Dread

I read this on the bus, and sat in utter awe of Atwood for the remainder of the bus ride. It is brilliant:

"What I was experiencing was dread, but it was not dread of Richard as such. It was as if the illuminated dome of the Royal York Hotel had been wrenched off and I was being stared at by a malign presence located somewhere above the black spangled empty surface of the sky. It was God, looking down with his blank, ironic searchlight of an eye. He was observing me; he was observing my predicament; he was observing my failure to believe in him. There was no floor to my room: I was suspended in the air, about to plummet. My fall would be endless -- endlessly down.

Such dismal feelings however do not often persist in the clear light of morning, when you are young."

~excerpted from "The Blind Assassin" by Margaret Atwood~