"Elizabeth Lynn - The White King's Dream" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lynn Elizabeth A)

The White King




The White King's Dream

by Elizabeth A. Lynn

The straps across her shoulders were cutting through the thin cloth gown. I'm cold, she thought. "Okay,
Louise, time to wake up now," said a voice warm as honeyтАФbut I am awake, Luisa thought, and
wondered why she could not see the light that she could feel falling on her eyes.

"Baby, I'll move you into the sun while I change those dirty sheets. You messed the bed again, Louise. I
know you can't help it, but I sure wish you wouldn't do it." At least I can hear, Luisa thought. She heard
the voice, and a crying sound, quite close. The sheets were clammy under her. She smelled a stale and
sour smell. The straps fell away. Something lifted her.

She was afraid.

She was set in a hard chair. The straps came back. The chair was metal and cold. Now she was sitting in
the sunlight. She wanted to say thank you but her mouth would not move. The close crying sound
increased. It was herself; she was crying. The stale sour scent was her own. Helen. Day shift. Every day
began like this, except the days when it rained. Helen still came, then, to change her bedclothes, wash
her, feed her, shove pills down her shriveled throat; but there was no sunlight to sit in when it rained,
and they would never open the windows so that she could smell the rain. All she smelled was her own
melting flesh. In Lord Byron there was a fat man crying to get out, and in me there is a skeleton wailing
for release.

"Baby, why you screwing up your face like that? Are you too hot?" No, Luisa wanted to scream, no, but
Helen's inexorable hands pulled her out of the warmth and dumped her into her cold, barren bed.
"Breakfast in a while, Louise. You just put your head back into the pillow and dream, now."

Even dreams are dreams, Luisa thought. Y los sue├▒os, sue├▒os son. Dreams no longer meant sleep, and
what good was sleep when she had to wake from it again? Sleep just meant the night shift, and then the
day shift, the sun looking through the windows, busy old fool, unruly sun. Breakfast, she thought with
loathing. They fed her with a tube down her throat. Sometimes they put a tube like an arm into her and
pumped air through her, making her breathe. She hated tubes. Is that Freudian, she wondered, to hate
tubes? She wanted to be back in the sunlight, in the warm. She began to cry again, a cat-mewl of sound.
Helen might hear it; Helen listened, sometimes, and might understand; and might put her back into the
sun.




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 The White King

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