“I had to go through with it, and I turned around and she was nude except for hose and shoes, and then I saw the wounds. It was at the loins; it was a birthmark or something, a burn, a seared place, a pitiful, dry, vacant place where flesh was gone, where the thighs suddenly became small and shriveled and the flesh seemed dead. I closed my jaws and then I said, "What--that? Is that all, just that? It's nothing, a mere trifle."”

But I was losing the words, I had to say them quickly or they would never form.
Ask the Dust (1939)

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John Fante113

1909–1983; American novelist, short story writer and screen… 1909–1983

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