Ray Bradbury - The October Game

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Ray Bradbury. The October GameOcenite etot tekstNe chital10987654321Ray Bradbury. The October Game

He put the gun back into the bureau drawer and shut the drawer.

No, not that way. Louise wouldn't suffer. It was very important

that this thing have, above all duration. Duration through

imagination. How to prolong the suffering? How, first of all, to bring

it about? Well.

The man standing before the bedroom mirror carefully fitted his

cuff-links together. He paused long enough to hear the children run by

switftly on the street below, outside this warm two-storey house, like

so many grey mice the children, like so many leaves.

By the sound of the children you knew the calendar day. By their

screams you knew what evening it was. You knew it was very late in the

year. October. The last day of October, with white bone masks and cut

pumpkins and the smell of dropped candle wax.

No. Things hadn't been right for some time. October didn't help

any. If anything it made things worse. He adjusted his black bow-tie.

If this were spring, he nodded slowly, quietly, emotionlessly, at his

image in the mirror, then there might be a chance. But tonight all the

world was burning down into ruin. There was no green spring, none of

the freshness, none of the promise.

There was a soft running in the hall. "That's Marion", he told

himself. "My'little one". All eight quiet years of her. Never a word.

Just her luminous grey eyes and her wondering little mouth. His

daughter had been in and out all evening, trying on various masks,

asking him which was most terrifying, most horrible. They had both

finally decided on the skeleton mask. It was 'just awful!' It would

'scare the beans' from people!

Again he caught the long look of thought and deliberation he gave

himself in the mirror. He had never liked October. Ever since he first

lay in the autumn leaves before his granmother's house many years ago

and heard the wind and sway the empty trees. It has made him cry,

without a reason. And a little of that sadness returned each year to

him. It always went away with spring. But, it was different tonight.

There was a feeling of autumn coming to last a million years. There

would be no spring.

He had been crying quietly all evening. It did not show, not a

vesitge of it, on his face. It was all hidden somewhere and it

wouldn't stop.

The rich syrupy smell of sweets filled the bustling house. Louise

had laid out apples in new skins of toffee; there were vast bowls of

punch fresh-mixed, stringed apples in each door, scooped, vented

pumpkins peering triangularly from each cold window. There was a water

tub in the centre of the living room, waiting, with a sack of apples

nearby, for dunking to begin. All that was needed was the catalyst,

the impouring of children, to start the apples bobbing, the srtinged

apples to penduluming in the crowded doors, the sweets to vanish, the

halls to echo with fright or delight, it was all the same.

Now, the house was silent with preparation. And just a little more

than that.

Louise had managed to be in every other room save the room he was

in today. It was her very fine way of intimating, Oh look Mich, see

how busy I am! So busy that when you walk into a room I'm in there's

always something I need to do in another room! Just see how I dash

about!

For a while he had played a little game with her, a nasty childish

game. When she was in the kitchen then he came to the kitchen

saying, 'I need a glass of water.' After a moment, he standing,

drinking water, she like a crystal witch over the caramel brew

bubbling like a prehistoric mudpot on the stove, she said, 'Oh, I must

light the pumpkins!' and she rushed to the living room to make the

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Ray Bradbury - The October Game

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