escape except a small mirror in which he saw a face he very nearly recognized as his own.
In another version of the story, he does recognize it.
Having walked by chance one morning into a fog, he was troubled thereafter by dreams of death. He was â people said of him â a strange man, distant and unapproachable. He spent the years that remained to him in private pursuits â making ornate picture frames with fretsaw and glue, for example. It was only at the hour of his death that his former serenity appeared, momentarily, like moonlight on snow, before the light went out of his eyes and he was no more. We are sorry he is gone â people said â but we did not know him at all, really. They could not know that the fog had taken both his vitality and his expressiveness. Or, more precisely, Death had, in order to leave the fog for a time and walk unnoticed among them. Death, whose image he had framed, repeatedly, as if vainly trying to steal back his own face.
What Wells failed to consider was the fate of Griffinâs cat. Perhaps he disdained the fairy tale aspect of his story or refused grumpily to enter the charmed world of fable. Be that as it may, the cat on which Griffin had tested his serum did become invisible, did become mad and did wreak its own havoc on Londonâs Great Portland Street. While the Invisible Man committed mayhem in Iping, his catâs criminality advanced relentlessly from laddering the stockings of several shop girls, to scratching a babyâs face as it slept in its pram, to â the ultimate in viciousness â removing, with quick deft strokes such as an oyster shucker or surgeon might envy, the eyes of an old man so that he â it can be imagined â might understand the anguish of invisibility. To see nothing in the world is much the same thing as not to be seen in it. Either way, one is desperately alone.
He wouldnât hurt a fly. This was true, though many thought his forbearance mere folly. They were confirmed in their belief when a fly visited his room one night, having come from who knows what infernal region and crushed him to death.
There are unfinished parts of the universe. Into one of them, a man strayed. Lath, newel, banister, mullion, a flight of stairs ending in cloud, a frieze without decoration, apple parings, an unmade bed. It was the bed which attracted him, for he had been without sleep since leaving the house three days earlier to buy a newspaper. How he had come to be in this space (too tentative to be called a room) he did not know. The passage here from the sidewalk outside the news agency had been suave, untroubled â âlike putting a hand in water.â Exhausted, he lay down and slept. When he woke, he was again in front of the news agency â only the newspaper was blank, so, too, the face of the agent, who stepped out onto the sidewalk to study the sky for signs.
He slept and heard in his sleep God breathing and woke to find it was his child, who was breathing in the room with him and not God. Or perhaps it was the opposite: it was his child, whom he heard in sleep and God, who was breathing there with him when he woke. It was impossible to say which case was true. Then the breathing stopped.
Norman Lock is the author of numerous works of fiction, as well as stage and radio plays, including The House of Correction (Broadway Play Publishing Co.), A History of the Imagination (FC2), Land of the Snowmen (Calamari Press, Kawade Shobo Shinsha, Publishers-Japan), The Long Rowing Unto Morning (Ravenna Press), The King of Sweden (Ravenna Press) and, most recently, Shadowplay (Ellipsis Press). He is a recipient of the Aga Kahn Prize given by The Paris Review , prose fellowships awarded by both the New Jersey and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and, in 2011, a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. He lives in Aberdeen, New Jersey, with his wife, Helen.
the Mud Luscious Press catalog :
WE
In another version of the story, he does recognize it.
Having walked by chance one morning into a fog, he was troubled thereafter by dreams of death. He was â people said of him â a strange man, distant and unapproachable. He spent the years that remained to him in private pursuits â making ornate picture frames with fretsaw and glue, for example. It was only at the hour of his death that his former serenity appeared, momentarily, like moonlight on snow, before the light went out of his eyes and he was no more. We are sorry he is gone â people said â but we did not know him at all, really. They could not know that the fog had taken both his vitality and his expressiveness. Or, more precisely, Death had, in order to leave the fog for a time and walk unnoticed among them. Death, whose image he had framed, repeatedly, as if vainly trying to steal back his own face.
What Wells failed to consider was the fate of Griffinâs cat. Perhaps he disdained the fairy tale aspect of his story or refused grumpily to enter the charmed world of fable. Be that as it may, the cat on which Griffin had tested his serum did become invisible, did become mad and did wreak its own havoc on Londonâs Great Portland Street. While the Invisible Man committed mayhem in Iping, his catâs criminality advanced relentlessly from laddering the stockings of several shop girls, to scratching a babyâs face as it slept in its pram, to â the ultimate in viciousness â removing, with quick deft strokes such as an oyster shucker or surgeon might envy, the eyes of an old man so that he â it can be imagined â might understand the anguish of invisibility. To see nothing in the world is much the same thing as not to be seen in it. Either way, one is desperately alone.
He wouldnât hurt a fly. This was true, though many thought his forbearance mere folly. They were confirmed in their belief when a fly visited his room one night, having come from who knows what infernal region and crushed him to death.
There are unfinished parts of the universe. Into one of them, a man strayed. Lath, newel, banister, mullion, a flight of stairs ending in cloud, a frieze without decoration, apple parings, an unmade bed. It was the bed which attracted him, for he had been without sleep since leaving the house three days earlier to buy a newspaper. How he had come to be in this space (too tentative to be called a room) he did not know. The passage here from the sidewalk outside the news agency had been suave, untroubled â âlike putting a hand in water.â Exhausted, he lay down and slept. When he woke, he was again in front of the news agency â only the newspaper was blank, so, too, the face of the agent, who stepped out onto the sidewalk to study the sky for signs.
He slept and heard in his sleep God breathing and woke to find it was his child, who was breathing in the room with him and not God. Or perhaps it was the opposite: it was his child, whom he heard in sleep and God, who was breathing there with him when he woke. It was impossible to say which case was true. Then the breathing stopped.
Norman Lock is the author of numerous works of fiction, as well as stage and radio plays, including The House of Correction (Broadway Play Publishing Co.), A History of the Imagination (FC2), Land of the Snowmen (Calamari Press, Kawade Shobo Shinsha, Publishers-Japan), The Long Rowing Unto Morning (Ravenna Press), The King of Sweden (Ravenna Press) and, most recently, Shadowplay (Ellipsis Press). He is a recipient of the Aga Kahn Prize given by The Paris Review , prose fellowships awarded by both the New Jersey and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and, in 2011, a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. He lives in Aberdeen, New Jersey, with his wife, Helen.
the Mud Luscious Press catalog :
WE
Similar Books
