"
"Youre not as stupid as most of your kind. But you make up for it by talking to much. "
"Is that what that city is, beyond Pandemonium? Part of the new Heaven? Is that what Hell really is, one big hardhat zone?"
"You tell me," Ashbliss said. "Behold. "
When he was still a child, Spyder had found a book of his mothers. It was an art history text, left over from her brief attempt at community college. Shed lasted less than a semester and bad-mouthed the curriculum, the teachers and the other students non-stop whenever the subject came up. But even as a child it puzzled Spyder why shed kept her school books if they brought back such painful memories. It wasnt until years later that he realized that it was probably his fathers nagging that had propelled his mother out of school. Spyders father considered all forms of self-improvement, short of studying innovations in Detroit horsepower and chasing strip club tail, useless and in all likelihood, un-Christian. Spyder never understood why his mother had said that he was so much like his father. He knew that they were nothing alike, and hed hated her for saying that. He hated his father just because.
The picture in his mothers art history text that had captivated him as a child was the Hell panel from Hieronymous Boschs triptych, "The Garden of Earthly Delights. " It wasnt the clever and artful ways the demons tortured the damned souls that had fascinated Spyder. Hed studied the top, the far background of the painting, where none of the sexy tortures were happening. That section of the painting depicted a ruined, burned-out city, or a city that had been built along very different aesthetic lines from a human city. The buildings and the sky above
Страницы: << < 229 | 230 | 231 | 232 | 233 > >>