Vampires in the Lemon Grove

There is a loneliness that must be particular to monsters, I think, the feeling that each is the only child of a species. And now that loneliness was over.

Beverly once read a science magazine article about bioluminescence, the natural glow emitted by organisms like fireflies and jellyfish, but she knows the dead also give off a strange illumination, a phosphor that can permanently damage the eyes of the living. Necroluminescence - the light of the vanished. A hindsight produced by the departed body. Your failings backlit by the death of your loved ones.

I wanted to touch the edges of my life - the same instinct, I think, that inspires young mortals to flip tractors and enlist in foreign wars.

Still, I'm not convinced that you were right, Dai--that it's such a bad thing, a useless enterprise to reel and reel out my memory at night. Some part of me, the human part of me, is kept alive by this, I think. Like water flushing a wound, to prevent it from closing. I am a lucky one, like Chiyo says. I made a terrible mistake. In Gifu, in my raggedy clothes, I had an unreckonable power. I didn't know it at the time. But when I return to the stairwell now, I can feel them webbing around me: my choices, their infinite variety, spiraling out of my hands, my invisible thread. Regret is a pilgrimage back to the place where I was free to choose. It's become my sanctuary here in Nowhere Mill. A threshold where I still exist.

Forever, just the word fills Beverly with an unaccountable, schoolmarmish sort of rage. Forever, that's got to be bad math, right? Such terrifying math.

I stood with my arms stretched wide and trembling, and I felt as if the black sky was my body and I felt as if the white moon, far above me, unwrinkled and shining, was my mind.

I dropped the candies into the children's bags, thinking: You small mortals don't realize the power of your stories.

It's strange to own anything, Beverly thinks, even your flesh, that nobody outside yourself ever touches or sees.

Women revert to their maiden names in Heaven, Rutherford feels fairly certain. He can't remember where he learned this--France or the Bible.

Rule One: Make friends with death Tailgating in the Antarctic is no joke. We are trying to do nothing less ambitious than reverse the course of history. We want Team Krill to defeat Team Whale. Look, if you want to tailgate in comfort, don't get on the boat. You can buy some quail eggs or snails or whatever you people eat and you can watch the Food Chain Games on your flat TV. Stay in Los Angeles. Hug your wife on your plush banquette. Cheer for the Antarctic minke whales, like every other asshole. No, wait a second, here comes the real Rule One: if you are a supporter of Team Whale, you can go fuck yourself, my fine sir. This list is for the fans of Team Krill.

Many of the presidents have sworn themselves in to similarly foolish titles: Governor of Cow Pastures, Commanding General of Standing Chickens.

I often think, that she foresaw only the end times, never hot dogs.

Dracula shows his fangs, and the Okie flees through a cornfield. Cornstalks smack her face. "Help!" she screams to a sky full of crows. "He's not actually from Europe!

What are you grinning at?' Nal muttered. As if in response, the gull spread its wings and opened its shadow over the miniature ruins of the castle - too huge, Nal thought, and vaguely humanoid in shape - and then it flew off, laboring heavily against the wind. In the soft moonlight this created the disturbing illusion that the bird had hitched itself to Nal's shadow and was pulling his darkness from him.

It's our suspicion that there's another, better Heaven behind the cumulus screen,' he murmurs into the grass, bending and tearing at a root that tastes beautifully yellow. 'That's the trouble. That's what keeps us trapped here, minds in animals.

The same spine that has been inside her since babyhood is hers today, the exact same bones from the womb, a thought that always fills her with a kind of thrilling claustrophobia. So much surface wrapped around that old stem. She watches her hands smear the water droplets on her stomach. It's strange to own anything, Beverly thinks, even your flesh, that nobody outside yourself ever touches or sees.

Uncle Fitzy!" the girl yells. "Gingersnap is being bad!" Eisenhower hates it when she calls him Gingersnap. He complains about it with a statesman's pomp: "Gentlemen, there exists no more odious appellation than"--nose crumpling, black lips curling-- "Gingersnap." From The Barn at the End of Our Term

If they heard Death mounting the stairs at night, footsteps that the teenage Beverly swore she could feel vibrating through the floorboards at three a.m., nobody mentioned this intrusion at breakfast.

The horses have been trying to get hold of the girl’s schoolbooks for some time. Every president wants to find out how history regards him.

There are twenty-two stalls in the Barn. Eleven of the stabled horses are, as far as Rutherford can ascertain, former presidents of the United States of America. The other stalls are occupied by regular horses, who give the presidents suspicious, sidelong looks.

My mother is thirty-one years old, but the land out here paints old age onto her.

Often I wonder to what extent a mortal’s love grows from the bedrock of his or her foreknowledge of death, love coiling like a green stem out of that blankness in a way I’ll never quite understand. And lately I’ve been having a terrible thought: Our love affair will end before the world does.

A scuola, Camp Dark picchiava i ragazzini come un quartetto. Lo facevamo in un silenzio animale. Trascinavamo un ragazzino isterico dietro l'edificio di scienze in mattoni rossi - di solito qualcuno più piccolo, delle classi precedenti - e poi martellavamo e pompavamo i nostri pugni nel suo corpo che si dimenava graffiando e gridando, finché il ragazzino non si afflosciava come uno straccio. Sentivo quelle urla come se provenissero dalla mia stessa gola, e scoprii di non riuscire a rilassarmi finché non lo faceva il ragazzo. Avvertivo che c'era una qualche logica profonda da catena di montaggio in quello che facevamo: una volta che avevamo fatto urlare un ragazzino, eravamo obbligati a tappargli la bocca di nuovo. Pensavo a questo processo come ciò che chiamano "un male necessario". Eravamo come una squadra di operai che fabbricava una calma che non era disponibile in natura da nessuna parte, ad Anthem. Avevamo un disperato bisogno di questa quiete che solo le nostre vittime potevano produrre per noi, il silenzio che arrivava dopo un'aggressione; per la nostra amicizia era altrettanto vitale del respirare. Come il sangue per un vampiro. Ci inginocchiavamo lì, ansimando insieme, e lasciavamo che la bolla di quiete buona uscisse dal moccioso di turno per entrarci nei polmoni.

Una volta Beverly ha letto un articolo di una rivista scientifica sulla bioluminescenza, il bagliore naturale emesso da organismi come le lucciole e le meduse, ma sa che anche i morti emanano una strana luce, un fosforo che può danneggiare in modo permanente gli occhi dei vivi. Necroluminescenza – la luce degli scomparsi. Un pensiero retrospettivo prodotto dal corpo del defunto. I tuoi fallimenti retroilluminati dalla morte dei tuoi cari.

Help!” she screams to a sky full of crows. “He’s not actually from Europe!

Don't look back, you asshole! he thought. Good advice, from Orpheus to Lot.

The krill are in a rebuilding year. The krill are always in a rebuilding year. Every year the whole franchise of 60,000,000,000 krill gets eaten. Team Whale sucks Team Krill into the primordial combs of its baleen plates at twenty-eight knots. We’ve got a decent offense but we’ve got a pretty dismal record on defense. But this is going to be our season. With all your might, try to believe that.

But if it turns out that she really can adjust them from without? Reshuffle the deck of his past, leave a few cards out, sub in several from a sunnier suit, where was the harm in that? Harm had to be the opposite, didn’t it? Letting the earliest truth metastasize into something that might kill you? The gangrenous spread of one day throughout the life span of a body— wasn’t that something worth stopping?

Regret is a pilgrimage back to the place where I was free to choose. It’s become my sanctuary here in Nowhere Mill. A threshold where I still exist.