2
" The more I read, the more I was led to abhor and detest my enslavers. I could regard them in no other light than a band of successful robbers, who had left their homes, and gone to Africa, and stolen us from our homes, and in a strange land reduced us to slavery. I loathed them as being the meanest as well as the most wicked of men. As I read and contemplated the subject, behold! that very discontentment which Master Hugh had predicted would follow my learning to read had already come, to torment and sting my soul to unutterable anguish. As I writhed under it, I would at times feel that learning to read had been a curse rather than a blessing. It had given me a view of my wretched condition, without the remedy. it opened my eyes to the horrible pit, but to no ladder upon which to get out. in moments of agony, I envied my fellow-slaves for their stupidity. I have often wished myself a beast. I preferred the condition of the meanest reptile to my own. Any thing, no matter what, to get rid of thinking! It was this everlasting thinking of my condition that tormented me. There was no getting rid of it. It was pressed upon me by every object within sight or hearing, animate or inanimate. The silver trump of freedom had roused my soul to eternal wakefulness. Freedom now appeared, to disappear no more forever. It was heard in every sound and seen in every thing. It was ever present to torment me with a sense of my wretched condition. I saw nothing without seeing it, I heard nothing without hearing it, and felt nothing without feeling it. It looked from every star, it smiled in every calm, breathed in every wind, and moved in every storm. "
― Frederick Douglass , Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
4
" And then came the pain. First in her leg, as if something had sunk its teeth into it. A huge beast, a dog, maybe. It locked its jaws onto her limb and tore at the muscles with its teeth. She screamed, that was all she could do, scream. She could not describe the feeling of having her body ripped apart. She remembered her father's despair, his face as he leaned over her bed, and his words: What is it, tell me, what is it? As she writhed in pain, soaked in her own sweat, Don Guillermo, her kind, good father, waited for her to tell him. For an explanation. A meaningful verbalization of this horror, so that he could understand what was happening to his child. Otherwise, how could he help her? Because her frenzied cries were not enough. Pain needs to be articulated, communicated. It needs a kind of dialogue. It needs words. But only screams and shrieks of pain escaped from the child's lips. "
― Slavenka Drakulić , Frida's Bed
7
" Hunter’s entire body writhed and squirmed.
The side of his head was partly gone. A creature, like some monstrous melding of insect and eel, protruded from Hunter’s shoulder and as they stood there rooted in horror it took a vicious bite of Hunter’s flesh.
Taylor was suddenly gone.
Dekka’s face was grim, her eyes wet.
“I tried . . . ,” Hunter said. He held up his hands, mimicked pressing them against his head. “It didn’t work.”
“I can do it,” Sam said softly.
“I’m scared,” Hunter said.
“I know.”
“It’s ’cause I killed Harry. God has to punish me. I tried to be good but I’m bad.”
“No, Hunter,” Sam said gently. “You paid your dues. You fed the kids. You’re a good guy.”
“I’m a good hunter.”
“The best.”
“I don’t know what’s happening. What’s happening, Sam?”
“It’s just the FAYZ, Hunter,” Sam said.
“Can the angels find me here so I can go to heaven?”
Sam didn’t answer. It was Dekka who spoke. “Do you still remember any prayers, Hunter?”
The insectlike creature was almost completely emerged from Hunter’s shoulder. Legs were becoming visible. It had wings folded against its body. It looked like a gigantic ant, or wasp, but silver and brass and covered with a sheen of slime.
It was emerging like a chicken breaking out of an egg. Being born. And as the creature was born, it fed on Hunter’s numbed body.
Jerky movements beneath Hunter’s shirt testified to more of the larvae emerging.
“Do you remember ‘now I lay me down to sleep’?” Dekka asked.
“Now I lay me down to sleep,” Hunter said. “I pray the Lord my soul to keep.”
Sam raised his hands, palms out.
“If I should die—”
Twin beams of light hit Hunter’s chest and face. His shirt caught fire. Flesh melted. He was dead before he could feel anything.
Sam played the light up and down Hunter’s body. The smell was sickening. Jack wanted to look away, but how could he?
Sudden darkness as Sam terminated the light.
Sam lowered his hands to his side.
They stood there in the darkness. Jack breathed through his mouth, trying not to smell the burned flesh.
Then they heard a sound. Many sounds.
Sam raised his hands and pale light glowed.
Hunter was all but gone.
The things that had been inside him were still there. "
― Michael Grant , Plague (Gone, #4)
8
" Wishing for someone to talk to, some warm human hand to cling to, she walked across the giant chessboard, searching blindly through the crowd of immobile figures... until she saw a dark form leaning indolently against a white marble column. Her heart began to hammer, and her steps slowed as she was filled with a rush of excitement that heated her skin and made her pulse beat in urgent rhythm.It was Simon Hunt, walking toward her with a slight smile on his face. He caught her before she could retreat, and bent to whisper in her ear." Will you dance with me now?" " I can't," she said breathlessly, struggling in his tightening embrace." Yes, you can," he urged gently, his mouth hot and tender as it moved across her face. " Put your arms around me..." As she writhed in his embrace, he laughed softly and kissed her until she was limp and helpless against him. " Queen is now subject to capture," he murmured, drawing back to stare at her with deviltry in his eyes. " You're in danger, Annabelle... "
9
" It happened as it always did, swallowing her swiftly and completely. Intense. Painful. Quick, vivid colors spun beneath her eyelids. Sounds were sharp inside her skull. Fire shot up through her bones. She may have been screaming and she wouldn’t have known. There was smoke in her nose, thick and black, and she couldn’t breathe. It stung her eyes and licked at her skin. Wood and metal crashed down as skin blistered and popped and she knew this wasn’t her, knew it was someone else, someone with a bigger body, bigger boots and darker jeans, and big ol’ hands with scars on the fingers. Men’s hands. Nails blunt and dirty with oil and grease and burning and- The cars were on fire. Paper burned and curled and rags ignited, the cement floor pockmarked by flash fires. Meat withered in her nose and she realized it was her. Him. Dancing embers blackened and burned bone. He screamed and she hoped she was not. He writhed and she really hoped she was not. He was dying, dead, and- "
― Angele Gougeon , Sticks and Stones
11
" Gabriel pulled her over his body to lie on the bed beside him. His kisses pressed her down into the oblivion of the mattress as her hands explored his chest, his shoulders, his face." I want to lay my kill at your feet," he said, more growl than words, and held her tight by her hair as he marked her neck with his teeth.She writhed against him. She wanted to bite him, she wanted to rip the flesh from his back, but most terrible of all, she didn't want him to stop. Her back arched, her body shattered, she howled. "
16
" Somewhere int he flesh of the earth the dreadful earthquake shuddered, the tide walked to and fro on the leash of the moon, rainbows formed, winds swept the sky like giant brooms piling up clouds before them, clouds which writhed into different shapes, melted into rain or darkened, bruised themselves against an unseen antagonist and went on their way, laced with forking rivers of lightning, complete with white electric tributaries. Out of this infinite vision an infinity of details could be drawn, but Sonny had settled on one, and from the endless series a particular beach was chosen and began to form around Laura - a beach of iron-dark sand and shells like frail stars, and a wonderful wide sea that stretched, neither green nor blue, but inked by the approach of night into violet and black, wrinkling with its own salty puzzles, right out to a distant, pure horizon. "
― Margaret Mahy , The Changeover
18
" They could tell the whole hateful story of it, set forth in the inner soul of a city in which honor and justice, women's bodies and men's souls, were for sale in the market-place, and human beings writhed and fought and fell upon each other like wolves in a pit; in which lusts were raging fires, and men were fuel, and humanity was festering and stewing and wallowing in its own corruption. Into this wild-beast tangle these men had been born without their consent, they had taken part in it because they could not help it; that they were in jail was no disgrace to them, for the game had never been fair, the dice were loaded. They were the swindlers and thieves of pennies and dimes, and they were being trapped and put out of the way by the swindlers and thieves of millions of dollars. "
― Upton Sinclair , The Jungle
19
" Me dad planted that tree,’ she said absently, pointing out through the old cracked window.The great beech filled at least half the sky and shook shadows all over the house.Its roots clutched the slope like a giant hand, holding the hill in place. Its trunk writhed with power, threw off veils of green dust, rose towering into the air, branched into a thousand shaded alleys, became a city for owls and squirrels. I had thought such trees to be as old as the earth, I never dreamed that a man could make them. Yet it was Granny Trill’s dad who had planted this tree, had thrust in the seed with his finger. How old must he have been to leave such a mark? Think of Granny’s age, and add his on top, and you were back at the beginning of the world. "
