Shriek - An Afterword by Jeff VanderMeer

Author:Jeff VanderMeer [VanderMeer, Jeff]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science
ISBN: 9781429951470
Publisher: Tor; Tom Doherty Associates
Published: 2006-01-01T16:00:00+00:00

{There I go, romanticizing it—putting words between myself and the hurt. I disgust myself sometimes.}

I took the Path of Remembering You well after dark. I don’t remember anything about my trip, except the absent-minded scratches from a rose bush in the gardens and the frozen position of the stars. It was cold, and I was glad to pull myself up into your open window and into your smooth white arms. Your skin, as always, awakened my senses, and I trembled from the power of your eyes, the soft place at the base of your neck, the soap smell of you, the miraculous hollows on the inside of your thighs.

And, afterwards, intoxicated by the feel and scent of you, the taste of you on my hands, my lips, I swung happily back into the cold, certain I would see you the next night; even the sudden tight prickle on my left arm, my right foot, that presaged spore-pain only added a spark to my mood. The stars swam and spun, and the solid, cold buildings seemed to sway with this happiness in me that was you.

But, my love, no happiness ever went untested. No happiness ever lasted unchanged, untransformed. It doesn’t mean happiness has to end, just that it takes on new patterns, new shapes.

It happened by the willow trees where I first saw you, that flickering shiver of a glimpse, and yet that red hair like a fire burning through the trees. It was by those trees, along the path where I walked a happy man, that the stone table where I spent my lunch hours came into view. It lay at the very heart of the willows like a black cave, not a stone at all, and the dark green leaves of the surrounding bushes glistened with reflected light. And, my love, someone sat at that table, and even in that uncertainty, I knew who it was and all of the life left my gait. I could tell my happiness was about to change.

Bonmot sat at the table, dressed in his most formal clothes, as a Truffidian priest would on sacrament day at the Cathedral. Glittering robes, with gold thread woven through them. Even in the dark, they glittered.

I looked into that dark and I could not see his eyes. “Bonmot,” I said, “is that you, Bonmot?” Even though I knew already that it was him.

He said nothing, but motioned for me to sit beside him at the table. I didn’t hesitate, Mary—I sat next to him willingly. Any excuses about the cold, the lateness of the hour, would have been crushed by the weight of the stone and that gaze. So I sat and made a joke and remarked on the cold and said, “Should we have a midnight snack, then, instead of lunch?” and trailed off because throughout my nervous monologue Bonmot had said nothing. He stared at me with no expression on his face, the staff leaning against the stone bench, the medallion hanging around his neck on a silver chain.

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