I’m not sure how I got here, or why. Reading this book felt like stacking twelve tabs of E on my tongue, with the acknowledgement that I would eventually lose my mind, any understanding of the universe and likely the control of my bowels. ‘Jim Giraffe’ came highly recommended from my everyday-hot-chocolate-pouring-barista whose opinions I shall now no longer trust.
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“Yo. Hear the bell?” I say over my shoulder to Thorndike, who's lying spread-eagled on his bed, face down. The only parts of him moving are the bright yellow soles of his trainers, bobbing up and down erratically like headlights. He’d cleaned them last night before bed, as he always did. Scrubbing and picking and brushing any specks he’d picked up from the linoleum. Like he was determined not to carry any of his day into the next.
'Elevation' is a curious thing. It contains, as so many of King’s greatest pieces of writing do, an extraordinary thing happening within an ordinary world. Scott Carey has realised that he has a strange and untreatable condition - that he is dropping pounds off his weight, without getting thinner.
“The DNA sample that you have provided does not match any of our records. Please return another sample to us.” He paused and read it again. Without saying anything, he flipped it over and skimmed the other side. It listed the countries: 0%, 0%, 0%. Another small line at the bottom: “Your DNA sample has not returned any matches.”
Through the knees of his suit trousers, woollen and scratchy, the child could feel the wet soil seeping. He had found a snail to watch.
He kissed me with the kind of urgency you only really see in the movies. It was only now that I started to detect the slightest flavour of something charred and earthy in his tongue. He was definitely a smoker.
As a society, we’ve been sharing our lives with the undead now for almost four years and the number of people with major anxiety has reached an incredible height. The chemical-ceiling has been pushed to the point where there’s call for more antidepressants and anti-anxiety meds than any of the pharmaceutical companies are able to make.
What do you do the morning after a one night stand when you cough and a decaying penis falls right out of your very own, very alive lady parts onto your shower floor?
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