Sci Fiction Classics Volume 4 (24 page)

The beast does not sleep, therefore I do not sleep. At first the change
came upon me once a week and then twice … but in recent months it
has been coming faster and faster, now six or seven times a week, and
furthermore I can
will
the change. Involuntary at first, overtaking
me like a stray bullet, it now seems to be within my control as my power
and facility increase. A
latent
characteristic then, some recessive
gene which peeked its way out shyly at the age of twenty-five, first with
humility and then with growing power, and, finally as I became accustomed
to the power, it fell within my control.

I can now become the beast whenever I wish.

Now it is not the beast but I who pokes his way from the covers during the
hours of despair and lurches his way to the bathroom; standing before that
one mirror, I call the change upon myself, ring the changes, and the
beast, then, confronts me, a tentacle raised as if in greeting or
repudiation. Shrugging, I sprint down the stairs and into the city. At
dawn I return. In between that time—

—I make my travels

My travels, my errands! Over manhole covers, sprinting as if filled with
helium (the beast is powerful; the beast has endless stamina) in and out
of the blocks of the West Side, vaulting to heights on abandoned stoops,
then into the gutter again, cutting a swath through the city, ducking the
occasional prowl cars which come through indolently, swinging out of sight
behind gates to avoid garbage trucks, no discovery ever having been made
of the beast in all the months that this has been going on … and
between the evasions I do my business.

Pardon. Pardon if you will. I do not do
my
business. The beast does
his
business.

I must separate the beast and myself because the one is not the other and
I have very little to
do
with the beast although, of course, I am
he. And he is me.

And attack them in the darkness.

Seize hapless pedestrians or dawn drunks by the throat, coming up from
their rear flank, diving upon them then with facility and ease, sweeping
upon them to clap a hand upon throat or groin with a touch as sure and
cunning as any I have ever known, and then, bringing them to their knees,
straddling them in the gutter, I—

Well, I—

—Well, now, is it necessary for me to say what I do? Yes, it is
necessary for me to say, I suppose; these recollections are not careless
nor are they calculated but merely an attempt, as it were, to set the
record straight. The rumors, reports, and evasions about the conduct of
the beast have reached the status of full-scale lies (there is not a crew
of assassins loose in the streets but merely one; there is not a carefully
organized plan to terrorize the city but merely one beast, one humble,
hard-working animal wreaking his justice), so it is to be said that as I
throttle the lives and misery out of them, I often
turn them over
so that they can confront the beast, see what it is doing to them, and
that I see in their eyes past the horror, the heartbreak, the beating
farewell signal of their mortality.

But beyond that I see something else.

Let me tell you of this, it is crucial: I see an acceptance so enormous as
almost to defy in all of its acceptance because it is religious. The peace
that passeth all understanding darts through their eyes and finally passes
through them, exiting in the last breath of life as with a crumpling sigh
they die against me. I must have killed hundreds, no, I do not want to
exaggerate, it is not right, I must have killed in the high seventies. At
first I kept a chart of my travels and accomplishments, but when it verged
into the high twenties I realized that this was insane, leaving physical
evidence of any sort of my accomplishments that is, and furthermore, past
that ninth murder or the nineteenth there is no longer a feeling of
victory but only
necessity.
It is purely business.

All of it has been purely business.

Business in any event for the beast. He needs to kill as I need to
breathe, that creature within me who I was always in the process of
becoming (all the strangeness I felt as a child I now attribute to the
embryonic form of the beast, beating and huddling its growing way within)
takes the lives of humans as casually as I take my midday sandwich and
drink in the local cafeteria before passing on to my dismal and clerkly
affairs at the Bureau, accumulating time toward the pension credits that
will be mine after twenty or thirty years. The beast needs to kill; he
draws his strength from murder as I do mine from food and since I am
merely his tenant during these struggles, a helpless (but alertly
interested) altar which dwells within the beast watching all that goes on,
I can take no responsibility myself for what has happened but put it
squarely on him where it belongs.

Perhaps I should have turned myself in for treatment or seen a
psychiatrist of some kind when all this began, but what would have been
the point of it? What? They would not have believed that I was possessed;
they would have thought me harmlessly crazy, and the alternative, if they
did believe me, would have been much worse: implication, imprisonment,
fury. I could have convinced them. I know that now, when I became strong
enough to will myself into becoming the beast, I could have, in their very
chambers, turned myself into that monster and then they would have
believed, would have taken my fears for certainty … but the beast,
manic in his goals, would have fallen upon those hapless psychiatrists,
interns, or social workers as he fell upon all of his nighttime victims
and what then?

What then? He murders as casually and skillfully as I annotate my filings
at the Bureau. He is impossible to dissuade. No, I could not have done
that. The beast and I, sentenced to dwell throughout eternity or at least
through the length of my projected life span: there may be another
judgment on this someday of some weight, but I cannot be concerned with
that now. Why should I confess? What is there to confess? Built so deeply
into the culture—I am a thoughtful man and have pondered this long
despite my lack of formal educational credits—as to be part of the
madness is the belief that confession is in itself expiation, but I do not
believe this. The admission of dreadful acts is merely to compound them
through multiple refraction and lies are thus more necessary than the
truth in order to make the world work.

Oh, how I believe this. How I do believe it.

I have attempted discussions with the beast. This is not easy, but at the
moment of transfer there is a slow, stunning instant when the mask of his
features has not settled upon him fully and it is possible for me, however
weakly, to speak. "Why must you do this?" I ask him. "This is murder, mass
murder. These are human beings, you know, it really is quite dreadful." My
little voice pipes weakly as my own force diminishes and the beast,
transmogrified, stands before the mirror, waving his tentacles, flexing
his powerful limbs, and says then (he speaks a perfect English when he
desires, although largely he does not desire to speak), "Don't be a fool.
This is my destiny, and besides,
I
am not human, so this is not my
problem."

This is unanswerable; it is already muted by transfer. I burrow within,
and the beast takes to the streets singing and crouching, ready once again
for his tasks. Why does he need to murder? I understand that his lust for
this is as gross and simple as my own for less dreadful events; it is an
urge as much a part of him as that toward respiration. The beast is an
innocent creature, immaculately conceived. He goes to do murder as his
victim goes to drink. He sees no shades of moral inference or dismay even
in the bloodiest and most terrible of the strangulations but simply does
what must be done with the necessary force. Never more. Some nights he has
killed ten. The streets of the city scatter north and south with his
victims.

But his victims! Ah, they have, so many of them, been waiting for murder
so long, dreaming of it, touching it in the night (as I touch the
self-same beast), that this must be the basis of that acceptance which
passes through them at the moment of impact. They have been looking, these
victims, for an event so climactic that they will be able to cede
responsibility for their lives, and here, in the act of murder, have they
at last that confirmation. Some of them embraced the beast with passion as
he made his last strike. Others have opened themselves to him on the
pavement and pointed at their vitals. For the city, the very energy of
that city or so I believe this now through my musings, is based upon the
omnipresence of death, and to die is to become at last completely at one
with the darkened heart of a city constructed for death. I become too
philosophical. I will not attempt to justify myself further.

For there
is
no justification. What happens, happens. The beast has
taught me at least this much (along with so much else). Tonight we come
upon the city with undue haste; the beast has not been out for two nights
previous, having burrowed within with a disinclination for pursuit,
unavailable even to summons, but now at four in the morning of this
coldest of all the nights of winter he has pounded within me, screaming
for release, and I have allowed him his way with some eagerness because (I
admit this truly) I too have on his behalf missed the thrill of the hunt.

Now the beast races down the pavements, his breath a plume of fire against
the ice. At the first intersection we see a young woman paused for the
light, a valise clutched against her, one hand upraised for a taxi that
will not come. (I know it will not come.) An early dawn evacuee from the
city, or so I murmur to the beast. Perhaps it would be best to leave this
one alone since she looks spare and there must be tastier meat in the
alleys beyond … but the creature does not listen. He listens to
nothing I have to say. This is the core of his strength, and my own
repudiation is nothing as to his.

For listen, listen now: he sweeps into his own purposes in a way which can
only make me fill with admiration. He comes upon the girl then. He comes
upon her. He takes her from behind.

He takes her from behind.

She struggles in his grasp like an insect caught within a huge,
indifferent hand, all legs and activity, grasping and groping, and he
casually kicks the valise from her hand, pulls her into an alley for a
more sweeping inspection, the woman's skull pinned against his flat, oily
chest, her little hands and feet waving, and she is screaming in a way so
dismal and hopeless that I know she will never be heard and she must know
this as well. The scream stops. Small moans and pleas which have pieced
out the spaces amid the sound stop too and with an explosion of strength
she twists within his grasp, then hurls herself against his chest and
looks upward toward his face to see at last the face of the assassin about
which she must surely have dreamed, the bitch, in so many nights. She sees
the beast. He sees her.

I too know her.

She works at the Bureau. She is a fellow clerk two aisles down and three
over, a pretty woman, not indifferent in her gestures but rather, as so
few of these bitches at the Bureau are, kind and lively, kind even to me.
Her eyes are never droll but sad as she looks upon me. I have never spoken
to her other than pleasantries, but I feel,
feel,
that if I were
ever to seek her out, she would not humiliate me.

"Oh," I say within the spaces of the beast, trapped and helpless as I look
upon her, "oh, oh."

"No!" she says, looking upon us. "Oh no, not you, it can't be you!" and
the beast's grasp tightens upon her then. "It can't be you! Don't say that
it's
you
doing this to me!" and I look upon her then with
tenderness and infinite understanding, knowing that I am helpless to save
her and thus relieved of the responsibility but saddened too. Saddened
because the beast has never caught a victim known to me before. I say in a
small voice which she will never hear (because I am trapped inside), "I'm
sorry, I'm sorry but it's got to be done, you see. How much of this can I
take anymore?" and her eyes, I know this, her eyes lighten with
understanding, darken too, lighten and darken with the knowledge I have
imparted.

And as the pressure begins then, the pressure that in ten seconds will
snap her throat and leave her dead, as the freezing colors of the city
descend, we confront one another in isolation, our eyes meeting, touch
meeting, and absolutely nothing to be done about it. Her neck breaks, and
in many many many ways I must admit—I will admit everything—this
has been the most satisfying victim of them all. Of them all.

The End

© 1975 by Ultimate Publications, Inc. Originally published in
Fantastic
.
Reprinted by permission of the author.

Pamela Sargent

I cannot remember ever having asked my mother outright about the
tattooed numbers. We must have known very early that we should not
ask; perhaps my brother Simon or I had said something inadvertently as
very small children and had seen the look of sorrow on her face at the
statement; perhaps my father had told us never to ask.

Of course, we were always aware of the numbers. There were those times
when the weather was particularly warm, and my mother would not button her
blouse at the top, and she would lean over to hug us or pick us up, and we
would see them written across her, an inch above her breasts.

(By the time I reached my adolescence, I had heard all the horror stories
about the death camps and the ovens; about those who had to remove gold
teeth from the bodies; the women used, despite the Reich's edicts, by the
soldiers and guards. I then regarded my mother with ambivalence, saying to
myself, I would have died first, I would have found some way rather than
suffering such dishonor, wondering what had happened to her and what
secret sins she had on her conscience, and what she had done to survive.
An old man, a doctor, had said to me once, "The best ones of us died, the
most honorable, the most sensitive." And I would thank God I had been born
in 1949; there was no chance that I was the daughter of a Nazi rape.)