In his dream, he was in the world's biggest classroom.
The walls stretched up for miles. Each desk was a mesa, the gray tiles the endless plain which swept among them. The clock on the wall was a huge cold sun. The door to the hallway was shut, but Morton Rainey could read the words on the pebbled2 glass:
HOME TEAM WRITING ROOM
PROF. DELLACOURT
They spelled it wrong, Mort thought, too many L's.
But another voice told him this was not so.
Mort was standing3 on the giant blackboard's wide chalk gutter4, stretching up. He had a piece of chalk the size of a baseball bat in his hand. He wanted to drop his arm, which ached ferociously5, but he could not. Not until he had written the same sentence on the blackboard five hundred times: I will not copy from John Kintner. He must have written it four hundred times already, he thought, but four hundred wasn't enough. Stealing a man's work when a man's work was really all he had was unforgivable. So he would have to write and write and write, and never mind the voice in his mind trying to tell him that this was a dream, that his right arm ached for other reasons.
The chalk squeaked6 monstrously7. The dust, acrid8 and somehow familiar - so familiar - sifted9 down into his face. At last he could go on no longer. His arm dropped to his side like a bag filled with lead shot. He turned on the chalk gutter, and saw that only one of the desks in the huge classroom was occupied. The occupant was a young man with a country kind of face; a face you expected to see in the north forty behind the ass1 end of a mule10. His pale-brown hair stuck up in spikes11 from his head. His country-cousin hands, seemingly all knuckles12, were folded on the desk before him. He was looking at Mort with pale, absorbed eyes.
I know you, Mort said in the dream.
That's right, pilgrim, John Kintner said in his bald, drawling Southern accent. You just put me together wrong. Now keep on writing. It's not five hundred. It's five thousand.
Mort started to turn, but his foot slipped on the edge of the gutter, and suddenly he was spilling outward, screaming into the dry, chalky air, and John Kintner was laughing, and he woke up on the floor with his head almost underneath13 the rogue14 coffee table, clutching at the carpet and crying out in high-pitched, whinnying shrieks15.
1 ass | |
n.驴;傻瓜,蠢笨的人 | |
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2 pebbled | |
用卵石铺(pebble的过去式与过去分词形式) | |
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3 standing | |
n.持续,地位;adj.永久的,不动的,直立的,不流动的 | |
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4 gutter | |
n.沟,街沟,水槽,檐槽,贫民窟 | |
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5 ferociously | |
野蛮地,残忍地 | |
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6 squeaked | |
v.短促地尖叫( squeak的过去式和过去分词 );吱吱叫;告密;充当告密者 | |
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7 monstrously | |
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8 acrid | |
adj.辛辣的,尖刻的,刻薄的 | |
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9 sifted | |
v.筛( sift的过去式和过去分词 );筛滤;细查;详审 | |
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10 mule | |
n.骡子,杂种,执拗的人 | |
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11 spikes | |
n.穗( spike的名词复数 );跑鞋;(防滑)鞋钉;尖状物v.加烈酒于( spike的第三人称单数 );偷偷地给某人的饮料加入(更多)酒精( 或药物);把尖状物钉入;打乱某人的计划 | |
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12 knuckles | |
n.(指人)指关节( knuckle的名词复数 );(指动物)膝关节,踝v.(指人)指关节( knuckle的第三人称单数 );(指动物)膝关节,踝 | |
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13 underneath | |
adj.在...下面,在...底下;adv.在下面 | |
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14 rogue | |
n.流氓;v.游手好闲 | |
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15 shrieks | |
n.尖叫声( shriek的名词复数 )v.尖叫( shriek的第三人称单数 ) | |
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