"Paul Di Filippo - The Short Ashy Afterlife" - читать интересную книгу автора (Di Filippo Paul)

changes would have to be engineered in my spousal relations, once I fully recovered. Perhaps even a trial
separation.
Then, after this period of idle, happy musing, odd, subliminal sensations began to filter into my
consciousness. I seemed to register light striking me, but in a new fashion. Sunlight seemed to be
impinging upon my "skin" and "face" in a whole-body manner, as if I were -- horrors! -- utterly unclothed
at the beach. Discordant, jagged images swept over me. Likewise, I perceived the ambient soundscape
in a novel, jumbled manner. Oddest of all though were fresh tactile impressions. I experienced a
contradictory feeling of compression and extension, as if I were stuffed into a closet, yet simultaneously
stretched on a not-uncomfortable rack.
Likewise, my sense of time's passage had altered. Objective minutes, gauged by the fragmentary
movements of the sun, seemed to drip by like hours.
I used this extended realm of time wisely, and by the end of what must have been a single day, I had
thoroughly integrated my new senses so that I could see and hear and feel in a coherent way.
From my new immovable vantage I enjoyed a three-hundred-and-sixty degree omniscient view of some
very familiar landscaped grounds. And when I focused my "sight" in one particular direction, I saw my
ancestral home standing forlorn and dark. Triangulating my position by landmarks, I could no longer deny
the obvious conclusion.
My soul now inhabited the very oak tree at whose foot I had been slaughtered. I was now a male dryad,
if such a creature were possible.
Acknowledging this impossible truth, I directed my vision and other senses downward. My human body
had been carted away, but my sticky blood still filled the hollow where it had gushed. Alarmingly, I
experienced a feeling of oakish satisfaction at this extra-rich watering, as if grateful for my pagan due.
Apparently, the original spirit of the oak still to some degree overlapped mine, offering its old
perceptions.
Well, this was a fine fix, I thought. My old life had reached a premature conclusion, and such comforting
rituals as milk and common crackers availed naught. But questioning the miracle would be futile, and I
would simply have to learn to inhabit my new body and enjoy this mode of existence.
Surprisingly, the transition came quite easily.
By dawn of the next day, approximately forty-eight or seventy-two hours after my murder, I was already
happy in my arboreal magnificence.
All my nurturing of this tree had prepared a veritable temple for my spirit. My roots stretched deeply
down and out into nutritious, stable soil, while my crown of efficient leaves reared high into the welcoming
sky. My inner flesh was strong and healthy, my limbs proud and free of disease. Birds and squirrels
nested in my niches, providing gay company, while sun and rain stoked my slow engines. Ants crawling
up and down me tickled and massaged and warred with insidious insects that would have harmed me.
Like some Hindoo holyman, I experienced an absolute contentment with my condition, free of unsatisified
desires, my mind at one with ancient cosmic imperatives.
But then came a disturbing incident that awoke my human side.
Out of my old house stepped Sparky Flint, my murderous wife.
And with her was a man!
Tall and impressively muscled, clad in a dark suit and crisp fedora, the fellow strolled alongside Sparky
with a sober yet irrepressibly jaunty air. I instantly assessed him as ten times the physical specimen I had
ever been (although of course compared to my current girth and strength he was pitiful), and I felt
complete jealousy toward this new suitor.
But then as the pair approached and I spotted the small mask guarding the stranger's identity, I
recognized him and my feelings flipflopped instantly.
This was the Shade! Central City's daring crimefighter, champion of the oppressed and wronged, had
come personally to investigate and avenge my murder!
I focused my "hearing" on Sparky and the Shade, a small matter of forming a parabolic cone with certain
of my leaves.