Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -… [502]

TRACY DUNN HAS NOT come home and has not been found by the police. I don’t think she will be. She’s only been gone for a week, but a week outside must be like a week in hell. People vanish outside. They go through our gate like Mr. Yannis did, and everyone waits for them, but they never come back—or they come back in an urn. I think Tracy Dunn is dead. — , Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -…, 502

Note

Notice how the passage bookends itself with the flat factual statement and its flat verdict, so the middle carries all the dread. The chiasmus of ‘they never come back — or they come back in an urn’ is the one ornate move, and it earns its ornament by being the only place the sentence structure bends. The all-caps opening is a diarist’s way of starting a fresh entry: no transition, no preamble, just the name, as if the fact had been waiting overnight.