He blinked a little, still only smiling and not yet grinning, but he crept a little closer.
"And should I make the rest of me disappear so that you can see the grin without the cat?"
And then he started to grin.
"We're all mad here."
A great crescent moon of a grin, full of too many white teeth (the teeth of a cannibal). A delighted grin, and overjoyed grin, the grin of a child on the verge of uncovering some wonderful thing or with some marvelous secret. There was a light in his eyes and it danced--like the feet of a newly-hanged man dangling through the trapdoor of the gallows.
There was a dark hilarity in his face, and perhaps in his heart, too, you would think--and you would be right. It was the face of a hatefully happy man, a face that radiated a horrible handsome warmth, a face to make water glasses shatter in the hands of tired truck-stop waitresses, to make small children crash their trikes into board fences and then run wailing to their mommies with stake-shaped splinters sticking out of their knees. It was a face guaranteed to make barroom arguments over batting averages turn bloody.
no subject
"And should I make the rest of me disappear so that you can see the grin without the cat?"
And then he started to grin.
"We're all mad here."
A great crescent moon of a grin, full of too many white teeth (the teeth of a cannibal). A delighted grin, and overjoyed grin, the grin of a child on the verge of uncovering some wonderful thing or with some marvelous secret. There was a light in his eyes and it danced--like the feet of a newly-hanged man dangling through the trapdoor of the gallows.
There was a dark hilarity in his face, and perhaps in his heart, too, you would think--and you would be right. It was the face of a hatefully happy man, a face that radiated a horrible handsome warmth, a face to make water glasses shatter in the hands of tired truck-stop waitresses, to make small children crash their trikes into board fences and then run wailing to their mommies with stake-shaped splinters sticking out of their knees. It was a face guaranteed to make barroom arguments over batting averages turn bloody.
He grinned.