The Nova Strikes
...darkness was receding by the nanosecond. From a deep indigo much of the sky had turned purple, like the color of a bruise, while off to the east a thickening band of orange hovered above the Caramel Mesa. I earnestly wished the house had been underwater after all. It was as if one whole side of the world had caught fire, and the flames, racing ever westward, would overtake me no matter how fast or far I tried to run.
Karen would later tell me the one thing that kept me from killing her that day, or vice versa, was that she had to bury her cat. So she did not join me in the asylum we enjoyed in both good times and bad—the cotton cave under the blankets on her bed. Once I had burrowed my way into its depths I meekly cried out for her a minute or two and then gave it up, because I did not want to draw any attention to my hiding place whatsoever. I worried about what might have happened to her, but my curiosity could not compel me to move any more than my ravenous thirst, the increasing heat under the blankets or even nature’s call. I imagined the world outside withering under the merciless light of day—trees bursting into flame, cars melting into bubbling puddles of glass, rubber and steel on the baking, cracking pavement, whole mountains reduced to heaps of hot ash. My only prayer was that I could be spared the sight of this conflagration, that my flimsy cocoon was somehow protection enough from glimpsing hell... It was an easy leap to conclude that my actions had brought this incomparable suffering upon myself, that I was solely to blame for being reduced to a shadow beneath a shade, huddled in a fetal position, shivering while the Sun tried to roast me alive. Most maddening of all, the echoes of the magistrate’s relentless pursuit across space, time and whatever state of consciousness I occupied.
“MONJETICO FROOGE SORIENTZIS! COLOGO DIDDO-LEYA! GRENT!”
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