"Harlan Ellison - Spider Kiss" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ellison Harlan)

stood quietly, almost humbly, watching. His name was intoned, extolled, cast
out, drawn in, repeated, repeated repeated repeated till it became a chant of
such erotic power it seemed to draw all light and sound to it. A vortex of
emotionalism. With him at its center, both exploding and imploding waves of
animal hunger. He was of them, yet not of them. With them, yet above them.
He stood tall and slim, his legs apart, accentuating the narrowness of his
hips, his broad shoulders, the lean desperation of his face, the auburn shock
of hair, so meticulously combed with its cavalier forelock drooping onto his
forehead. A guardian of unnamed treasures. Then he began to play. His hands
moved over the frets of the guitar slung across his chest, and a guttural,
sensuous syncopation fought with the noise of the crowd ... fought ... lost
momentarily ... lost again ... crowd swell ... then began to mount in
insistence ... till the crowd went under slowly slowly ... till he was
singing high and loud and with a mounting joy that caught even the
self-drugged adolescents who had not come to listen, merely to worship. His
song was a pointless thing; filled with pastel inanities; donтАЩt ever leave me
because IтАЩve got a sad dog heart thatтАЩll follow you whereтАЩer you go, no,
donтАЩt leave me .cause my sad dog heart cries just for you for you, ju-ust
fo-o-o-or you... But there was a subtext to the song. Something dark and
roiling, an oil stain on a wet street, a rainbow of dark colors that moved
almost as though alive, verging into colors that Spider Kiss by Harlan
Ellison 9 had no names, disturbing colors for which there were only
psychiatric parallels. Green is the dead baby image... The running line of
what could be sensed but not heard was ominous, threatening, sensuously
compelling in ways that spoke to skin and nerve-ends. It was like the moment
one receives the biopsy report. It was like the feeble sound an unwatered
plant makes in the instant before all reserve moisture dries from the tap
root and the green turns to brown. It was like the sigh of anguish from the
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victim of voodoo at the instant the final pin is jammed into the ju-ju doll
half a continent away. It was like the cry of a mother brought to see the
tiny, crushed form lying beneath the blanket on a busy intersection. It was
like the kiss of a spider. And the great animal that was his audience, his
vacuous, demanding, insensate, vicious audience, purred. Ripples of
contentment washed the crowd. Almost mystically the surface of mass hysteria
was smoothed, quieted, molded by his singing into a glossy plane of attention
and silence. Girls who had been facially and bodily contorted by his
appearance, who had thrown themselves forward in a spasm of adoration, now
settled back demurely, seated and attentive. He went on, singing, gently
strumming the guitar, making idle movements of foot and hip and head.yet
nothing overly suggestive, nothing that would rouse the sleeping beast out
there. His movements, his voice, the chords he chose to pull from his
guitar.all combined to lull the herd. His performance was as much a casting
of hypnotic trances as it was a demonstration of musical ability. Like some
advanced breed of snake charmer he piped at them, and their eyes Spider
Kiss by Harlan Ellison 10 became glassy, their limbs limp; they stared and
absorbed and wanted, but were silent, all waiting. And he could sing.