From Whispers by Dean Koontz

She wanted to lean back and drink lots of icy Dom Perignon and let happiness consume her, but she could not totally relax. She was always sharply aware of that spectral darkness at the edge of things, that crouching nightmare waiting to spring and devour her. Earl and Emma, her parents, had jammed her into a tiny box of fear, had slammed the heavy lid and locked it; and since then she had looked out at the world from the dark confines of that box. Earl and Emma had instilled in her a quiet but ever-present and unshakable paranoia that stainedeverything good, everything that should be right and bright and joyful.

From Needful Things by Stephen King

Norris sat behind an old IBM electric typewriter, working on a report with the agonized, breathless concentration only Norris could bring to paperwork. He would stare fixedly at the machine, then abruptly lean forward like a man who has been punched in the belly, and hit the keys in a rattling burst. He remained in his hunched position long enough to read what he had written, then groaned softly. There was a click-rap! click-rap! click-rap! Sound of Norris using the IBM’s CorrecTape to back over some error (he used one CorrecTape per week, on the average), and then Norris would straighten up. There would be a pregnant pause, and then the cycle would repeat itself. After an hour or so of this, Norris would drop the finished report into Sheila’s IN basket. Once or twice a week these reports were even intelligible.

From Rising Sun by Jeffrey Archer

There, by the windows, I saw the familiar figure of Willy Wilhelm, known to everyone as Weasel Wilhelm. Willy’s narrow, ferretlike face was at this moment composed into a mask of smiling attentiveness as he joked with a blond girl sitting before a terminal.

Most organizations had a person like the Weasel: somebody who is more ambitious than scrupulous, somebody who finds a way to make himself useful to the powers that be, while being roundly hated by everyone else. That was the case with Weasel Wilhelm.

Like most dishonest people, the Weasel believed the worst about everybody. He could always be counted on to portray events in their most unflattering light, insisting that anything less was a cover-up. He had a nose for human weakness and a taste for melodrama. He cared nothing for the truth of any situation, and he considered a balanced appraisal weak. As far as the Weasel was concerned, the underlying truth was always strong stuff. And that was what he dealt with.

The other reporters at the Times despised him.

From Sinners by Jackie Collins

He stood and watched the car thread its way slowly back among the traffic. Foolish little girls. Was that really the only reason they went out with him? Did they honestly believe that he could be used to get them into the movies? How many times he had heard it now? How many different ways the direct approach: “Do you think you could get me a screen test?” the oblique hint: “I’ve always wanted to act.” The actress’s approach: “My agent says I’m perfect for the girl’s part in your next film.”

Lorna had warned him, laughed at him, scoffed. “Oh, yes, sure,” she had said, “you’ll have tons of little girls just lining up to jump into bed with you. But ask yourself, my darling, is it you they want? Or is it Charlie Brick?”

From Sinners by Jackie Collins

Charlie had first met her five years previously, when his career as a film actor was jogging along nic ely and hers beginning to smoulder.

For the first time in a film, instead of being just a comedy actor, he had been given a romantic interest as well. Women everywhere began to like him. Letters started to pour in, and his career started to zoom. But at the same time it was the beginning of the end as far as Lorna and he were concerned.

The start of his affair with Michelle had changed his life a great deal. In the beginning he just couldn’t believe that a famous actress, probably the most famous European actress of that time, could possibly fancy him. But fancy him she had. Most of the arrangement had been maneuvered by her. She had a husband who conveniently stayed in Paris and appeared only occasionally.

“You are a wonderful man,” she used to purr at him.

No-one had ever said anything like that to him before. He had always felt inadequate, or, at the very most, average. But Michelle had changed all that: she made him feel like a king.

Of course his marriage suffered. He would return home from the studio later and later. At weekends, he would always say he had to work. In the end he hardly ever saw Lorna; they just happened to live under the same roof.

Occasionally they saw each other long enough for a brief exchange of insults. And so I went on, fight after fight, insult after insult, grudge after grudge, until one day things really came to a head.

His career continued to progress in the best possible way. He found himself in the enviable position of being able to pick and choose what films he would do. His notices were always the best. “Charlie Brick Shines Again ”, “ Brick Saves the Film ”, “The Comic Genius of Charlie Brick.”

At last Lorna and he decided to move from their country home. The affair with Michelle had been more or less finished, due to the fact that they were both working in different countries, and meetings became impossible to arrange.

From False Memory by Dean Koontz

[Martie Rhodes has come to collect her friend Susan, who suffers from agoraphobia, to psychiatrist; but as they started, a storm broke out.]

Fat drops of rain – at first in fitful bursts but soon more insistently – began to rattle on the roof that covered the landing. […]

As they reached the bottom of the steps, the rain fell harder than before, rattling through the leaves of the potted plants on the patio, clicking against the bricks.

Susan was reluctant to let go of the corner of the house.

Martie put an arm around her. “Lean on me if you want.”

Susan leaned. “Everything’s so strange out here, not like it used to be.”

“Nothing’s changed. It’s just the storm.”

“It’s a new world,” Susan disagreed. “And not a good one.”

Huddling together, with Martie bending to match Susan’s stoop, they progressed through this new world, now in a rush as Susan was drawn forward by the prospect of the comparatively closed space of the car, but now haltingly as Susan was weighed down and nearly crushed by the infinite emptiness overhead. Whipped by wind and lashed by rain, shielded by their hoods and their billowing coats, they might have been two frightened holy sisters, in full habit, desperately seeking sanctuary in the early moments of Armageddon.

Evidently Martie was affected either by the turbulence of the incoming storm or by her troubled friend, because as they proceeded fitfully along the promenade toward they side street where she had parked her car, she became increasingly aware of a strangeness in the day that was easy to perceive but difficult to define. On the concrete promenade, puddles like black mirrors swarmed with images so shattered by falling rain that their true appearance could not be discerned, yet the disquieted Martie. Trashing palm trees clawed the air with fronds that had darkened from green to green-black, producing a thrum-hiss-rattle that resonated with a primitive and reckless passion deep inside her. On their right, the sand was smooth and pale, like the skin of some vast sleeping beast, and on their left, each house appeared to be filed with a storm of its own, as colourless images of rolling clouds and wind-tossed trees churned across the large ocean-view windows.

Martie was unsettled by all these odd impressions of unnatural menace in the surrounding landscape, but she was more disturbed by a new strangeness within herself, which the storm seemed to conjure. Her heart quickened with an irrational desire to surrender to the sorcerous energy of this wild weather. Suddenly she was afraid of some dark potential she couldn’t define: afraid of losing control of herself, blacking out, and later coming to her senses, thereupon discovering she had done something terrible … something unspeakable. […]

Martie opened the curbside door, helped Susan into the red Saturn, and then went around and got in the driver’s seat.

Rain drummed on the roof, a cold and hollow sound that brought hoofbeats to mind, as though the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse – Pestilenc e, War, Famine, and Death – were approaching at full gallop along the nearby beach.

Поиск по сайту: