Read Online Hunger and Thirst by Richard Matheson - Free Book Online
Authors: Richard Matheson
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drawing back sensation. As if he could no longer adjust to being a part of the world. That was how he felt when he saw that the tiles on the floor were like the tiles in the zoo.
For he remembered the past.
He shook his head, clamped himself back inside the dungeon of the bathroom. With his eyes, he followed the crazy line of the crack that ran through the small tiles.
It was a highway, a madman’s highway. It was constructed from a blueprint drawn up in melancholia by a paranoiac engineer.
He imagined for a moment an actual man in a great, soaring building late at night bending and poring over his drawing table and meticulously, designing the blueprints for that crack through the tiles in this tiny bathroom.
Look at it run, his mind observed. Look at it meander and wander and roam across the floor like an indented snake. “
Roaming in the gloaming”
. He was humming it unconsciously.
It became conscious and he stopped and went back to his other problem.
Not consciously, not with the strained effort of study, with the teeth-clenched effort to concentrate that he used to effect when studying for college examinations. Here the work was picked at deep in the lowest mines of his brain. Patterns formed unseen. The secret invisible builders made the edifice of decision within him but he could not hear or feel their hurried steps and hammering.
Money. He knew that was the starting point. But the working out was something else.
He sat silently, looking down at himself.
I’m even, half his brain observed. Yes, I’m very even. I have two legs on each side, I mean one. And one in the middle to satisfy the dirty purists. The third leg. Pivot of such a great to do. Fulcrum of chicanery.
He drew back his army shirt and looked at it.
There you are, he thought. There you are, caught between two beefy, lard-encased thighs. Look at you, poor, misguided macaroni, your pubic hairs aglow in the dingy bulb light. Your head adrip with the rain drops of the bladder. Safety catch of the flesh machine. Subject to the whim and fancies of your mother lust. Ho, you penis. Ho.
He let his shirt drop and looked at his hairy legs.
Those are my legs, he decided. Mine. He had to repeat it. For it was hard to believe. A man could drift away and stop up his thoughts and let them lag behind like drugged children while he wandered on ahead.
Then he was without thought and stared with bovine eyes, wondering nothing, seeing nothing, knowing nothing. And his body was someone else then. It did not belong to him. That underwear. It wasn’t his. It was someone else underwear. He was a watching specter, hovering and looking in the bathroom reek. He was nothing, certainly not an underwear bearing animal.
It is this, the planning went on unfettered by his fancies and rising to the top for a second. You simply must have this money. There’s no other point to argue. And the end justified the means. Therefore…
He ran a finger over his legs. The finger pushed the dark hairs out of its way. Then the hairs curled back into place. He did the same thing again.
He pressed his finger into his left leg. He pressed hard. Then he pulled away the finger and looked at the white spot. Me? He kept asking. Me?
He took hold of his penis. It was warm and soft. Incredible, he thought, here in this center of nothing, in this cavern of green plaster and hanging odors. I hold a penis, warm and malleable It must be a sign, a message from up there.
He looked up there.
There was a cockroach on the far wall, hanging head down over the bathtub.
Its quivering antennae reached out and searched, brushing threadlike over the plaster. He watched the cockroach as it walked in tiny spurts. Beastie, he thought, thing that goes bump in the night. He thought of Kafka’s hero and wondered what his reaction would be if that cockroach were to suddenly swell up and be as large as him.
The thought of it dropping heavily into the bathtub and then clambering over the side and reaching
For he remembered the past.
He shook his head, clamped himself back inside the dungeon of the bathroom. With his eyes, he followed the crazy line of the crack that ran through the small tiles.
It was a highway, a madman’s highway. It was constructed from a blueprint drawn up in melancholia by a paranoiac engineer.
He imagined for a moment an actual man in a great, soaring building late at night bending and poring over his drawing table and meticulously, designing the blueprints for that crack through the tiles in this tiny bathroom.
Look at it run, his mind observed. Look at it meander and wander and roam across the floor like an indented snake. “
Roaming in the gloaming”
. He was humming it unconsciously.
It became conscious and he stopped and went back to his other problem.
Not consciously, not with the strained effort of study, with the teeth-clenched effort to concentrate that he used to effect when studying for college examinations. Here the work was picked at deep in the lowest mines of his brain. Patterns formed unseen. The secret invisible builders made the edifice of decision within him but he could not hear or feel their hurried steps and hammering.
Money. He knew that was the starting point. But the working out was something else.
He sat silently, looking down at himself.
I’m even, half his brain observed. Yes, I’m very even. I have two legs on each side, I mean one. And one in the middle to satisfy the dirty purists. The third leg. Pivot of such a great to do. Fulcrum of chicanery.
He drew back his army shirt and looked at it.
There you are, he thought. There you are, caught between two beefy, lard-encased thighs. Look at you, poor, misguided macaroni, your pubic hairs aglow in the dingy bulb light. Your head adrip with the rain drops of the bladder. Safety catch of the flesh machine. Subject to the whim and fancies of your mother lust. Ho, you penis. Ho.
He let his shirt drop and looked at his hairy legs.
Those are my legs, he decided. Mine. He had to repeat it. For it was hard to believe. A man could drift away and stop up his thoughts and let them lag behind like drugged children while he wandered on ahead.
Then he was without thought and stared with bovine eyes, wondering nothing, seeing nothing, knowing nothing. And his body was someone else then. It did not belong to him. That underwear. It wasn’t his. It was someone else underwear. He was a watching specter, hovering and looking in the bathroom reek. He was nothing, certainly not an underwear bearing animal.
It is this, the planning went on unfettered by his fancies and rising to the top for a second. You simply must have this money. There’s no other point to argue. And the end justified the means. Therefore…
He ran a finger over his legs. The finger pushed the dark hairs out of its way. Then the hairs curled back into place. He did the same thing again.
He pressed his finger into his left leg. He pressed hard. Then he pulled away the finger and looked at the white spot. Me? He kept asking. Me?
He took hold of his penis. It was warm and soft. Incredible, he thought, here in this center of nothing, in this cavern of green plaster and hanging odors. I hold a penis, warm and malleable It must be a sign, a message from up there.
He looked up there.
There was a cockroach on the far wall, hanging head down over the bathtub.
Its quivering antennae reached out and searched, brushing threadlike over the plaster. He watched the cockroach as it walked in tiny spurts. Beastie, he thought, thing that goes bump in the night. He thought of Kafka’s hero and wondered what his reaction would be if that cockroach were to suddenly swell up and be as large as him.
The thought of it dropping heavily into the bathtub and then clambering over the side and reaching
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