Ray Bradbury by Quicker than the eye

Author:Quicker than the eye
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2011-08-12T17:55:17+00:00

Dorian In Excelsus

1996 year

Good evening. Welcome. I see you have my invitation in your hands. Decided to be brave, did you? Fine. Here we are Grab onto this.>>

The tall, handsome stranger with the heavenly eyes and the impossibly blond hair handed me a wineglass.

> he said.

I took the glass and read the label on the bottle he held in his left hand. Bordeaux, it read. St. Emilion.

> said my host. drink?>>

> I sipped, shut my eyes, and smiled. >

My host sat and filled his own glass. > His lizard tongue darted into his wine to vanish back into his contentment.

He exhaled it all out:

> he said, Me!>>

> I laughed. >

>

>

life! In all of life.>> He rocked back and forth, drunk not from the wine but from some inner joy. >

>

old I am!>>

>

I said, > I pretended to half rise. He pressed a gentle hand to my lapel.

> He touched under his eyes and then around his neck. >

> I said.

>

>

> He showed his wrists. not turning to rust. I repeat the question, how old am I?>>

I swirled the wine in my glass and studied his reflection in the swirl.

> I guessed. >

> He fell back in his chair, astonished. know?>>

>

> The handsome stranger leaned forward. stayed young. Became young. I was old, very old, and it took a year, but the clock went back and after a year of playing at it, I achieved what I set out for.>>

>

>

no portrait, no attic, no staying young. It's becoming young again's the ticket.>>

>

>

He seized my hand. > He hustled me along through the tables in a swiftly filling room of mostly middle-aged and some fairly young men, and a few smoke-exhaling ladies. I jogged along, staring back at the EXIT as if my future life were there.

Before us stood a golden door.

> I asked.

any golden door?>> my host responded. >

I reached out to print the door with my thumb.

> my host inquired.

> I touched again. >

>

We pushed and the golden door swung soundlessly wide.

>

almost Friends. Feast your eyes.>>

I did as I was told and saw, at the longest bar in the world, a line of men, a lineage of young men, reflecting and re-reflecting each other as in a fabled mirror maze, that illusion seen where mirrors face each other and you find yourself repeated to infinity, large, small, very small, smallest, GONE! The young men were all staring down the long bar at us and then, as if unable to pull their gaze away, at themselves. You could almost hear their cries of appreciation. And with each cry, they grew younger and younger and more splendid and more beautiful...

I gazed upon a tapestry of beauty, a golden phalanx freshly out of the Elysian fields and hills. The gates of mythology swung wide and Apollo and his demi-Apollos glided forth, each more beautiful than the last.

I must have gasped. I heard my host inhale as if he drank my wine.

aren't they,>> he said.

> whispered my new friend. Now.>> And he glided, he

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