Have you ever thought about what fiction is? Probably, such a question may seem surprising: and so everything is clear. Every person throughout his life has to repeatedly create the works he needs for specific purposes - statements, autobiographies, dictations - using not gypsum or clay, not musical notes, not paints, but just a word. At the same time, almost every person will be very surprised if he is told that he thereby created a work of fiction, which is very different from visual art, music and sculpture making. However, everyone understands that a student's essay or dictation is fundamentally different from novels, short stories, news that are created by professional writers. In the works of professionals there is the most important difference - excogitation. But, oddly enough, in a school literature course, you don’t realize the full power of fiction. So using our website in your free time discover fiction for yourself. Happy Ending by Fredric Brown and Mack Reynolds (bill gates book recommendations .txt) 📖
- Author: Fredric Brown and Mack Reynolds
Book online «Happy Ending by Fredric Brown and Mack Reynolds (bill gates book recommendations .txt) 📖». Author Fredric Brown and Mack Reynolds
And after a while, having found what they sought, they returned.
They took the Earthling out with them, then, and tied him to a tree. They left him there, and they left the gag over his lips because they did not wish to hear his screams when the kifs came.
The cloth of the gag would be eaten, too, but by that time, there would be no flesh under it from which a scream might come.
They left him, and went back to the compound, and the drums took up the rhythm of propitiation to the gods for what they had done. For they had, they knew, cut very close to the corner of a tabu—but the provocation had been great and they hoped they would not be punished.
All night the drums would throb.
The man tied to the tree struggled with his bonds, but they were strong and his writhings made the knots but tighten.
His eyes became accustomed to the darkness.
He tried to shout, "I am Number One, Lord of—"
And then, because he could not shout and because he could not loosen himself, there came a rift in his madness. He remembered who he was, and all the old hatreds and bitterness welled up in him.
He remembered, too, what had happened in the compound, and wondered why the Venusian natives had not killed him. Why, instead, they had tied him here alone in the darkness of the jungle.
Afar, he heard the throbbing of the drums, and they were like the beating of the heart of night, and there was a louder, nearer sound that was the pulse of blood in his ears as the fear came to him.
The fear that he knew why they had tied him here. The horrible, gibbering fear that, for the last time, an army marched against him.
He had time to savor that fear to the uttermost, to have it become a creeping certainty that crawled into the black corners of his soul as would the soldiers of the coming army crawl into his ears and nostrils while others would eat away his eyelids to get at the eyes behind them.
And then, and only then, did he hear the sound that was like the rustle of dry leaves, in a dank, black jungle where there were no dry leaves to rustle nor breeze to rustle them.
Horribly, Number One, the last of the dictators, did not go mad again; not exactly, but he laughed, and laughed and laughed....
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