"Richard Matheson - Now You See It." - читать интересную книгу автора (Matheson Richard)

death from stroke being rare, I was not permitted the grace
of taking my final bow and exiting me stage of life.

Instead, the best fate could offer me was a doctor's in-
struction to reduce physical and emotional tension while I
waited for as much recovery as possible.

Fourteen years later, when these events transpired, I was
still waiting.

By dint of my son's loving kindness, I was not dispatched
to some asylum but permitted to reside in his home, a mo-
tionless figure customarily located in the studyтАФor, as I
prefer to call it. The Magic Room.

There I sat ensconced in my wheelchair, a staring obelisk,
an effigy of what I'd been, a statue entitled Impotence (in
more ways than one) or, better still. Up On the Shelf for Good.
A voiceless, torpid lump, ostensibly brainless.

There, you see, is the rub. For the real torment was that in
mat dumb shell I existed in, an active and observant brain
was struggling for the means to express itself. That is the
horror of a stroke, believe me.
Perhaps if mis had happened ten or twenty years later,

Now You See K... 13

there might have been some medical-surgical procedure by
which I could have ended my night- (and day-) mare.

Then again, perhaps not. Even my son, devoted as he was
to, me, might have found it inescapable to A&F (Accept and
Forget). Who could have blamed the man? I had become


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more a piece of furniture than a family member. Not hard to
take a piece of furniture for granted.

I go on at length about my plant-kingdom persona so you
will understand how all these strange events could have
taken place in my presence without a single person in-
volved giving it a second thought that I was mere. But then,
do we concern ourselves with me observational capacities
of a turnip?

Anyway, Maximilian (my son) had enough problems of