...black women's t-shirt with a skull and a rose on it, large swatch of yellow cloth, a top that looks like it used to be a sundress only the owner didn't like the sleeves or the dress part and took her scissors to it.
Didn't Coma come out around the same time as Carrie by Steven King? I was fourteen when Carrie came out, and my best friend at the time, Julie L., had just read it and loved it. I generally did judge these sorts of books by their covers and would not have ever picked it up if someone I liked hadn't recommended it to me. But recommend it she did. Those were the days when I also felt honor bound to finish any book I started. So there I sat, reading a book I never would have chosen right through to the end. Carrie exceeded my expectations. I was in a cold sweat by page five, and that never let up.
I had been gripped by a book before. I remember reading Oliver Twist at age 11, sitting in our house in Scotland, and at the part where Bill Sykes jumps off the roof and hangs himself, I realized it had grown dark outside and in the room I was in, and that I couldn't see into the corners anymore. It was a chilling moment. But I happily opened books by Dickens thereafter.
Carrie finished Steven King off for me. Was it the relentless teen-aged tormenting? Was it the idea that people could be so cruel that they'd save up a bunch of pig's blood to dump on some misfit's head? Was it the savage revenge that took hold of Carrie herself? Or was it the idea that some guy actually enjoyed filling his own brain with this stuff enough that he wanted to write a book about it?
And since I'm on a rant, what's with skulls and roses?
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