NOS4A2

by Joe Hill

You could look at birds all your life without ever knowing what was a sparrow and what was a blackbird, but we all know a swan when we see it.

It was awful listening to her try to talk—like watching someone with no legs dragging herself along a sidewalk.

Bruce Wayne Carmody had been unhappy for so long that it had stopped being a state he paid attention to. Sometimes Wayne felt that the world had been sliding apart beneath his feet for years. He was still waiting for it to pull him down, to bury him at last.

Was there any human urge more pitiful—or more intense—than wanting another chance at something?

“Most recently she’s been helping Bing redecorate his basement. I felt like it needed some color down there, so I painted the walls with the motherfucker.”

If you’re going to be mad, she heard her father say, then use it, and don’t be used by it.

The difference between childhood and adulthood, Vic had come to believe, was the difference between imagination and resignation. You traded one for the other and lost your way.

She had lost all power of speech, and at this notion she felt a sweet tingle of relief. No more stammering. No more trying desperately to make herself understood while her tongue refused to cooperate.

“Gold don’t come off. What’s good stays good, no matter how much of a beating it takes.

She was saying he wasn’t like the children in Christmasland. She was saying he was still himself. But Charlie Manx had said something different. Charlie Manx said blood didn’t come out of silk.

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