Sundman's The Pains, a novel about decent people bearing up under unending misery
Sf writer John Sundman's latest novel, "The Pains" is up for free download and purchase as a physical object. It's "the story of a perfectly decent person upon whom God, or the Universe, or Random Chance, or Chaos, or Whatever, decides to dump unending physical misery--and of how that perfectly decent person bears up with extraordinary grace under the onslaught."Read THE PAINS or I will shoot you in the face (Thanks, John!)Mr Norman Lux, nSF, woke up with a pain in his body that felt as if it might have been a soul gone bad.
He first perceived the pain as a toothache in the general area of the upper right quadrant of his mouth. But as he fixed on it and tried to determine which tooth it might be that was hurting, he experienced a swift vague transfer of pain from the upper portion of his mouth–by way of the right side of his neck, down the right side of his body, traversing his torso near his belt line–to a region just north and to the left of his scrotum, where it briefly ceased. Two seconds later he felt the sharp ingrowing of the pinky toenail on his right foot. That pain stopped after about five seconds and was almost immediately replaced by the crushing weight of the white linen sheet under which, exhausted from prayer, Mr. Lux had drifted to sleep only a few hours ago. By faint dawn light, the sheet, where it pressed upon the bad toenail, showed a small bloodstain.
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