Gone Tomorrow by Gary Indiana

Author:Gary Indiana
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: 1980s, 1990s fiction, 1990s novel, lgbt fiction, lgbt thriller, gay thriller, gay crime fiction, cinema novel, film novel, lgbt author, lgbt authors, gay classic, novels about hedonism, books set in colombia, serial killer, books about serial killers, art world fiction, art world novel, novels by artists, 90s books, 90s novels, Cold in Columbia, Cold in Colombia, aids-era classic, 20th century canon, gay novel, novels about movies, novels about film, LGBT canon, LGBT classic, aids-era literature, aids-era books, LGBT novel
ISBN: 9781609808648
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
Published: 2018-08-24T18:00:00+00:00

9

Night

The tapping noises woke me, the sound of a pick chipping at metal. I opened my eyes and tried to focus the vague rhomboid shadows on the ceiling, finally groping for my glasses. The shadows were like strangely tilted prison cells. Everything was deadly still except the chipping, which seemed to be happening in the street below the window.

The dark shapes of the room’s furniture gradually stood out from the walls. I knew exactly where I was in space and time, yet my body felt all at war with itself, its various parts taunting and mocking the ensemble, so to speak, with little twitches and spasms and pinpoints of pain. These miniature pains reminded me of the cockroach dragging its shattered belly across the ground, which of course recalled the odd worm of flesh above Valentina’s mouth, Jaybill’s pile of artificial arms and legs, Michael’s dark lips, the grille of the restaurant ashtray, and Irma’s mouth, all mixed up and tossed together, and I thought of my own scarred cheek and my face lying there in the darkness.

I imagined that someone below was chiseling the wrought iron bars off a basement window, and with some audacity, too, since it had to be three or four in the morning and every stroke of the instrument echoed down the cobbled avenue. As I sat up in bed, another sound commenced in the hallway, a squeaking noise, like a rubber wheel rubbing against linoleum, accompanied by a hoarse intermittent whisper. Fear began spreading up my legs, climbing my lower back, suddenly my organism was unified in a soft ball of fear. I expected at any moment the telltale creak of the twisting doorknob, the rattle of a passkey slipped into the lock.

The pencil line of light beneath the door was obliterated by a large object. The object wavered, the light slithered on either side of its moving shadow, and then the line returned to normal. I waited, holding my breath, thinking of the sinister brothers who ran the hotel, three of them, all in their twenties, built like soccer players, given to darting glances and furtive looks, as if the hotel business were a front for some darker, clandestine activity. Could one of them be the Cartagena Vampire? Or, better still, all of them?

The chipping outside suddenly ceased: now everything was frozen in a kind of electric silence. I forced shallow, inaudible breaths, as if someone outside the door had his ears pricked for any evidence of movement. Although I was terrified, I was also quite drowsy. I closed my eyes and lay back and started to drift off, when the whispering resumed, full of gluey-sounding breath, and this time I crept out of the bed, my weight causing the floor to creak, and crawled, with interminable caution, over to the door. I saw myself crawling and thought of the cockroach again, venturing out from under the hedge with its elaborate but useless defenses at high pitch. Finally I peered into the hall through the keyhole.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.