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Authors: Terry Richard Bazes
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pretty much the same.”
She turned and placed her scuffed black boot on the first step.
“It don’t pay to get too nosy, mister,” she said. “That fella Darrell upstairs made that mistake. One day Uncle Mosher here got loose and folks got talkin’ about a swamp thing. Newspapers got real curious. So Darrell Butz came a-snoopin’. That was back in nineteen and sixty-eight. Ever since then, Darrell’s been our guest.” She held her hand to her back, trudged up another five steps, but then stopped again to wheeze: “I used to think Darrell would come in handy. But Darrell, see, he don’t have good kidneys neither.”
Chapter VIII.
In which the Prisoner bares his bum.
Smedlow awoke to find himself face down on a heap of straw with a feeble stream of daylight falling down upon him from a tiny window. He had no clear sense of how long he had lain there and only the foggiest memory of the goo they had forced him to drink, the sudden spinning nausea and the clicking of the lock. His beard, as he felt it, seemed like two days’ growth -- maybe three. During this time his captors had left, beside his bed, a Coke bottle of water and a clump of Velveeta on which ants and houseflies had begun to congregate. He had no sooner stuffed his face and slaked his thirst, than the dizziness returned -- and if he had not fallen back upon the straw, he would almost certainly have stepped upon the snakes. For he had seen at least a dozen of them coiled in the corner -- in a variety of colors like a rainbow of lifesavers.
The sight of them made him draw back farther on his heap of straw -- although, come to think of it, there might be even more of them sleeping here in the straw itself. Gingerly he drew himself into a ball, clutching at his knees. Was there any way out of this horrid place? The little window far above him -- if he could somehow climb up there -- was obviously much too narrow. The door, just opposite him, was iron-plated and crossbolted. But even if it hadn’t been, he would hardly have dared to walk across the floor. In fact, the more he thought about it, the very dimensions of his cell now began to toy with his chronic claustrophobia: for it was excessively small, like a gent’s room in a hellish gas station, which it also seemed to resemble for general foulness -- the filthy porcelain of a nearby washbasin, a cigarette butt floating in a seatless commode.
He had read somewhere -- hadn’t he? -- that reptiles are frightened of fire. It was this happy thought which made him now rummage through his jacket for his lighter -- only to discover that his wallet, his pager, his calculator, his keys, even his monogrammed handkerchief -- in fact every vestige of his former identity -- had been carefully removed.
At last he reached into his pants’ pocket. It somehow seemed appropriate that this stupid silver lighter, which beaming Agnes had given him and with which he was supposed to have been absolutely delighted on the very birthday when he had expected her skinflint father to make him a partner in his dental practice, should have turned out to be the only so-called valuable his captors hadn’t taken. He flicked it open, twice thumbed the wheel -- and it leapt into flame. How fitting that its only purpose was to reveal the mildew on his prison walls.
But then he looked more closely. For by the flickering of its light he now beheld a myriad of crossed-off lines scratched into the slimy stone of the wall beside him and read the name “Abner Cootes, age 19, 9th Infantry”; the name was written in large block capitals and beneath it, barely legible and in smaller letters, were the words “ water badd, ” “ snaykes got Selby and Powell ” and “ Abigail my Luv. ”
Some illiterate yokel, no doubt, had written this. Oh, it was easy enough to imagine the union blue of his uniform, the acned face of troubled youth. Had they
She turned and placed her scuffed black boot on the first step.
“It don’t pay to get too nosy, mister,” she said. “That fella Darrell upstairs made that mistake. One day Uncle Mosher here got loose and folks got talkin’ about a swamp thing. Newspapers got real curious. So Darrell Butz came a-snoopin’. That was back in nineteen and sixty-eight. Ever since then, Darrell’s been our guest.” She held her hand to her back, trudged up another five steps, but then stopped again to wheeze: “I used to think Darrell would come in handy. But Darrell, see, he don’t have good kidneys neither.”
Chapter VIII.
In which the Prisoner bares his bum.
Smedlow awoke to find himself face down on a heap of straw with a feeble stream of daylight falling down upon him from a tiny window. He had no clear sense of how long he had lain there and only the foggiest memory of the goo they had forced him to drink, the sudden spinning nausea and the clicking of the lock. His beard, as he felt it, seemed like two days’ growth -- maybe three. During this time his captors had left, beside his bed, a Coke bottle of water and a clump of Velveeta on which ants and houseflies had begun to congregate. He had no sooner stuffed his face and slaked his thirst, than the dizziness returned -- and if he had not fallen back upon the straw, he would almost certainly have stepped upon the snakes. For he had seen at least a dozen of them coiled in the corner -- in a variety of colors like a rainbow of lifesavers.
The sight of them made him draw back farther on his heap of straw -- although, come to think of it, there might be even more of them sleeping here in the straw itself. Gingerly he drew himself into a ball, clutching at his knees. Was there any way out of this horrid place? The little window far above him -- if he could somehow climb up there -- was obviously much too narrow. The door, just opposite him, was iron-plated and crossbolted. But even if it hadn’t been, he would hardly have dared to walk across the floor. In fact, the more he thought about it, the very dimensions of his cell now began to toy with his chronic claustrophobia: for it was excessively small, like a gent’s room in a hellish gas station, which it also seemed to resemble for general foulness -- the filthy porcelain of a nearby washbasin, a cigarette butt floating in a seatless commode.
He had read somewhere -- hadn’t he? -- that reptiles are frightened of fire. It was this happy thought which made him now rummage through his jacket for his lighter -- only to discover that his wallet, his pager, his calculator, his keys, even his monogrammed handkerchief -- in fact every vestige of his former identity -- had been carefully removed.
At last he reached into his pants’ pocket. It somehow seemed appropriate that this stupid silver lighter, which beaming Agnes had given him and with which he was supposed to have been absolutely delighted on the very birthday when he had expected her skinflint father to make him a partner in his dental practice, should have turned out to be the only so-called valuable his captors hadn’t taken. He flicked it open, twice thumbed the wheel -- and it leapt into flame. How fitting that its only purpose was to reveal the mildew on his prison walls.
But then he looked more closely. For by the flickering of its light he now beheld a myriad of crossed-off lines scratched into the slimy stone of the wall beside him and read the name “Abner Cootes, age 19, 9th Infantry”; the name was written in large block capitals and beneath it, barely legible and in smaller letters, were the words “ water badd, ” “ snaykes got Selby and Powell ” and “ Abigail my Luv. ”
Some illiterate yokel, no doubt, had written this. Oh, it was easy enough to imagine the union blue of his uniform, the acned face of troubled youth. Had they
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