light ballpoint pen, someone had drawn a word balloon coming out of Grant’s mouth. It contained two words in Max’s handwriting: Suicide Mission.

“Tracy found me floating in my cabin, hyperventilating. She pulled me down to her cabin and strapped me to the wall. Across from me she secured one of her paintings, a bare black tree on a jade green background, on an easel that was bolted to the cabin. She told me to stare at the painting and breathe steadily. ‘Concentrate on the life of the tree,’ she said. I did. I was in shock and barely moved, but my mind was frantic with thoughts of suffocation and a sense that the walls were about to close in.

“The inanity of the painting actually brought me back around. Its simplicity was infectious. I eventually calmed down, and when my breathing had returned to normal, Tracy said, ‘If you get scared, just think of the painting.’ I swore to her that I wasn’t scared, and she just gave me a flat midwestern chuckle. All this time, the theremin was playing, and now that I was free of my own fear, I began to notice how annoying the instrument was, like a relentless robot cat in heat with digestion problems.

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