Flight to Darkness Read Online Free Page A

“You
don’t dream?”, the lies; “Ah, so you do dream?”, the truths at
last, “A wooden mallet!”; the bedpans, the changing of sheets,
shave, wash, brush your teeth, the toenails clipped, scar-tissue,
haircut, the occasional scream of agonized sound purling across the
thick night, and worst of all the first realization that that last
scream was you—during the time between I would look out the window.
It was always fine and better than any movie or play. It never
became monotonous. Once in a while people passed out there, though
seldom, and I speculated as to what they did in life; the fat, the
slim, the quick, the weary. I speculated and dreamed and thought
intensely about my sculpturing and of how much I needed it, how I
wanted to return to it. Because thinking about it grounded you
somehow, made things real again. And I watched the skies change and
the clouds and winds in the trees out the window.
    Then one day my door opened.
    “ Hi! How’d you like something to
read?”
    “ Thanks. Never mind.” I hadn’t
looked. That door had previously brought nothing to me but a minor
or major agony. This could be nothing else.
    “ Well, have a look,
anyway.”
    I heard the door swing wide and wheels
running—one with a squeak—and crepe-soled shoes and the hiss of a
nylon dress against what I suddenly saw was female flesh. The cart
was piled high with books, with tabs sticking out of them, and
magazines. That’s what she’d meant for me to look at. I looked at
her. She was something to watch.
    There she was. My fate stood right there in
the door with the books in the cart and looked at me out of still
blue eyes. A fate that was going to be mixed up with death, murder,
money, and hell. A lush red-lipped fate with thick auburn hair and
long legs in a white dress which seemed to have been spun across
her body.
    Maybe I didn’t think anything right then.
Except that she was something real. You didn’t have to look hard to
see it.
    “ They say you haven’t had any
books,” she said. “I thought you might like some.” Her voice was
soft, yet there was a rasping quality to it. An exciting voice. Her
eyes were very steady. I raised to my elbows, pushed back against
the pillows. Something tore in my back and hurt like hell, but she
was morphine.
    It was a day in May, about three o’clock in
the afternoon, and it began raining when she opened the
door.
    I hadn’t said anything and she looked
embarrassed. Her face colored up. When she started to turn the cart
through the door, it caught her skirt.
    “ Don’t go,” I said. “I might like
something.”
    She was dubious now. But it was easier at that
moment to let me see the books on the cart than to wheel the cart
out the door. She half smiled and pressed her hair away from her
face with both hands. It was a gesture I would often see and
remember for the rest of my life. There was something in that
gesture that made you want to sink your hands into that hair. As
she moved closer to the bed, I realized her eyes had changed from
blue to gray. A cold gray, like wet black slate. Her mouth was
broad, full-lipped, her body long and willowy with deep breasts,
and she was very much alive. The blue returned to her
eyes.
    “ What would you like to read?” Her
voice was rusty. That was it.
    “ I don’t know.”
    She smiled. “Lots of detective
stories.”
    “ That’s good.” I wasn’t thinking.
Not about books.
    “ Mysteries pass the
time.”
    “ Have you found that?”
    “ Well, sometimes I read them.” She
looked out the window. I saw that her eyelids were heavy. I thought
then it was from overwork. It wasn’t. I learned that later. It was
natural with her. Her lids were dark. It wasn’t eye shadow, either.
It came from something inside her. Those heavy dark lids with the
blue eyes were sure something.
    Somebody opened the ward door down the hall
and the draft caused my door to slam. She said, “Oh,” and looked at
the door. “I’m not supposed to be in