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| | The Princess |
 | | As Alexei Petrovich lies in bed trying to get to sleep, his legs start to grow down all by themselves, and his head up to the fl dome, always up, and it rocks back and forth like a treetop in a storm, and the stars scratch his skull. |
 | | But the second Alexei Petrovich, the inner one, keeps shrinking and shrinking; he contracts, disappearing into a poppy seed, into the sharp end of a needle, into a little microbe, into nothing and, if he is not stopped, he will vanish into it altogether. |
 | | Alexei Petrovich checked if the little boxes were still in place, sniffed the glue, and took a risk – he went out into the hall. |
| personal.uncc.edu /ybaldwin/russ3050/night.htm (2344 words) |
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