Читать книгу Silent Screams - C.E. Lawrence - Страница 10

The campus is quiet, still as a tomb. The thought came to Samuel as he tiptoed across the quad, toward the dormitory building with the one light burning in the first-floor corner room. The light cast a blurry yellow halo around the window, a protective aura surrounding the room’s inhabitants. He shivered as he drew closer. He could hear music playing—something classical, with flutes and violins. A couple of other rooms on the third floor had their lights blazing—late-night studying, he supposed.

He stood beneath the windows and looked up at the occupants of the rooms. Three coeds, as far as he could make out, sat around a low table, talking and laughing. He watched the girls moving through the windows, the outline of their bodies blurred through the white lace curtains, their faces muted and indistinct, as if in a dream. Why didn’t they want him? Why couldn’t they see his specialness? He could hardly dare to desire them, but as he sat gazing at their soft forms, lit from behind by yellow lamplight, translucent and misty mermaids, the gentle glow of the room, the light breath of breeze on his cheeks induced a trancelike state in which he floated, caught in a sweet web of longing.

Then one of the girls threw back her head, laughing at something (he couldn’t make out the words), exposing her throat. He watched as the light fell upon the sudden curve of her neck, so open, so vulnerable. He imagined his hands wrapped around that white neck, pressing, squeezing, tighter and tighter, until the life within seeped into his fingers. He imagined his hands growing stronger as the life force drained away from the girl’s body and into his own.

It was a thrilling thought—and it seized him with a force that shook him to his bones. He trembled, he sweated, he burned with a fierce flame from deep within him, from a place he had not known existed until now, a place his mother could not see, could not even imagine. This was his secret, his delicious fantasy. He trembled at the idea of keeping something from his mother—it made him swell with a sense of his own manhood. He turned and walked away from the window, putting his hand on the key ring that hung from his belt to stop the keys from jangling.

For the first time in his life that he could remember, he felt powerful.