/lit/ - Literature

>Once upon a time Slothrop cared. No kidding. He thinks he did, anyway. A lot of stuff prior to 1944 is getting blurry now. He can remember the first Blitz only as a long spell of good luck. Nothing that Luftwaffe dropped came near him. But this last summer they started in with those buzzbombs. You’d be walking on the street, in bed just dozing off suddenly here comes this farting sound over the rooftops—if it just keeps on, rising to a peak and passing over why that’s fine, then it’s somebody else’s worry . . . but if the engine cuts off, look out Jackson—it’s begun its dive, sloshing the fuel aft, away from the engine burner, and you’ve got 10 seconds to get under something. Well, it wasn’t really too bad. After a while you adjusted—found yourself making small bets, a shilling or two, with Tantivy Mucker-Maffick at the next desk, about where the next doodle would hit. . . .
>But then last September the rockets came. Them fucking rockets. You couldn’t adjust to the bastards. No way. For the first time, he was surprised to find that he was really scared. Began drinking heavier, sleeping less, chain-smoking, feeling in some way he’d been taken for a sucker. Christ, it wasn’t supposed to keep on like this. . . .