IJ study archive

Stice stuck to the window (p. 866)

quote

For the past ten days I’d always felt worst in the early A.M., before dawn. There’s something elementally horrific about waking before dawn. […] I realized that from his position he could see only condensed breath on the window, no reflections. I made a few grotesque, distended, pop-eyed faces at him behind his back. They made me feel worse.

Context

Stice — forehead frozen to the window — has just asked whether Hal is crying; Hal's voice "had been neutral and a bit puzzled." Ten days is his abstinence clock exactly, and the grotesque faces are the anhedonic's experiment: manufacturing expression to see if feeling follows. The result is only "worse."

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