The Hilliker Curse [antikvár]

So women will love me. I invoked The Curse a half century ago. It defines my life from my tenth birthday on. The near-immediate results have kept me in near-continuous dialogue and redress. I write stories to console her as a phantom. She is ubiquitous and never familiar. Other women loom flesh and blood. They have their stories. Their touch has saved me in varying increments' and allowed me to survive my insane appetite and ambition. They have withstood my recklessness and prédation. I have resisted their rebukes. My storytelling gifts are imperviously strong and rooted in the moment that I wished her dead and mandated her murder. Women give me the world and hold the world tenuously safe for me. I cannot go to Them to find Her much longer. My obsessive will is too stretched. Their story must eclipse Hers in volume and content. I must honor Them and distinguish each one from Her. My pursuit has been both raw and discerning. The latter comforts me now. There were always grace notes in with the hunger. It's been a fever dream. I must decorously decode it. They are all gone now. I'm unbodied without them. If I address them with candor, they'll cut me loose of the fury. My grasp may recede to a touch in retrospect. I'll find the answer in dreams and waking flashes. They'll find me alone and talk to me in the dark.