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Authors: Richard Matheson
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out for him with its fish pole antennae made him shudder.
His face grew hard. He swept away everything, crying out without a sound – Why do I think! I want to stop thinking!
The answer formed quickly. Some sort of answer always did.
Because you are poor, it said, because you are victimized. That is why you think on and on.
No. He had to throw over the answer. It was too pat, too encompassing. He did not trust it.
Inner machinations spreading. Inner plans creeping into light. The reasoning went on, breaking surface. Well, it was true. Wasn’t it true? Leo didn’t love him. That was a lie right from the start, a rationalization on her part to coalesce her libido with her imagined moral code. And, whether she was aware of it or not, she was out to get what she could from him.
Who else was there? Lynn? No, Lynn didn’t care anymore either. That was a thing of the past; as dead as a rusty doornail. And he didn’t like Lynn. The antipathies evened out and flattened the surface of their once intense relationship.
There was no one else.
He stared at the floor angrily and bitterly, feeling again the sense of betrayal that had some upon him with more and more frequency in the past few years. A sense that he had not been given the chance others had been given. A sense that all events conspired to defeat him.
Looking up, he snatched a piece of slimy-bottomed soap from the sink and hurled it at the cockroach.
The gold-green insect bulleted down the wall and disappeared behind the bathtub.
Bastard! He raged,
stupid, futile bastard
!
And his writing was no good. It was impossible. How could he write when he lived in this trap of hopes? Was it possible to write when bugs did dances on the walls, when cars and busses roared and yelled out their deafening growls twenty-four hours a day and the elevated trains came grinding and screeching into the station, disgorging people, waking him, distracting him, whipping him down the path to failure?
“No!”
was the answer, half shouted in a voice hollow and dry.
No. You can’t write under such conditions. No. He said it again to emphasize it on himself and was almost content in accepting the fact. At least it made excuses easier and gave the entire problem an air of simplicity, of understandable justification. No matter what I do, he told himself, I have it coming to me. It was not possible to hope for any other good in this haven for all things bad.
He was sick of the bathroom.
He got up quickly and jerked paper from the rack. It snapped at him like an irate turtle. He wiped and dropped the paper down and flushed the toilet. Flushing this, the thought occurred to him, is like trying to make a horse’s ass fragrant by dusting it.
He unfastened the door lock and went into the dim, dust-hanging hallway.
Then at the door to his room…
He stopped, his heart suddenly pounding.
No seeming reason. The joints were invisible. What had formed the links was unknown to him.
But, abruptly, he thought of the old man in the pawn shop. The old man with his money in a lead box. The crouched ugly old man with the hair-sprouting wart on his chin. The old man who would offer him nine dollars for the watch his mother gave him.
Money and the old man.
Quickly rising now, a strange excitement possessed him as he went in his room and locked himself in. Like some trembling conspirator who had suddenly deduced the method by which to overthrow the tyrant’s throne.
How fantastic! He thought elatedly. How utterly fantastic that I never thought of it before.
He walked quickly to the bed and sat down, leaned back against the head that was like a prison window. He heard an elevated train come grating to a halt and there was thunder far away.
You think in layers.
That was it.
Incredible that he’d never realized it before. You think in layers and each layer you build up or have built up for you makes you more a victim of society’s mores. Each added layer weighs you down more, makes you more
His face grew hard. He swept away everything, crying out without a sound – Why do I think! I want to stop thinking!
The answer formed quickly. Some sort of answer always did.
Because you are poor, it said, because you are victimized. That is why you think on and on.
No. He had to throw over the answer. It was too pat, too encompassing. He did not trust it.
Inner machinations spreading. Inner plans creeping into light. The reasoning went on, breaking surface. Well, it was true. Wasn’t it true? Leo didn’t love him. That was a lie right from the start, a rationalization on her part to coalesce her libido with her imagined moral code. And, whether she was aware of it or not, she was out to get what she could from him.
Who else was there? Lynn? No, Lynn didn’t care anymore either. That was a thing of the past; as dead as a rusty doornail. And he didn’t like Lynn. The antipathies evened out and flattened the surface of their once intense relationship.
There was no one else.
He stared at the floor angrily and bitterly, feeling again the sense of betrayal that had some upon him with more and more frequency in the past few years. A sense that he had not been given the chance others had been given. A sense that all events conspired to defeat him.
Looking up, he snatched a piece of slimy-bottomed soap from the sink and hurled it at the cockroach.
The gold-green insect bulleted down the wall and disappeared behind the bathtub.
Bastard! He raged,
stupid, futile bastard
!
And his writing was no good. It was impossible. How could he write when he lived in this trap of hopes? Was it possible to write when bugs did dances on the walls, when cars and busses roared and yelled out their deafening growls twenty-four hours a day and the elevated trains came grinding and screeching into the station, disgorging people, waking him, distracting him, whipping him down the path to failure?
“No!”
was the answer, half shouted in a voice hollow and dry.
No. You can’t write under such conditions. No. He said it again to emphasize it on himself and was almost content in accepting the fact. At least it made excuses easier and gave the entire problem an air of simplicity, of understandable justification. No matter what I do, he told himself, I have it coming to me. It was not possible to hope for any other good in this haven for all things bad.
He was sick of the bathroom.
He got up quickly and jerked paper from the rack. It snapped at him like an irate turtle. He wiped and dropped the paper down and flushed the toilet. Flushing this, the thought occurred to him, is like trying to make a horse’s ass fragrant by dusting it.
He unfastened the door lock and went into the dim, dust-hanging hallway.
Then at the door to his room…
He stopped, his heart suddenly pounding.
No seeming reason. The joints were invisible. What had formed the links was unknown to him.
But, abruptly, he thought of the old man in the pawn shop. The old man with his money in a lead box. The crouched ugly old man with the hair-sprouting wart on his chin. The old man who would offer him nine dollars for the watch his mother gave him.
Money and the old man.
Quickly rising now, a strange excitement possessed him as he went in his room and locked himself in. Like some trembling conspirator who had suddenly deduced the method by which to overthrow the tyrant’s throne.
How fantastic! He thought elatedly. How utterly fantastic that I never thought of it before.
He walked quickly to the bed and sat down, leaned back against the head that was like a prison window. He heard an elevated train come grating to a halt and there was thunder far away.
You think in layers.
That was it.
Incredible that he’d never realized it before. You think in layers and each layer you build up or have built up for you makes you more a victim of society’s mores. Each added layer weighs you down more, makes you more
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