The Project Gutenberg EBook of Success Story, by Robert Turner

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Title: Success Story

Author: Robert Turner

Release Date: June 11, 2010 [EBook #32782]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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SUCCESS STORY

By Robert Turner

Illustrated by KELLY FREAS

_What is to be will be. Our only refuge lies in that which
might not have been._

_December 8th, 1952, Two-Thirty A. M._

After awhile the blinding light was like actual physical pressure
against his tightly squinched eyes. He tried to burrow deeper into the
protectively warm, cave-like place where he'd been safe from them for
so long. But he couldn't escape them. Their hands, their big, red,
hideously smooth hands had him, now. They were tugging and pulling at
him with a strength impossible to fight. Still he struggled.

He tried to cry out but there was no sound from his constricted
throat. There were only the frightening noises from outside, louder,
now. He tried to twist and squirm against the hands dragging him
toward that harsh, blinding light. He was too small, too weak,
compared to them. He couldn't fight them off. He felt himself being
stretched and strained and forced with cruel determination. He didn't
want to go _out there_. He knew what was waiting for him _out there_.
He _couldn't_ go. Not _out there_, where....

* * * * *

When Jeff McKinney was three years old he tipped a pot of scalding
water from the stove onto himself. He was badly burned and scarred. He
hovered between life and death for several weeks. Jeff's father was
out of work at the time and they were living in a cold water tenement.
Something about the case caught a tabloid's attention and it was
played up as a human interest sob story. It came to the attention of a
wealthy man who volunteered to pay for plastic surgery. Then followed,
long months of that kind of torture, but Jeff McKinney came out of it
not too badly scarred. Not on the surface, anyhow. But his face had a
strange hue. There was a froze