The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button -2008- Hdri... Page

Thomas entered. The crib held something that resembled his father more than his son: a wizened, arthritic creature of perhaps eighty, with milky eyes, a bald spotted head, and a feeble, rasping cry. "He is deformed," the doctor whispered. "Some children are born old. It's a condition of the blood."

"I'm none of those things," he said. "I'm just moving backward."

"Excuse me," he said. "Do I know you?"

Daisy visited the clock on the anniversary of his death every year. She would stand beneath it, close her eyes, and listen. And if she listened closely enough, she could almost hear it ticking backward—a sound like footsteps retreating into the past, into the arms of a blind clockmaker's son, into a place where time was just a story we told ourselves to make the leaving bearable.

Prologue: The Unfinished Clock

He looked up. "Daisy," he said. His voice was high and sweet, like a boy's. "I spelled Mississippi."

"No," Benjamin said. His voice was a raspy whisper. "I'm a boy." The Curious Case of Benjamin Button -2008- HDRi...

Benjamin was twenty-six when he returned to New Orleans. He looked thirty. His hair was dark brown now, his face smooth, his body lean from years of hauling lines and fighting river currents. Queenie, now gray and frail, hugged him at the door and wept. "You're beautiful," she said. "My ugly little baby. You're beautiful."