nerve-draw

Updated: May 25, 2025

Then with the silence and the tense nerve-draw of waiting came the sense of things finished done forever. A vast, all-embracing finality "Néant" the habitant expression for the uttermost nothing, the word seemed to push at his lips. He wanted to say it, but a premonition warned him that to utter it was to make it real. Should he call upon the name of the Void, the Void would answer.

- O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921