Swan Song

by Robert McCammon

Maybe the whole future of the world depends on who’s willin’ to be the craziest!

he understood that nations were jealous and paranoid and downright crazy, but he couldn’t fathom why sane leaders didn’t just pick up their telephones and talk to each other. What was so tough about talking?

Josh was beginning to believe the whole thing was like professional wrestling: the superpowers put on their masks and stomped around, roaring threats and swinging wildly at each other, but it was a game of macho, strutting bluff.

This was where he would grow old and die without letting anyone love him—because he was afraid, just like her mother was, of getting too close.

sometimes the imagination could be a useful place to hide in when the going got rough.

“I used to be an optimist, a long time ago. I used to believe in miracles. But do you know what happened? I got older. And the world got meaner.

he talked about suicide like the next step in a natural progression.

But she never wanted to grow up all the way, because she feared the grown-up world; it was a bully with a fat stomach and a mean mouth who stomped on gardens before they had a chance to grow.

But that’s the past, isn’t it? And beware of dwelling on the past if you want to keep your sanity.”

One step, she told herself. One step and then the next gets you where you’re going.

The solution to things he did not understand was very simple: Destroy it.

“Everybody’s got two faces, child—the outside face and the inside face. A face under the face, y’see. It’s your true face, and if it was flipped to the outside, you’d show the world what kind of person you are.”

“Hope hurts me,” he said. “It’s a disease, and you’re the germ that spreads it. We can’t have disease at my party. Oh, no. It won’t be allowed.”