The director sat in the dark at her desk for a few minutes. Her backpack sat there with her. The guns were tucked into the outer mesh, safeties on, not loaded. She would be leaving it all a mess. The book shelves had become overgrown, her notes were in nothing anyone would recognize as an organized pattern. A plant that would not die, nourished by a dead mouse, lay in a locked drawer of her desk. So many things that made no sense, or only made sense to her. She agonized for the thousandth time that perhaps her course of action was extreme, that perhaps it was ill-thought-out…and yet it was all she had been thinking about for over twenty years. She had a choice. She could let it all go on as it had before. Or she could do this…this thing she planned to do, that in just a short while would take her out of the dark, out of the silence, and on a path from which she could not come back. Even if she came back. There was a movement in the hallway, and a pale, curious head peered in, turned at an angle. “Go away Whitby,” she said in a whisper, and mercifully he did—receded and dissipated into nothing. Whitby had taken a course of action and had stuck to it. Whitby hadn’t come back, not really. When the director rose, she felt the weight of it, and of the decision. But she ignored that. She grasped the knapsack, glanced around at the shadows, and walked out into the hallway. It was very late. No one now haunted the building but Whitby, and he had no choice. The fluorescent lights seemed dim but a sickly heat came off of them, or from the vents, passing across the top of her head. Whitby might still be watching, from god knows where, but he wouldn’t be the one waiting in the parking lot. The night would be cool and there might be the scent of honeysuckle in the air, even a half-remembered hint of salt spray, and it would seem, she believed, to take no time at all, the familiar ride there, under the clear half-moon and through the dark, submerged shapes of ruined buildings. Before long the director would be at the border, would be sneaking as much as her tall, broad shape could sneak, toward the luminescence of the enormous door. Before long, the decision would be made for her, and she welcomed that even as she prepared herself for it. – from Acceptance, novel three, Southern Reach series
Posted on: Sun, 11 Aug 2013 04:23:22 +0000