Time slows perceptibly, measurably. Julie’s right eyelid is closing just ahead of the left as her head rocks forward in a sneeze. Dick’s pencil bounces lazily off his top dentures in the freeze-frame waggle between his teeth, the sound a dull ‘tap … tap …’ Paul seems to be drawing gently on a longbow, instead of the nylon rod with which he is removing a sample from the inspection hole in the reactor casing. Marta’s mascaraed eyes begin to balloon as milliseconds ahead of the others she perceives what is wrong.
There is in this aching drawn-out world something awry, something missing, something snuffed out of consciousness. It has been there all the time thus far and their ears have grown weary of listening, but now its absence is dawning in four arresting hearts; four adrenalin floodgates are about to be opened in a dash for cover.
The steady background tick of the failsafe radiation monitor has stopped.
No comments:
Post a Comment