Independent Novel Study Assignment #8
A rewritten section of ‘The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon’ in second person point of view…
You stand in the set position and let the stillness spin out around you. Yes, it came from the shoulders. Let it eat you; let it beat you. It could do both. But you would not beat yourself. And I won't run.
It stopped before you and stretched its neck up so its face approached your face as if to kiss. There were no eyes, only two squirming circles, wormhole universes filled with breeding bugs. They hummed and squirmed and jostled each other for position in the tunnels that bored toward the god's unimaginable brain. Its mouth opened and you see that its throat was lined with wasps, plump ungainly poison factories crawling over the remains of a chewed stick and the pinkish lump of deergut that served as its tongue. Its breath was the muddy stink of the bog.
You saw these things, noted them briefly, then looked beyond. Veritek flashed the sign. Soon you would make your pitch, but for now you were still. You were still. Let the batter wait, anticipate, lose his timing; let him wonder, begin to think his guess about the curve was wrong.
The bear-creature sniffed delicately all around your face.
Bugs crawled in and out of its nostrils. Noseeums fluttered between the two locked faces, one furry and the other smooth. Minges flicked against the damp surfaces of your open, unblinking eyes. The thing's rudiment of a face was shifting and changing, always shifting and changing - it was the face of teachers and friends; it was the face of parents and brothers; it was the face of the man who might come and offer you a ride when you were walking home from school. Stranger-danger was what they had been taught in the first grade: stranger-danger. It stank of death and disease.