And the bitter tears
Have no ducts
The eyes have fleshed in.
Only the nose knows that
A loser is always the same.
There is a sharp report.
It slices the night cleanly
And thumps home with a tincan spannnng!
Against the Speed Limit sign down the road.
Laughter
The clean clear sound of a bolt levered back...
Silence...
Spannng!
'Aileen, if poachers poached peaches, would the
poachers peel the peaches to eat with poached eggs
poached before peaches?'
oh don't
don't
please touch me
but don't
don't
and I reach for your hand
but touch only the radiating live pencils
of your bones:
-- Can you do it?
IN A HALF WORLD
OF TERROR
Stephen King
First appeared in
Stories Of Suspense, a.k.a.
I Was A Teenage Graverobber 1966
It was like a nightmare. Like some unreal dream that you wake up
from the next morning. Only this nightmare was happening. Ahead
of me I could see Rankin's flashlight; a large yellow eye in the
sultry summer darkness. I tripped over a gravestone and almost
went sprawling. Rankin whirled on me with a hissed oath.
'Do you want to wake up the caretaker, you fool?'
I muttered a reply and we crept forward. Finally, Rankin stopped
and shone the flashlight's beam on a freshly chiseled gravestone.
On it, it read:
DANILE WHEATHERBY
1899 1962
He has joined his beloved wife in a better land.
I felt a shovel thrust into my hands and suddenly I was sure that I
couldn't go through with it. But I remembered the bursar shaking
his head and saying, 'I'm afraid we can't give you any more time,
Dan. You'll have to leave today. If I could help in any way, I
would, believe me ...'
I dug into the still soft earth and lifted it over my shoulder. Perhaps
fifteen minutes later my shovel came in contact with wood. The
