Your brother brings you a flier about a thing. His gift to you. They need kids. Some Halloween mansion. Your mother rolls her eyes. Because she rolls her eyes you go. And because your brother.
You sit with other kids in a fake mansion. They talk you through what you signed up to do. They show you where you stand. Hide in a secret pocket in a hallway. Hear people coming toward you. Wait until they've gone past you. Jump out and hit a metal bucket with a crowbar. Scare them so they piss themselves.
They give you a black cape.
They give you a crow mask.
In the parlor with a pipe.
In the dark you see with your eyes closed is the same dark you see when you open them. You suck in sweet rubber of your mask. Adjust to gray-on-gray, fake cobwebs against chipped drywall. Load your greedy eyes with dark, your ears with buzzers, your nose with chainsaw smoke. A kid comes around the corner, a stripe of red exit sign light scissoring across his neck.
The crowbar's weight in your hand feels adult.
-Lesley Bannatyne, from Unaccustomed to Grace
4 comments:
This book is insanely wonderful. Every story is filled with a loneliness that I haven't experienced before. But never sad for sadness' sake. And you don't walk away bummed or depressed. It's more like meeting a very interesting person who you can tell is sad on the inside, but they're working on it. And they've figured some stuff out in life that you haven't.
There you have it: The weirdest book review ever written.
Definitely need to pick this up. Bannatyne is an amazing author, and a great person.
YUP. Her fiction is brilliant. And her characters are so real.
Super Deep Thoughts!
Great story!
And a great review;)
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