All Gifts, Bestowed by Joshua Gayou

Author:Joshua Gayou [Gayou, Joshua]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aethon Books
Published: 2019-06-10T16:00:00+00:00

“You don't have a goddamned thing of value in this whole house, do you?”

The part of Gilles that was Gilles swirled back up from the underneath, and he began to hear again. He began to perceive, and he perceived that he was hunched over and that his head throbbed and that his wrists hurt and that his hands buzzed terribly. His shoulders ached in time with the throbbing of his head, and he understood only that things were more wrong than usual. He opened his eyes, and the brightness undid them so that he was blind again in the bath of white heat. He panted and drooled and waited for the light to not be so much of itself.

When it faded away to a livable grayness, he leaned back, and in the process of leaning back realized he was sitting in one of his dining chairs. His hands were upon each other at the small of his back, and he could not move them. He realized they must be bound together and he blinked his eyes stupidly for several seconds. The home around him made him feel as though he needed glasses, though only the very poor wore glasses anymore—he knew that much—the poor wore glasses. The accomplished wore Lenses. He wished to shake his head clear but knew this would be a horrible thing to attempt.

“Are you waking up finally? Good. You can tell me where the valuable things are kept.”

He looked up and saw a soft blotch. It was human-shaped, faded, brown, and throbbed in time with his head. Everything throbbed in time with his head. He blinked his eyes again and rolled them in their sockets, swirling the blotch around like a splat of oil in a cup of water.

The voice was female.

“You're robbing me,” he grunted. His voice did not sound like his voice.

“I'm trying to, though I appear to be wasting my time. I should have known I was wasting my time when I saw that TV on the wall. Honestly, who bothers with a TV anymore, except the poor? I thought it was an antique or something at first. Tell me this: what the hell does a person who lives in a house like this need with a TV?”

Gilles shook his head as slowly as he could; as slow as long hair moving through a soft current (blonde hair, he thought), and exhaled. He wondered if there was any way he could explain that would make sense and decided he did not have the mind necessary for the job. “I don't need much…”

“Well, that's certainly a good thing. You don't have it.”

He nodded and saw that the soft edges of the things around him were sharpening. It felt to his mind the same way it did when he was on the tail-end of a sickness and getting better rapidly. It was the way he felt when his nose opened and he could breathe again. “You picked the place.”

“Excuse me?”

“It was you who picked the home to rob.

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