Wolf Flow by K. W. Jeter Read Free Book Online

scalpel and the thin rubber fingers that held it. He squeezed his eyelids even tighter, and the tears broke through and ran, trailing down to the angle of his jaw. A sob, a child's, fought past his clenched breath.
        "Don't worry… everything's coming along fine…"
        The words inside his head were louder than the doctor's whisper.
         Dreaming … He shouted it. teeth grinding together, trying to swallow the fear that had clotted on his tongue.
        Or else he was dying. He knew that could be true as well And that would be all right, too. As long as it ended.
        "Just fine…"
        Far away now. The light gone; deep inside. The familiar dark had come out of the hole at the center of the doctor's eyes, and wrapped him up in its comfort, forgiving him. He had been stupid to have been so scared. Like a child.
        He let go and fell.
        

FIVE
        
        He woke up, the hinges of his jaw aching. He wondered-dimly, at the edge of his consciousness-whether he had been shouting, or screaming, his mouth stretched open wide.
        With no one to hear him. He opened his eyes and saw early morning sunlight, thin and pale, seeping through the ragged curtains in narrow cuts between the boards nailed over the windows. The pieces of sun made straight-edged marks across the bare floor.
        The dream's panic eased away with his slowing pulse. But he remembered that other world, with its own light… its heavy motion, as though he'd been mired in some soft, perfectly transparent crystal. Until at last he'd been unable to move at all-that was the worst, to remember that. He closed his eyes again, working on one trembling breath after another, feeling each ache against his ribs. Something about… an examining room. He'd been up on the table, with the light pressing down on him. Everything in the room around him had been old-looking, period pieces: the cabinets, the black X-ray machine with its swirls of gold lettering, even the light itself, the fixture on its double-hinged arm. But all new at the same time, as though the cabinets had just been built a little while ago, the X-ray shipped out from the factory… that had been the weird part.
        More of the dream came back to him, as he drew one breath after another, letting the sleep weight drain from him. The people who'd been out on the lawn, in their funny old clothes… but not old. Old-fashioned; that was it. Costume party stuff. Or like they'd been shooting a movie, and he hadn't spotted the cameras. Something like The Great Gatsby . No; he shook his head, wincing at a stab of pain up his neck. That'd be too late. Flappers and shit. Maybe something by Henry James. Cybill Shepherd in Daisy Miller . That was it. Parasols and those high-waisted long dresses that made girls' breasts look so nice, choker lace up to their chins…
        He burst out laughing, eyes squeezed shut, his throat barking dry, realizing that he'd started to work himself into a hard-on. Must not be dead … yet . Fat lot of good it would do him- you dumb shit -and it was already dwindling away, chased by the pain that the laughing had pulled out of his ribs. Like some goddamn old Lenny Bruce routine: you're dying, you've been beaten to death and kicked out in the boonies, and what do you think about? Shit . He gulped little shallow breaths, letting the pain fold back in on itself, become something small enough so that he could stand opening his eyes to the strip of sunlight he felt on his face.
        Still, the girl with the badminton racquet, the youngest one, had been good-looking enough. Skinny little thing. Even if she had stared up at him with the same dead face and coin-blank eyes that all the rest of them had had, the other women and the men with their muttonchops and walrus mustaches. All of them, the whole costume party on the lawn. The dream.
        Lindy would have looked good in one of those old period-piece dresses. He felt a little