- - - - [The following excerpt comes from Issue No. 10: McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales.] - - - -
A S T H E D A R K N E S S We're all blind to something — the mind's eye can't hold everything at once. And we're all dying — just some more rapidly than others. But platitudes were only so much whistling in the dark, mantras to reassure the senses, soothe the terrors, distract the rat-mind gnawing at the vitals. The truth of the matter was, Janna was dying and Suze Blackstock was more the type to blast the dark with a bonfire than whistle into it. Suze did not want to be soothed, not even when she woke, as she did now, to an unrelieved blackness. Ah shit, she thought. It's gone, I'm blind. And it had happened while she slept, not even a last flicker to grab on to, or to wish goodbye. Then rationality elbowed its way to the fore: Maybe it actually was still dark. This was, after all, a place without streetlights, so it could be — But no. She didn't just wake, she'd been awakened by… yes, by the sound of digging, a shovel blade biting into soil. That meant Andy was here. And builders did not work in the dark of night, not even eccentric, senior-citizen odd-job men builders like Andy. So, that was it, then. Her optic nerves had given up the fight, closed down in the night, died. Once, she'd been left in a desert without water, another time she spent a week trapped by a blizzard, but she'd never been abandoned so completely, never left with two vestigial lumps on her face that would do nothing more than dribble weak tears, as they did now onto the pillow. She lay back, prodding the soft, useless skin and the wet, cowardly lashes, then pressed down in a sudden spasm of anger that she hadn't even been there to see her sight off. And the night flared in reaction. She froze, then flipped over and stretched for the big flashlight under the edge of the bed, kept there for times like this when she needed to know that the world of light was still there for her. She fumbled after the handle, knocked it away, lunged for it and thumbed the switch and — light! The brilliance of it assaulted her retinas, blinding her with glory, making her head spin with relief. She laughed, even, and patted her eyelids in apology, loving the wetness of the lashes, the slight ache from where she had pressed down hard. A full five minutes went by before she remembered the sound of shovel blades digging into soil. Obviously it hadn't been the builders; Andy was a conscientious old coot, but surely he wouldn't come out here in the middle of the night. Besides, hadn't he finished with the retaining wall? She switched off the beam and sat, listening, but the noise did not come again. After a while, she stowed the light in its place under the edge of the bed and got back under the covers, wondering, as she'd wondered for the past five weeks, just what the hell she was going to do. Suze Blackstock had always been a woman who met her fears head-on. From the day she took her first steps she'd been called a tomboy, a reckless kid, a daredevil. The pattern of her adult life had been set when a high school boyfriend turned first possessive, then violent, and in a desperate bid for self-respect, she'd signed up for a karate class. Lesson learned: When life spit on you, pull back and let fly. She'd set out for Europe at nineteen with $104 in her pocket, spent the next six years walking and hitching across five continents, and come home with eleven dollars and change. She started skydiving at the age of thirty-one during a nasty, threat-filled divorce, the mind-blowing rush of each near-suicide stripping the mess of her life down to essentials. Rock climbing followed at thirty-seven, when her mother died in April and a close friend four weeks later. And she swallowed her claustrophobia and went caving a few years after that, when her world was crumbling in six directions at once. In each case, death looking over her shoulder steadied her; flirting with it and then walking away left her strong and cleansed. Will the parachute open this time? Will that tiny jut of rock hold me? Will the huge weight of the earth above me choose now to sigh and settle down? It was as if, when life spiraled out of control, seizing Death and staring him down was the only to bleed off the intolerable pressures. In the face of death, she felt most alive.
NOTHING IS WHAT IT SEEMS IN McSWEENEY'S MAMMOTH TREASURY OF THRILLING TALES. - - - - Laurie R. King has lived a life of crime since the publication of A Grave Talent in 1993, having come from a life of academic theology. Her thirteenth novel, Keeping Watch, is out in March.
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