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Maugham, W. Somerset (William Somerset), 1874-1965

"The Magician"

There was one monstrous thing
in which the limbs approached nearly to the human. It was extraordinarily
heaped up, with fat tiny arms, little bloated legs, and an absurd squat
body, so that it looked like a Chinese mandarin in porcelain. In another
the trunk was almost like that of a human child, except that it was
patched strangely with red and grey. But the terror of it was that
at the neck it branched hideously, and there were two distinct heads,
monstrously large, but duly provided with all their features. The
features were a caricature of humanity so shameful that one could hardly
bear to look. And as the light fell on it, the eyes of each head opened
slowly. They had no pigment in them, but were pink, like the eyes of
white rabbits; and they stared for a moment with an odd, unseeing glance.
Then they were shut again, and what was curiously terrifying was that the
movements were not quite simultaneous; the eyelids of one head fell
slowly just before those of the other. And in another place was a ghastly
monster in which it seemed that two bodies had been dreadfully entangled
with one another.


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