Echoes Of Unspoken Words
Many people have sat in this chair. Some of them have died in it. Some die easy, some die hard. But everybody who sits in the chair talks. Some rush to it, as if they believe that will lessen the pain. Others hold out, gritting their teeth against the words they wish so powerfully to speak. Everybody talks, and everybody dies.
It is a job, like any other.
I wear a suit. It is comfortable and has plenty of pockets. I replace the pocket handkerchief every day. By the afternoon, I may remove the jacket and perhaps roll up the sleeves of my shirt. I wear a dark shirt, never white.
One time, a man spat at me and – in anger – I slit his throat; his last words bubbled out of his neck and dried unheard on his chest. I was new, I knew no better. That would not happen today. I have more pride than that.
So, please – sit. We shall talk here, you and I.
Rivka Jacobs
This is a perfect, polished little gem of a story. Really chilling and horrific with nothing wasted. Every word counts. The placement of each sentence, the order in which information is revealed, are expertly chosen.
How you do this, build up such a sense of character and tension in such few words, is beyond me.
The last line is like a punch in the gut, as the reader is wrenched from some passive observational vantage to a position of immediate active participation; the reader becomes the victim, who learns in the last line what is really going on at the same time they learn it’s knowledge gained too late!
(And hey, my review is longer than the story.) :)
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Nicolas Papaconstantinou
You really creep me out sometimes, Andrew. And I mean that as a compliment.
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