Lizard World (18 page)

      
“Now it ain’t like you was dead,” yelled his captor from the front seat, figurin’ it was only right to cheer the sucker up and takin’ his eyes off the road for just a sec so that he could see the prisoner in the rearview mirror. Hell, that cut around his head was healin’ up real good. All that mess and swellin’ was nearly gone. Only a few more days and he could snip out all them stitches. A prolonged honk roused him, and just in time Lem looked ahead to see the yellow cab cut him off, forcing him to slam on his brakes, change lanes, floor the gas, cut back in front, and jam down the other pedal at the red light. “Asshole!” shouted Lem, giving him the finger as Smedlow’s head smacked forward into a crystal decanter on the mahogany bar.

      
“Hell, now I just can’t let you go an’ bust yer goddamn stitches,” said Lem, taking advantage of the red light to open the front door, get out, open the back door, push the prisoner up and finally click on his seat belt: Smedlow caught a ghostly glimpse of his wrinkled reflection as the congested traffic, gaudy lights and brazen marquees of midtown appeared in the tinted rectangle of his window.

   
 
    
        
WHIP KITTENS OF SODOM,

said the large block letters.

   
 
   
  
HORNY SLUTS LAND ON MARS

      
Lookin’ at the signs he near forgot where he was goin’ -- forcing him to hang such a screeching left toward the highway that old Blitz, curled up on the seat beside him, decided to give up on sleep, contenting himself instead with a stretch and scratch and a noseful of cold air at the sliver of open window. Blitz sniffed in the heavy damp of rain as they merged onto the highway and, when they turned off the interstate an hour later, the frozen damp of snow, a few nose-stinging flakes, had become a steady fall of feathers by the time the headlights chased them down the long, bumping dirt road to the dump.

”Now
don’t you just hate takin’ out the garbage?” asked Lem, using all his strength to drag out the heavy bag.

      
A moment later and Smedlow himself was aware of being yanked up rudely from his seat, thrown -- as limp as a ragdoll -- over Lem’s shoulder and dropped into a waiting wheelchair. The large flakes were falling, with silent determination, on a necropolis of crushed cars, gutted sofas, rusted toasters and derelict tv’s piled high like so many murdered cyclopses. That goddamn dog -- whom Smedlow remembered only too well -- jumped out of the front seat carrying a long, thick and still meaty bone. With renewed horror Smedlow watched it being carried by those yellow teeth while the animal wagged its tail, sniffed the ground, and raised its leg beside a heap of treadless tires.

      
“What the hell!” said Lem, trying to dig the crabgrass with his shovel, “this damn ground’s all froze! Now ain’t that just my stinkin’ luck?”

      
A pickaxe, retrieved from the limousine’s trunk, bit into the earth with more success, eventually loosening chunks of sod which the shovel pried up, lifted -- and dropped into a pile beside the deepening pit. But the work was slow and a few more inches of snow had fallen by the time Smedlow saw his captor throw the shovel down. The next moment he was conscious of being shoved, wheeled quickly past the limousine’s black hood and glaring headlights -- and brought close enough to look down at the chocolate dirt waiting at the bottom of the narrow trench.

      
“Well, it sure looks like the time has come to split you boys up,” said Lem as the dog came closer, sniffing at the large green plastic bag.

      
Smedlow wanted to say a few words on behalf of the deceased, something appreciative about the many pleasures his body had given him, about what a very good home it had been during all those years he had abused it and taken it for granted. But once again his larynx failed him and he was constrained to watch the tumbling of the bag and to hear its gentle thud with the horrified impotence of a silent scream.

Chapter VIII.

In which the Dentist drowses and his Lordship wakens.

It was
that monster woman Ligeia, dressed in the white pinafore and lace cap of a chambermaid, who brought him his breakfast tray the following morning. Suddenly awakening to her double chin and sagging bust was unpleasant enough. But the shock was worsened by the observation that now she waddled faster, that her swollen ankles were much thinner, and that the sickly yellow of her skin had been replaced by an equally unnatural orange. The thought that his own precious organs had worked this transformation, that even now as she poured his tea they labored in the service of her blood and urine, was enough to shake Smedlow from his drowsiness. But was he still Smedlow? All at once his dreams -- a low-cut bodice, a heaving bosom in a formal garden -- receded and the horrors of his own burial came rushing back.

      
Once again he tried to scream, to flail his arms, to make some muscles of this hideous body express the anguish of his plight. He watched her bitch eyes look up from buttering his toast to relish the completeness of his torment. At last he did manage to blink his lids and gently whimper. But otherwise his paralysis was wretchedly complete -- and in the frenzy of his stifled horror she curtsied.

      
If she had beaten his buttocks with a wirebrush, as she had done before, it would have been far better than this mocking courtesy. Why exactly had she brought him tea which he couldn’t drink -- and scrambled eggs, bacon, sausages, kippers, toast, and orange marmalade which he couldn’t possibly eat? Was that nitwit Lem going to shove it down his throat?

      
“Now don’t you think for one minute, mister, I like to fetch yer grub and and change yer goddamn diapers. So you just play it smart and be a real good boy.”

      
It wasn’t until after her huge thighs and broad rump had waddled out the door that Smedlow noticed all the paintings. The night before, after his captors had removed his blindfold and fiddled with his stitches, after they had skewered his arm with the intravenous drip and left him to the weight of sleep, he had only vaguely seen some shadowed portraits as he drifted off. Now, in the morning light, he could see that there were several of these monumental oils -- a gold-framed gallery of haughty faces, powdered wigs, flintlock guns and hunting dogs. But it was the painting at the foot of his bed that most attracted his attention.

      
It was, like most of the others, a hunting scene. While a bucolic vista of hills and hedgerows stretched into the background, the foreground was occupied by the hunting party who, judging from the fresh slaughter at their feet, had rested from their pastime for a family portrait. The proud and fleshy father of this family, his white satin pants gleaming, his black boot upon the antler of a dead buck, stared back at Smedlow with ruddy and
stupid complacency. His lady, a forbidding woman with a face only slightly less horsey than that of the chestnut mare behind her, stood beside her lord, her right hand on the shoulder of her eldest son, a fat and sober diminutive of his father. But it was the other boy in the picture, standing to his brother’s right and in his portly shadow, whose sallow face and sunken eyes were so terribly disquieting. Smaller and slighter than his brother, this was a boy who would not be mastered by his little wig and damask waistcoat, a face of proud and sickly malice.

      
It was only now -- beneath the gilt frame of this unsettling painting, beneath the gilt railing of his canopied bedstead -- that Smedlow finally saw his feet. His own feet, as he remembered them, had never (owing to the shortness of his legs) protruded beyond the sheets and blankets. But these new legs were apparently far longer, so much so that now two brown and wrinkled feet were exposed, right up to their scarred ankles, beyond the silken hills and valleys of the bedclothes. The hideousness of these feet was of a far different order than the reptilian repulsiveness of his hands. For what made them so hideous was not their ugliness but their almost feminine delicacy.

      
He had spent several moments repelled by the decay of their shapely smallness, when he heard the voices whispering in the hall, speaking about the seizure, about the hospital, saying that now, thank God, the old gentleman was resting quietly, that he -- whoever he now was -- was not to be disturbed. It seemed, from what they were saying, that he was someone terribly important. He had already guessed that he was rich. The limousine, the gigantic ruby, the paintings, the silver tea service, this garish Louis Quatorze bed, had all made that absolutely obvious. Up till now he had been so absorbed by the horror of his plight that he hadn’t realized what he’d been given. Why, he might have a yacht, a plane, a castle -- maybe even a private island.

      
The voices in the hall stopped whispering. Footsteps clicked into the distance. A faraway clock chimed the quarter hour.

      
No, this disgusting body’s money did not belong to him. Absolutely not: he would not now -- must not ever -- allow himself to think of this abominable carcass as his own. Instead, he would barricade himself against it, build a mental wall which nothing -- not any amount of money -- could possibly breach. Oh, they thought they had him beaten, he told himself: but Smedlow the steadfast, Smedlow the invincible, would now and forever remain Smedlow. -- But what if, for example, these appalling feet were to start itching? Would it be his itch?

      
“Well now, don’t you look all warm an’ comfy,” said Lem, suddenly bursting into his room, flicking on the light and pulling up a chair: “lyin’ in yer big bed there like you was some kind a goddamn king. Folks to bring yer grub. Folks to change yer diapers. Nothin’ to do all day but lie around an’ snooze. Shucks,” he said, looking down at the breakfast tray: “you didn’t eat nothin’! How you gonna get all big an’ strong if you don’t eat yer grub?”

      
Smedlow watched him pick up the fork, lick his lips, and shovel in a heap of scrambled eggs. “Why,” he said, swallowing it down, “I bet you was thinkin’ I forgot all about you. But you an’ me, we’re pals through thick and thin, ain’t we?” Reluctantly Smedlow watched him bolt down the bacon, the sausages, the kippers and the toast -- and then gulp down all the juice.

      
“You don’t talk much no more,” said his tormentor, stuffing in more eggs: “but I know yer in there somewhere. -- Say,” he said, putting down his fork, “you mind if I smoke? Nothin’ like a good smoke to finish off a meal. Now where’d I put that stogie?” And in an instant he had plunged into the pocket of his dirty jeans and produced a well-chewed butt and a familiar silver lighter.

      
My lighter! Uselessly trying to scream, Smedlow stared at his own precious initials -- MNS -- etched into its silver surface.

      
“Well,” said Lem, flicking it open, thumbing the wheel and lighting up: “I sure am glad we had this little chat. Cause you an’ me is such good pals that I just figured I oughta let you know that no matter how bad and hairy things is gonna get, we’re in this together, that I’m gonna stick to you like goddamn fly paper cause that’s what friends is for.”

      
He had decided, after that, to keep his eyes closed. At least this much was something he could actually do. He had also -- once -- been able to move the tongue and -- twice -- to produce a few faint whimpers from the larynx. The rest of the carcass, admittedly, still eluded his control. But the eyes and eyelids had by now completely surrendered to the strength and superiority of his will. It was a small domain, it was true, a single captured garrison, but it was his: Smedlowland. And so, if they were going to persist in tormenting him, then at least he could shut them out. They were, of course, dismally, incomparably stupid. But even they might eventually come to understand that he had now imposed a limit on their tyranny, that he was still a force to be reckoned with -- that he had decided to resist.

. . . There
was no saying how long he had slept. But from the darkness of his closed lids he could tell that night had fallen. He felt certain that some noise had awakened him. Yes, that was the creaking of the door, the clicking of the lock -- and those were evidently footsteps. The footsteps were now moving away from him: someone seemed to be opening drawers, closing them, dropping things on a table, making quite a racket. Whoever it was apparently didn’t give a good goddamn if he was sleeping -- or perhaps even wanted him to waken. But no, he absolutely refused to open his eyes: he would never, ever, give them that much satisfaction.