When Reason Sleeps by Rex Burns

Author:Rex Burns [Burns, Rex]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781784083298
Publisher: Head of Zeus
Published: 2012-12-26T16:00:00+00:00

The winter rains fell steadily outside the window; the heavy gray of the late, overcast afternoon made the room colder and gloomier. She watched the rain, one of those endless, persistent California drizzles, drip off the long, sad curve of eucalyptus leaves and down to the soggy lawns of the quadrangle. A pair of students, huddled under the glistening black of an umbrella, walked quickly toward the white box of the library. Japanese, probably; they liked that kind of umbrella and they were always first in line when the library opened Sunday afternoons.

She should go to the library, too. Goldman’s term paper was due in another couple of weeks, and she still hadn’t finished her first studio project. But it was hard even to think of going. It was hard to keep her mind on anything, really, and all this—the outside world, school, her studies and deadlines, they all seemed so unreal. More and more, the only life that had any meaning was what she found with them. It was as if she only really woke up when she was with them, and the rest of the time she sort of drowsed through the hours. Her father had noticed it over Christmas break, wondering why she was so irritable, why she spent so much time alone in her room, why she didn’t do more of the things happy families were supposed to do at Christmas.

“Just leave her alone.” Her mother’s thick voice drew on her nerves like a knife blade across a taut wire. “Leave her alone if she wants to be alone.”

“Well, I’d like to see a little of her!” Her father’s voice rumbled angrily down the hallway from the living room, accompanied by the jingle of holiday music on the stereo. “Goddamn it, it is Christmas, after all, and it’s not only depressing, it’s damned bad manners—my mother was very hurt when she wouldn’t even come out of her room to say hello.”

Her mother’s voice muttered something that her father didn’t bother answering. She heard the icy tinkle of a drink and then he snorted something. “Boy troubles. It’s probably boy troubles. Be damned glad when she grows out of this stage.”

It wasn’t boy troubles and she didn’t grow out of it. It was simply that she hadn’t felt alive without them and she had been counting the days and hours before vacation was over and she would be back with them and away from the guilty memories held by this room, this house, by her mother’s unfocused eyes.

Last night she had felt truly alive. A lot of it was a blur now, and hazy with fragmented memory and the frayed consciousness that had come with the Potion. Warmth and chanting. The glare of candles and fire. The pale glimmer of flesh as she gazed down between sweaty, taut breasts at the gold chalice resting on the flatness of a stomach. Then, her body had seemed distant and she could watch with eyes that belonged to someone else as if the altar was the flesh of another person.

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