He flicked through the
pages, the drawings with their strange, dreamlike perspective. Then, at
the end, the final little catechism, saying goodnight to the last things
- the stars, the air, and to noises everywhere.
That should go on the baby’s gravestone, except there would be no
stone, no grave. Cat was going to have a D & C, as the doctors so
artlessly called it, to remove anything that hadn’t already come out.
Any thing. There would be nothing to bury. Polly, Rose, all the names
they had played with, taking their time because after all there had been
no hurry, months to wait, and now she wouldn’t be any of them. She was
Nobody.
Goodnight Nobody.
Sitting on the stairs with a box of books on his lap, he cried.
- Tad Williams, "The
War of the Flowers"
Photoshop 7.0, Painter Classic