Offbeat: Uncollected Stories Read online

My hand was on the doorknob.

  “A ten-foot cobra is climbing up my bedroom door,” Richard said. “It is going to kill my wife.”

  I stared at him.

  He hadn’t even turned around.

  I ran to him and clutched his arm. “Richard!”

  Suddenly, from upstairs, a scream pierced the air.

  Richard’s head jerked around. A look of horror filled his face.

  “No,” he said.

  He tore from my hold and rushed to the door. He flung it open and ran across the hall. I heard him cry out:

  “It is gone! It has disappeared!”

  I ran after him up the stairs.

  I found him kneeling over her.

  It was Alice—dead. Her cheeks were puffed, her eyes wide and staring. Under her right eye were two red punctures.

  Richard was looking at her in disbelief. He reached down and touched her face with trembling fingers, felt for her heartbeat.

  I looked at Alice’s feet. She had taken off her shoes so Richard would not hear her on the stairs.

  He picked her up, his face a blank. He started down the stairs and took her into the study.

  I turned quickly.

  Mary was standing in the bedroom doorway, looking down at the study.

  I grabbed her hand. “We’ve got to go!” I said.

  She didn’t speak as I half dragged her down the long stairway and out the front door. I put her in my car.

  “Drive to the highway and wait for me.”

  “But—”

  “Don’t argue,” I said. She stared at me for a moment: Then she turned and drove down the path. I watched the car roll onto the road. I turned and ran back into the house.

  I found him kneeling beside the couch on which he had placed Alice’s body.

  He was holding her hand and stroking it. All the arrogance was gone. He looked as though he thought she was going to wake up in a moment.

  I went over to him and put my hand on his shoulder. His head snapped back and he looked up at me.

  “You’ve got to get rid of her,” I said.

  “The house is burning,” he said.

  The suddenness made me jump backwards. The walls had burst into flame. The drapes began to curl, the room abruptly thick with smoke.

  “Richard!” I cried. “Stop it!”

  He didn’t answer. He only stared at Alice’s puffed, white face and stroked her hand.

  I knew it was hopeless. I rushed for the door. Just before I reached it, a sheet of flame blocked the way.

  I whirled and looked at him.

  He didn’t want me to leave.

  I coughed as the choking fumes entered my throat. Turning, I ran for the window. Flames covered it.

  I jerked a small table from the floor and hurled it at the window. It splintered through. I dived for the opening.

  “No!” I heard him yell. It made me jolt to a halt.

  “You can’t go!” he cried. His words broke off into a peal of laughter.

  “You can’t stop me!” I cried.

  He didn’t say anything, just smiled and sank across her body.

  Suddenly I knew why I couldn’t go.

  Because I’m one of his characters, too.

  And now I’m waiting.

  The Last Blah in the Etc.

  You are awake, pale thing, your muddy eyes perusing. There the ceiling, there the walls; security in plaster and paint, in parchment jiggled with coordinate lilies. Primo: goddam wallpaper. It is, has been and never more will be your opening reflection. Secundo: Mildred isajerk. This thought may continue.

  Slumber-fogged, your gaze seeks out the clock. It has not clarioned the dawn. It is, indeed, not even cognizant of dawn’s most rosy rise, its black arms pointing frozenly to midnight’s XII—

  —or noon! You start, eyes bugged and marbleized, mouth a precipitate sanctuary for some indigent gnat. Wotnth’ell! And—snap! Body parallel with mattress becomes body squared. You are—presto!—ninety degrees of male American athrob; a sitting inflammation. With a crunch of the cervix, a crackle of the clavicle, you look around the room, you look around the—

  Silence. All and only silence. (Pallid thing)

  “Mil!” you call. What, no sibilance of frizzling bacon, no scent of coffee? “Millie!” No savor of charred toast, no lilt of nagging on the air?

  “Mildred!” Wot’nth’blublazinghellis—

  Silence. Oh so silent.

  Your brow is rill-eroded now. A curious dismay guerrillas in your craw. Too silent this. Too—deadly silent. Yes?

  “MILDRED!”

  Ah, no reply, blanched thing. Your corn-cobbed toes com­press the rug, your torso goes aloft, you find erection. “What’s goin’ on?” mumble you. You thump across the room, shanks athwart, terror tapping tunes along your spine. You reach the hall. “Mil!” you cry. No Mil. The hallway is your racetrack. You are Mercury and Ariel. You are Puck in pink pajamas. “Millie!” No Millie. You blunder like a village-razing mammoth through the chambers of your home. “Mildred!”

  No—need I append?—Mildred.

  In fact, nothing. Whether sign of exodus, Goinghometomother note or hint of counternatural removal. Pale thing, you are aghast. Panic rings the tocsin in your wooly brain. Where—eh?—is Mildred? Why—ask you—at noon, are you alone, self-wakened?

  Noon? But see, the black arms still point alike.

  The clock has stopped.

  Pulsing with alarm, you seek the phone, le pachyderme en difficulté. Digits clutch receiver, receiver cups ear. Hark; you listen. Your mouth is cavernized anew. Why?

  Dead as the doornail, (proverbial) That’s why.

  “Hello,” you state, regardless. You tap distress rhythms. “Hello! Hello! Hey!”

  No answer. (Achromatic you)You drop the dumb Bell and worry a channel to the windows. You yank the cord and up goes the shade, flapping in maniacal orbits around its roller and through this paneful frame you view the picture of your street.

  Empty.

  “Huh?” Your very word. “Wot the—”

  Strange tides rise darkly. Terror is a blankness. It is cessation, emptiness; figures, fog-licked, hardly heard, vaguely seen. “Mil?” you mutter.

  No Mil.

  Dress! Probe! Nose out! Get to bottom! Resolution hammers manly nails; your framework bolsters. Up—you vow—and at them. There’s an explanation for everything. (Of course) You are the captain of your shape, the master of your soles. Once more into the britches! Onward!

  Etiolated thing.

  Bones garbed vitement, feet ensconced in Thom McCann’s, you plunge through bedroom, hall, living room, kitchen, out through doorway and—

  The neighbors! The crossthehallwhydon’ttheymindtheirown-dambusiness neighbors!

  You arc the gap to their door, heartbeat a cardiac ragtime. Manifest really. (Sez you to you) Mil, Millie, Mildred, MILDRED has gone to pirate a dole of flour, a driblet of sugar. She laughs, blabbing and blabs, laughing with the neighbor’s wife. She forgets old mortality. (Oohwilugiverhell!) And the phone lines suffer breach. Q: And the barren street? A: Nearby, a parade, a fire, an accident alluringly sanguineous and the neighborhood emptying to view it.

  Only this and nothing more. (Rationalize chalky, poem-lifting you)

  Forthwith: Skin-puffed knuckles harden, your hand is become a fist. Rap, rap, it goes. Inside, silence. Knock, knock. Ditto. Bang, bang. Also. You bluff. “Hullo!” you call, “Anyone t’home?”

  No reply. Boom! You teach the door a lesson. But nothing. Terror-veined fury claims you. You twist the knob, the door creaks open.

  Consternation.

  No Mildred, no neighbors. The kitchen devoid of all—save (shade of Marie-Celeste?) a skilletful of orange-eyed eyes, awash in sibilant butter; a flame-perched pot with a delicate volcano of coffee in its dome; a toaster ticking like a chrome-cased bomb; the table set.

  “Hey.” The cry drips feebly from your lips. “Where is every­body?” (Where, indeed?) You clump into the living room. Devoid. The
bedrooms, all—bodiless. Your next remark, wan thing? I quote.

  “What’s goin’ on here?” (Un—as you say—quote)

  Now resolution finger-dangles from the sawed-edge cliff of fear. (Quelle tasty simile) Standing at the window, heart an eighty-mile-an-hour piston, you gape down at the street again. Empty; so empty. Panic looms.

  “No!” Underground resistance again. Chin up, gauntlet down. Avant! Socratic you will plumb this poser to its roots. This Too Shall Pass!

  You betcha.

  Whirling, you greyhound to the door and exit. Pegasus could not pass you on the stairs—or make more noise. Three flights cannon-balling and the vestibule is yours.

  Confusion plus. Boxes bulging mail like any day. Delivered papers strewn as always. “Huh?” Your quasi-gibbous eyes peruse the headline. FIND STARLET TORSO IN FIRKIN. No answer there. You plunge into the street, exploring.

  One vast length of nothing, sir. One spacious, sidewalksided span of silence. (Quelle alliteration) In the middle of the street you stand, goggling. Ovez—nothing. Not one soul, one movement. You are alone—blank, marmoreal thing.

  “No!” cries the hero—that’s you. You slam the door in evidence’s face. This cannot be! There Has To Be A Reasonable Explanation. Things Like This Just Don’t Happen. (It says where?) Terror ricochets off reason’s wall and comes back courage. You’re off!

  Ah, picture you, sallow, slapdash sleuth you are, running a forty-minute mile to Main Street, pulpy legs awaggle, breath like radiator steam; The Picture Of Durance in Grey. Along the crypt-still thoroughfare you scud, hunting for a fellow soul.

  Doorbell ringing is futility you’ve found; knocking, a bootless cause; peering in at windows, inutility at its primest. Worse than inutility—guignol with its actorless scenes of a.m. enterprise—food boiling, frying, toasting, poaching; tables set and stoves alive. And even, propped on sugar bowls, the morning papers.

  But no one there to eat, serve, read.

  Onward. (Every Effect Has Its Cause) (Naturellement)

  Approaching Main Street you come upon a fresh obscurity. A halted car standing in its proper lane, hood still pulsing with engine tremors. Standing there as though its operator were waiting for the lights to change.

  Empty though. (Ice mice batten on your heart) You waver beside its open window, staring in. A bag of groceries sags beside the driver’s place; a morning paper next to that. BUTT HOLDS STARLET, reads the head. No aid there.

  “I don’t get it,” you announce. (You will, discolored thing) Painpoints etch lines around your face. Your fingers tremble, your glands secrete.

  Courage, mon passé.

  You press on again, then, apace, return to take the car. Desperate dilemmas dictate desperate deeds. (Quelle something or other) Sliding in behind the wheel, you slap the gears into mesh (The hand brake isn’t even out) and press the pedal mightily. The car leaps off with gas-fed growlings. The silence is undone.

  A thought! Hunching forward, you finger prod a silvery radio button, then, leaning back, await.

  A moment.

  “, lo-ve,” sings a woman, “lo-ve, lo-ve,” in eerie oscillating weariness, “lo-ve, lo-ve, lo-ve,”

  Somewhere, a diamond needle, groove-imprisoned, pendulums the word, untouched because unheard. A city station too. Does that mean the city is tenantless? What about—

  —the world? Yes, that too, (To you) dun, albescent, pale as witches thing.

  “, lo-ve, lo-ve, lo-ve, lo-” You cut her off, poking in another button. Silence. Another button. Ditto. Another, the same. Another. “, lo-ve, lo-ve, lo-ve,” You’re back again. Eyes frozen grapes, you snap the radio off. Nothing but nerve impalings there.

  Drive on. Drive on. Drive on and on.

  Main Street’s intersection. You signal for a turn, abash, draw in your arm. You turn—

  —and, horror-tossed, slam on the brakes, stalling the motor. Breath hisses in and chills.

  “Gudgawd!” (Literal translation)

  ’Til now there was a chamber in your brain that still housed disbelief. A chamber of contention with the facts. Q: So what was it? A: Everyone in town, by some strange rule of mob, was gone to view a movie star, the President, a fire, an accident, some incredible attraction. That was why the streets were empty, the houses extempore exited.

  But no. The length of Main Street is a humanless alley strewn with unmoving, engine-purring cars. You stare at this, candescence. You gape upon a people-reft world. You are struck dumb with cognizance.

  “No,” you mutter. (Yes) “Oh, no.” (Oh, yes) “No!” (Ah, but yes)

  Oozing, mindless, from the car, you stumble forth, stricken as a zombie. Legged on wooden struts you clump across the gutter, goggle-eyed. No, you insist, despite the obvious; No, it can’t be true. Denial breeds traction though. And gestation nears completion. In cob-webbed wombs stirs lunacy.

  “Hey!” you howl, “Hey-ey!”

  Snarling, you leap the curb and elephant your way along the sidewalk.

  First National Bank. You fling your jangled self into the pie-slice opening of its revolving door and, spinning a desperate arc, plunge inside. Yelling. “Hey-ey! HEY!”

  Silence.

  “HEY-EY!”

  The aberration of your voice handballs off marble walls, ricochets from polished v.p. desk and wriggles, troublous, between the bars of empty teller cages.

  Unnerving you. Whirling, hissing, shaking, you exit à pas de géant (Running like hell) too distraught to concentrate on stealing money.

  The street again. You rush into a woman’s shop, clods thumping on the rug. You race by rows of dress racks.

  “Hey!” you call, “Anyone here!” No one. You exit.

  An appliance store—row on row of stoves and sinks and washing machines—snowy headstones in a linoleum churchyard.

  “Hello!” you shout, “Hel-LO!” No reply. (You’ll crack soon)

  Turning, you find the street again, ice cubes dancing in your stomach. A candy store. You dash against its newsstand and headlines leap at you. STARLET WEDGED IN CRUSE; TORSO OF ACTRESS FOUND IN TUN; STARLET BODY IN DEMIJOHN. And, on one, in tiny letters, near the bottom. Strange Sighting.

  (Ain’t it the way?—wan, wishy-washy thing?)

  Where was I?

  Oh. You tear your gaze away and stare into the candy store. Empty; silent. Cups and dishes strew the counter, unattended. And hark: behind the counter, a malted mixer buzzes like an outboard motor in the distance.

  “No,” you mutter. (Thirty-forty seconds at the outside) “No. Hello! Dammit, Hel-LOOOOO!” Fury adds its rabid spine to fear.

  They can’t do this to you!

  “HEY-EY-EY-EY!”

  You stagger-swoop along the middle of Main Street, bypassing cars like raging tide around islands. “HEY-EY!” You cry havoc. “WHERE’N’TH’HELL IS EVERYBODY!”

  Breath gives out. A stitch (in time) pokes needlepoints into your side. Pupils like worlds swimming in chaos, your eyes whip around, searching. There has to be an answer. Your head yaws back and forth. There has to be an answer. Fury rises. There has to be AN ANSWER!

  “There has to be!” you scream.

  And, sired by malfunction, rage is born. (Right on schedule­)

  Hell-fire-eyed, you rush into a pottery shop.

  “HEL-LO!” you challenge. No reply. Your lips compress.

  “I said HEL-LO!” you ultimatum.

  No reply.

  Pulsing with distemper, you grab a firkin mug and let fly. Strike one! A hand-wrought chafing dish explodes into china shrapnel. The floor is sprinkled with its splinters. Angry satisfaction fires your insides.

  “Well?” you ask. Nothing.

  Your hand shoots out and grabs a miniature patella. Whiz-z-z-z!—it goes. Ca-rash! Strike two! A hail of gold-fringed porringer fragments sprays the floor and wall.

  “I SAID HELLO!” you shout. Not mad exactly; more infuriated than deranged. Arm extended, spar-like, you pound along the counter, sweeping trenchers, salvers, goblets, bowls
and cylixs into one great Dresden bomb.

  Which goes off with a glorious, ceramic detonation, pelting kaleidoscopic teeth just everywhere. Strike three! You are fulfilled.

  “There!” you yell.

  Whirling, profanations dancing on your tongue, you rush from the shop, laughing. (A laugh not wholly wholesome)

  “HEY!” you cry, “HEY-EY!” You shuck out curses at the people-less stretch of Main Street. You jump into a running car and drive along the sidewalk for a block, making a right turn into the window of a furniture store.

  “Look out!” You bound into the ruins and begin to topple chairs and sling sofa cushions at the chandeliers. “I said Hel-LO!” You kick in coffee table tops. You pick up porcelain lamps and pitch them at the walls. “HEL-L-O!”

  And so on—hoary thing.

  When next seen, hours later, you have run amuck, an abstract lamp shade for a hat, an ermine wrap around your camel’s hair clad shoulders. You have burst into a supermarket with an axe and chopped pies and breads and cookies into flotsam. You have sent thirty cars running toward the neighboring town. You have thrown fistfuls of hundred dollar bills off roofs. You have set fire to the fire department, then driven its ladder truck on Main Street, knocking over hydrants and lampposts, leaving it, finally, red and running, in the lobby of the Gaiety Theatre.

  And now you sit, wearied with rage’s labor, sprawled on a contour chair you’ve dragged into the street; watching your town go up in smoke. Thinking: Who cares, gawdammit, anyway, who cares?

  Which is—precisely, may I say?—the way we planned it.

  For there is, of course, an answer. (As you said) An Explanation For Everything. A Cause For Every Effect. (As you also said)

  We beamed down the brain waves at midnight, putting every child and woman into a semi-permanent coma. Making every man a solipsist.

  Picture it. A world of men, each one believing himself to be the only one. Panic, madness, fury—all releasing the instincts (or habits?) of destruction. Making it so easy for us to complete our costless and wholly entertaining invasion.

  Of course a good many men just stayed in bed and smiled indulgently. Men like you made up for that—you ghastly, hueless, biped, two-eyed thing.

  Phone Call from Across the Street