First Sentence

"And here is how I visualize the moment of your death: a falling away a draining and receding and lightening and melting and sliding of the world like the gradual disappearance of snow in the forest, or like colours slowly spilling outside the frame and leaving nothing on the canvas, while in the meantime your limbs grew numb and leaden, becoming one with the mattress, the floor, the earth, even your rage turning to froth and its millions of bubbles bursting as your mind sank deeper and deeper into matter . . . I see a long highway curving across the plain and the sun beating down on it, beating you down into the asphalt, the crushed rock and tar - you're part of that road now Paddon, that endless grey ribbon of an idea about going somewhere - lying flat yes flattened at last into the plain from which you'd struggled to arise - a faintly perceptible scar on its surface."