The Fading by Linda Taimre

Author:Linda Taimre [Linda Taimre]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780648415015
Publisher: Kaustik Press
Published: 2018-11-01T16:00:00+00:00

Katherine threw Italian for Beginners at the wall with disgust and lurched up to pace about apartment. She couldn’t concentrate, didn’t want to concentrate on anything. Depression had infiltrated every room and Katherine could no longer see past her own brain. This is bloody ridiculous. “I wanted to avoid quarantine, not create one in my own home.”

The silence of the walls answered her. Standing in the middle of the living room, the thought of the gun she had acquired popped into her mind. She stood still for a moment longer, then walked suddenly towards the kitchen, opening the laminate cupboard above the sink. From there she grabbed an old biscuit tin in which clunked the heavy metal. It wasn’t easy for her to open it, she had bitten all her nails off and had very little to grip with. Finally, she prised away the lid and picked up the gun, hefting the metal in her hand with a confidence that she did not have. She found it fun to pretend she was someone who had lived with guns all their life, someone who could shoot a cigarette out of a fly’s mouth. It doesn’t matter though. I don’t need to know how to aim for what I’m going to do.

Katherine slowly sat down on the couch, her knees shaking slightly. She could feel the muscles in her sides contract and relax over and over again. There was nothing she could do to stop these movements, she had long learned, so she tended to just observe the occurrences with interest. The gun was cold and heavy in her hands, particularly heavy considering its small size. She knew this wasn’t the time for her to go. She wasn’t far enough along yet. She really only wanted to do it at the start of the Wrenching, when she had had a chance to say goodbye to Harriet – but of course, of course, not when Harriet was there to see it.

At least, that had been the plan. Over the past few hours, she had felt her body shifting and responding in ways that did not match previous reports of Fading instances. She was finding it hard to pinpoint where she was in the process, which made her nervous. What if she missed the deadline and couldn’t pull the trigger in time? What if these undocumented responses meant that she was going to evaporate in the next two minutes, without a full Wrenching?

A faint wind blew in the back of her mind. Sounds that were almost-words tickled her synapses, thoughts with weight, thoughts she could see. Katherine shook her head, wanting to spill the almost-words out of her ears. Again. What is this new symptom? Hearing voices? Her body tingled all over, and she felt an involuntary breath blow inwards, expanding her chest and making her feel like her entire body was swelling, then falling, rising, then slowly returning to its normal shape. And she saw – or thought she saw – her limbs physically pulsing with an in-breath.

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