Falling leaves

I paged through the leaves of the book with difficulty. It's not that it was a hard book to read - King had a free-flowing style that made the pages disappear quickly - but it was too much information all the same.

Eden had given me The Dark Tower III: The Watse Lands first. I sat in my little room and forgot about the pain of my wounds while I read. When I was done, I went up to the lounge on Twenty and came back with an armload. Steven King'd written enough to fill out a small library on his own. There was the other one that had been mentioned: Carrie. Supposedly, it was about the very girl I'd just met today.

I'd only gotten through five books by the time my eyes gave up on me, but I'd read the important ones. The four Dark Tower books (an unfinished story), and Carrie. Holy shit.

Things that I'd only heard about in passing, pieced together from guarded conversations with Lex, Steven King wrote about in detail. Ka, ka-tet, khef, secret things I'd seen and felt... I was pissed off for some reason. I felt violated and exposed the way I'd felt when Carrie had started talking about Lex like she knew him herself.

I couldn't be mad at her though when I read the scene in the waystation. If her...death...had been anything like the boy's, then I could only pitty her. Besides, it's not her fault, really. Most of the precogs I've met don't really have a lot of choice. They just see. And if she saw my life? Well...she didn't seem to hold any of it against me.

And now that I'd read her book, the one just called Carrie...I had to wonder what I'd seen too. Hell, one of the very first things I read about was her first period and her blood dripping down her thighs in the shower. I paged through her life, reading about her bitch of a mother and a life of ostracism. If I'd have been there, I'd have gunned down the whole auditorium for her.

Except...this was a different Carrie. The one in the book was named Carrie White (...Penny White? Coincidence?), and the Carrie I'd known wasn't telekinetic and hadn't killed anyone. She said she was different. I wonder what Carrie Rose had done when they poured blood all over her? ...and how did she die?

I also felt like I understood Eden a little more. She talked like some crazed cartoon character and acted like a squirrel who'd gotten into my old coke stash. But as I read the Watse Lands I could imagine her there in Lud, with ZZ Top pounding from the speakers, her hand shaking as she dropped her stone into the bowl, wondering if this time she'd be the one strung up to hang. I guess I couldn't blame her for being the way she is.

And when she looked at me, it was never with revulsion. She'd been in my head, seen everything that I've done, thought everything that I've thought, felt everything that I felt, and she treated me with no more suspicion than she did everyone else. No hatred. I couldn't even say the same for myself when I looked in the mirror.

But Penny kept me going. She showed kindness and care to everyone, brought them sandwhiches and smiles. These people that'd she'd barely just met already warmed to her. She reminded me of the boy Jake in the Gunslinger book. So young, but so much more. She was like Jake...and she was like the Rose.

I thought it was crazy. How much could this writer see? He saw the Tower! Did he even realize what it was he wrote about? But of course he couldn't. Probably thought it was all dreams. Because there was no way the Crimson King would let him publish those books and live. So the Tet Corporation protected him, and he kept writing. But why did he write?

Did Ashley have a book? Or Alastair? I mean, the genius shares his name with King. What was written about me?

I pushed the books off the bed and stretched out slowly, trying not to tear my new stitches. No more, not tonight.