XXXIX
Still unsure if it was her or not, or whether he had finally lost his mind, Bean followed the girl along the path, crawling through the thick shrub of the moor, and stopping, whenever she turned, awakened to her suspicions. And each time she did, he dove into the wet mud and tried to quiet his heavy breathing.
His heart felt like it could explode at any second, and the air in his lungs was both hot and freezing cold. His hands shook when they were not anchored to anything, and his stomach felt like it was being beaten and pummelled, and flipped inside out - and then kneaded and rolled, and flattened repeatedly. He was both delighted and petrified on the same hand. It could have been his birthday party or his execution, such was the vigour of his impotent elation. No amount of training could have prepared him for this kind of exhilaration.
It was wonderful.
The Accountant, on the other hand, was not faring too well. It wasn’t so much the world he had fallen into, but instead the ‘he, himself’, which he was ill-prepared to encounter. So overwhelmed was he with his new found feelings, and that certain zest that perspired from the living that, for the first hundred days, he did nothing but cry.
His face felt like a terribly deformed candle, and his tears, the hot wax that shaped it so. His blubbering voice sounded like a scooter, stuck in first gear. And whenever he wiped away a cocktail of snot and tears, he would break into hysterical laughter, waving his arms around frantically as if he were fending himself from a swarm of angry wasps. He felt alone and vulnerable, and at the same time, he felt absolutely free. He didn’t know whether to dig a hole and hide or to climb to the highest cliff face and roar like a lion. No amount of training could have prepared him for this kind of indecision.
It was horrible.