The Friendly Killers

Spasmodically, I drew up my knees and hugged my arms round them—burying my face, squeezing my eyes tight shut in a vain, desperate effort to blot out the room, and Celeste, and the things she said.

Only they wouldn't blot out, because they were inside of me, too, churning and roiling and spinning round in my brain. I had a queer, detached feeling, as if I were two rather than one, and one of those two was a great, yawning, black pit, and the other hung on the brink, ready to cast himself in.