The tale of the body thief - By Anne Rice Page 0,88

didn’t like the look of fear in the eyes. No, not at all. I tried to see a different expression, to claim the features from within and let them express the wonder I felt. But this wasn’t easy. And I’m not sure I was feeling any wonder. Hmmm. I couldn’t see anything in this face that was coming from inside.

Slowly I opened my mouth and spoke. I said in French that I was Lestat de Lioncourt in this body, and that everything was fine. The experiment had worked! I was in the very first hour of it, and the fiend James was gone, and everything had worked! Now something of my own fierceness showed in the eyes; and when I smiled I saw my own mischievous nature at least for a few seconds before the smile faded and I looked blank and amazed.

I turned and looked at the dog, who was right beside me, and gazing up at me, as was his habit, perfectly content.

“How do you know I’m in here?” I asked. “Instead of James?”

He cocked his head, and one ear gave a tiny movement.

“All right,” I said. “Enough of all this weakness and craziness, let’s go!” I started forward towards the dark hallway, and suddenly my right leg went out from under me, and I slid down heavily, left hand skidding along the floor to break my fall, my head slamming against the marble fireplace, and my elbow striking the marble hearth with a sudden violent explosion of pain. With a clatter, the fireplace tools came down upon me, but that was nothing. I’d struck the nerve in the elbow, and the pain was like a fire rushing up my arm.

I turned over on my face, and just held still for a moment waiting for the pain to pass. Only then did I realize my head was throbbing from being slammed against the marble. I reached up, and felt the wetness of blood in my hair. Blood!

Ah, beautiful. Louis would be so amused by this, I thought. I climbed up, the pain shifting and moving to the right behind my forehead, as if it were a weight which had slipped to the front of my head, and I steadied myself as I held the mantel shelf.

One of those many fancy little rugs lay snagged on the floor before me. The culprit. I kicked it out of the way, and turned and very slowly and carefully walked into the hall.

But where was I going? What did I mean to do? The answer came to me all of a sudden. My bladder was full, and the discomfort had grown worse when I’d fallen. I had to take a piss.

Wasn’t there a bathroom down here somewhere? I found the hall light switch and turned on the overhead chandelier. For a long moment I stared at all the tiny bulbs—and there must have been twenty of them—realizing that this was quite a bit of light, no matter what I thought of it, but no one had said I couldn’t turn on every lamp in the house.

I set out to do this. I went through the living room, the little library, and the back hall. Again and again, the light disappointed me, the sense of murkiness would not leave me, the indistinctness of things left me faintly alarmed and confused.

Finally, I made my way carefully and slowly up the stairs, fearful every moment of losing my balance, or tripping, and annoyed at the faint ache in my legs. Such long legs.

When I looked back down the stairway, I was stunned. You could fall and kill yourself here, I said to myself.

I turned and entered the cramped little bathroom, quickly finding the light. I had to piss, I simply had to, and I had not done this in over two hundred years.

I unzipped these modern pants, and removed my organ, which immediately astonished me by its limpness and size. The size was fine, of course. Who doesn’t want these organs to be large? And it was circumcised, which was a nice touch. But this limpness, it felt remarkably repulsive to me, and I didn’t want to touch the thing. I had to remind myself, this organ happens to be mine. Jolly!

And what about the smell coming from it, and the smell rising from the hair around it? Ah, that’s yours too, baby! Now make it work.

I closed my eyes, exerted pressure very inexactly and perhaps too forcefully, and a great arc of stinking urine