The Insult

Начало книги

‘You’ve been shot.’

I heard someone say it. I wouldn’t have known otherwise; I wouldn’t have realised. All I could remember was four tomatoes — three of them motionless, one still rolling. And a black shape, too. A shape that had a curve to it.

I’ve been shot.

Sirens circled me like ghosts.

I slipped away, the feeling of having fallen from a plane, of falling through dark air, and the plane flying on without me …

Each time I woke up, it was night.

Then voices spoke to me, out of nothing. Voices told me the rest. You’d been shopping, they said. You were in a supermarket car-park when it happened. It was a Thursday evening. You were walking towards your vehicle when you were fired upon, a single shot. The bullet took a horizontal path through the occipital cortex. One millimetre lower and you would’ve died instantaneously. You suffered no damage to adjacent structures; however, you have lost your vision and that loss is permanent. There were no witnesses to the shooting.

Читать дальше →