"... I IS THIS _<и>?hearers wounded-wonder like stand them makes and stars wandering the conjures sorrow of phrase Whose. . ."
He blew smoke through the cigarette and it grew longer.
He glanced at the clock and realized that its hands were moving backwards.
The clock told him it was 10:33, going on 10:32 in the P.M.
Then came the thing like despair, for he knew there was not a thing he could do about it. He was trapped, moving in reverse through the sequence of actions past. Somehow, he had missed the warning.
Usually, there was a prism-effect, a flash of pink static, a drowsiness, then a moment of heightened perception...
He turned the pages, from left to right, his eyes retracing their path back along the lines.
"?emphasis an such bears grief whose he is What"
Helpless, there behind his eyes, he watched his body perform. The cigarette had reached its full length. He clicked on the lighter, which sucked away its glowing point, and then he shook the cigarette back
into the pack.
He yawned in reverse: first an exhalation, then an inhalation. It wasn't real--the doctor had told him. It was grief and epilepsy, meeting to form an unusual syndrome.
He'd already had the seizure. The dialantin wasn't helping. This was a post-traumatic locomotor hallucination, elicited by anxiety, precipitated by the attack.
But he did not believe it, could not believe it--not after twenty minutes had gone by, in the other direction--not after he had placed the book upon the reading stand, stood, walked backward across the room to his closet, hung up his robe, redressed himself in the same shirts and slacks he had worn all day, backed over to the bar and regurgitated a Martini, sip by cooling sip, until the glass was filled to the brim and not a drop spilled.
There was an impending taste of olive, and then everything was changed again.
The second-hand was sweeping around his wristwatch in the proper direction.
The time was 10:07.