Зло

He didn`t mind it so much, prison. At least he fit in. In the real world, people took one look at him and tightened their grip on their purses, quickened their pace. Cops took one look and thought guilty or going to be. But in prison people took one look and thought I want him on my side, or I don`t want to mess with him, or he could crack my skull in his elbow, or any number of far more useful thoughts. His size became a status symbol, even if it denied Mitch the perks of worldly conversation, and even if the staff considered him with skepticism when he checked out a book and was suprised when he used a word with more than two syllables. He spent most of his time trying to hack the prison computers` various safety settings and firewalls, more out of boredom than a desire to cause any real trouble. But at least his curse left him alone.

But what fascinated Victor most was the fact that something about Eli was decidedly wrong. He was like one of those pictures full of small errors, the kind you could only pick out by searching the image from every angle, and even then, a few always slipped by. On the surface, Eli seemed perfectly normal, but now and then Victor would catch a crack, a sideways glance, a moment when his roommate`s face and his words, his look and his meaning, would not line up. Those fleeting slices fascinated Victor. It was like watching two people, one hiding in the other`s skin. And their skin was always too dry, on the verge of cracking and showing the color of the thing beneath.