Quicksilver

by Dean Koontz

This will sound weird, but I suppose no more so than everything that I have written to this point: I didn’t know myself anymore, and I found the new me a little scary. During the course of the day, I’d become a stranger to myself, a different person from the guy who had gotten out of bed to go to work at Arizona! magazine the previous morning. The path to the future that I long envisioned had withered away in the wild woods of recent experience, and I was unable to imagine where this new path might lead. I had killed two federal agents with a car, albeit in self-defense. I was on the run. I was engaged to be married. Sort of. I could see monsters. The world had not changed; however, my understanding of it had undergone a most radical revision, which in turn revised me. I was unsettled by the thought that I was destined to become a warrior. I didn’t see myself as a warrior. I didn’t want to be a warrior. I just wanted to avoid diarrhea, enjoy the health benefits of copper-infused underwear, and have my own little kitchen with a collection of spurtles. However, the mysterious forces at work in my life might give me no choice in the matter. I might have to become a warrior or die. Of course, if I became a warrior, I would almost surely die, because the role did not suit me.