Spider Kiss
Harlan Ellison has been called "one of the great living American short story writers" by The Washington Post. In a career spanning more than 40 years, he has won more awards for the 74 books he has written or edited; the more than 1700 stories, essays, articles, and newspaper columns; the two dozen teleplays and a dozen motion pictures he has created, then any other living fantasist. He has won the Hugo award eight and a half times, the Nebula award three times, the Bram Stoker award, presented by the Horror Writers Association, five times (including The Lifetime Achievement Award in 1996), the Edgar Allan Poe award of the Mystery Writers of America twice, the Georges Melies fantasy film award twice, two Audie Awards (for the best in audio recordings), and was awarded the Silver Pen for Journalism by P.E.N., the international writer's union. He was presented with the first Living Legend award by the International Horror Critics at the 1995 World Horror Convention. He is also the only author in Hollywood ever to win the Writers Guild of America award for Most Outstanding teleplay (solo work) four times, most recently for "Paladin of the Lost Hour" his Twilight Zone episode that was Danny Kaye's final role, in 1987. In March (1998), the National Women's Committee of Brandeis University honored him with their 1998 Words, Wit & Wisdom award.
Harlan Ellison
An [
e - reads
] Book
No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, scanning or any information storage retrieval system, without explicit permission in writing from the Author.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locals or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright 1996 by Harlan Ellison
First e-reads publication 1999
www.e-reads.com
ISBN 0-7592-0165-X
For the fifth time around,
This one is dedicated to the
Lady who knew it ain't as
Easy as it looks.
For my ex-wife BILLIE,
with affection and respect.
Author's Note
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
This is a work of fiction. It is intended, however, to convey a reasonably accurate impression of a segment of contemporary life as it existed during the period 1950-1960; a segment of show business based on the reality of the time. To convey a feeling of verisimilitude, I have employed the names of real persons, places, organizations, and events. Any such use, however, is intended strictly for story-value, and it should be understood that any part they play in this fiction is a product of literary license employing figures whose public images are clearly in the public domain, and in no way implies any actual participation in reality. Of the fictional characters, woven from the whole cloth of the imagination, there may be those who seem to have counterparts in real life. Anyone attempting to "rip aside the masks" to discern the "real" people underneath, should be advised they're wasting their time. Stag Preston and all the others are composites, a chunk from here, a hand movement from there, a mannerism from somewhere else. He is many people and he is no one: he is a symbol, if you have to have labels. I have tried to tag a type. Types have no names. Or, to quote from Mark Twain: "Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted: persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished: persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot." It is a fable; who can be offended by a fable?
Harlan Ellison
Let's Pretend
"What're you whistling?"
I stopped spreading pumpkin butter on the raisin bread and looked up. "Say what?"
"I asked you: what was that tune you were whistling?"
The leftover mushroom-lentil soup looked thick and glutinous as an argument with a Scientologist, and I was sorry I'd even started reheating it. "Was I whistling?"
"You
always
whistle. You are a terrific whistler. But you whistle all the time. Even if I can't locate you, I can tell when you're coming, even in a store, even when you were in the hospital, even in an office building. If I had gotten separated from you in, say, The Empire State Building, all I'd have to do was ride up and down on the elevator till I heard you whistling on the seventieth floor. Because nobody else whistles these days. It's one of the great Lost Arts of the modern world. Yes, you were whistling."
"No kidding. So what was I whistling?"
"That's what I'm asking
you
!" There was a tone in her voice. It is a lovely voice, as anyone who has called our home can attest; a mellifluous, lyrical, patibulary, longaminous speaking utensil. Charms birds. Quietens feral beasts and patrons of Pauly Shore movies who want their ticket money back.
This was not
that
terrific voice. This one had a tone in it. I said, "Uh…can you give me a hint what it sounded like?" She growled. Low, throaty, not reassuring.
Sheesh! Whatta grouch. I was just minding my own business, trying to fix some minor lunch out of second-hand leavings. How the hell do I know what I was whistling?
"Okay, so at least what'd it
sound
like?" I asked. Trying to be accommodating.
She gave me The Look.
So I dredged back through the last five minutes' memories, and I replayed myself. (As a member of the Agile Mind Squadron, this is but one among an armory-full of mnemonic devices I use to reclaim data. And it uses much less electricity than a slow laptop.) "Oh," I said, as I heard myself in my head, "that was the theme song from a children's radio show called
Let's Pretend
. I used to listen to it on Saturday mornings back in the 1940s. When I was a little kid.
Cream of Wheat is so good to eat
Yes we have it every day;
We sing this song, it will make us strong
And it makes us shout "Hooray!"
It's good for growing babies
And grown-ups too to eat;
For all the family's breakfast
You can't beat Cream of Wheat!
"Now why the hell would I be whistling
that?!
I haven't thought of that in years."
Susan was squeezing dirty, soapy water out of a big yellow sponge. She had been washing the Packard, out front; and here she was in the kitchen, wringing out dirty, soapy water as I tried to summon the fortitude to face that hellspawn glop of mushroom-lentil soup. "You were whistling it," she said, not looking at me, "because you can't think of a way to start that introduction to the book, and your unconscious mind is sick and tired of waiting for you to catch up with it, and it's signalling you." And then she walked away.
I hate
it that she's smarter than I.
Many things have happened to both of us, you and me, the two of us, you in your place and me in mine, since last we got together here at the Edgeworks Spa and Storm Window Company, and I would be dilatory in my duties if I didn't say I'm awfully sorry about the miserable crap that's happened to you recently; but look on the bright side, there are
still
those three or four good things that you can cling to in wretched moments.
I don't mean to be smartass or overbearing about it, but you know it
was
your fault, mostly. You keep trying to outwit yourself, but there are times when you fall back into the same old habit-patterns and reaction-formations. And then…well…you
know
what happened. Which isn't to say that I'm not very sympathetic. We're pals, you and I, and when you're all fucked up it makes me miserable as a buzzard on a shit-wagon. Or somesuch rural phrase intended to make you feel better.
And I know it's not going to make your lot any easier if I tell you that soon after we last met here, I had this very serious heart attack, and they cracked me open like O.J.'s alibi, and they took 27½ inches of vein out of my left leg (leaving a scar that runs from my anklebone up to my groin) (and though I've said it elsewhere, it's a good line, so I'll say it again: this scar makes me look as if I finished way out of the money at the Heidelberg Dueling Academy slice-a-thon), and they built me a new superhighway in my chest. Over the counter, in lay terms, it's called quadruple bypass surgery.
I also got this nifty zipper scar in my sternum area.
To be frank about it, kiddo, I was almost dead. Stood right at the open doorway and looked to the other side of that misty aperture. Trust me on this: you don't come back if you go on through.
And I have had any number of interesting epiphanies, eye openers, illuminations, awarenesses, and like that. Most of all, I am now able to report, it scared the crap outta me.
And there's been other stuff that happened, and places I've gone, and things I've done, and a few new awards won…
(Did I ever tell you that the very first award I ever copped was when I was, oh, I don't know, maybe seven or eight, in Painesville, in Ohio, 1941 or '42, something like that, and it was a bronze medal for kite-flying, and let me tell you, pal, I fuckin'
loved
that little medal, and it's been lost for a lot more than fifty years, and I miss the hell out of that object. I just
know
it's lying up in some dusty cigar box in the back room of a gimcrack and antiquery in Weyauwega, Wisconsin or South Lunenburg, Vermont but I'll never again hold that first treasure in my pudgy little kid's fingers. Okay, now you flash on what
you
lost from your kidhood, and the two of us will take a minute or two break to sigh and go tsk-tsk and dwell on how time swirls by too fast to grab any of it, no matter how lean or pudgy the fingers.)
…and I know a long-time friend betrayed you, and that you had a few nights when the phone rang, late, waking you, and someone you love gave you the medical report; and I know the money thing didn't get much better, but you made it through again, and like the man said, what don't kill us only makes us stronger; and we both got suckered into seeing
Independence Day
and came out wondering why the hell they had to spend so much money just to update
Earth vs. the Flying Saucers;
but we're still here, you and I, maybe for no other reason than to piss off our enemies (and you five redolent bags of turkey-puke know who you are, and don't think that just because you've backed off for a while, that I've forgotten to dream about your carotid arteries and the reflective glory of an old-fashioned straight razor).
We're still here, despite all of it; and for the most part we still have our dreams. We can still play
let's pretend
.
And I'm very pleased you came back for a second helping of what I've spent my adult life writing. Yes, there
were
a lot of typos in the first book, and we've heard your complaints and have struggled to do a
lot
better this time. Mostly because of Dana Buckelew, the editor for White Wolf who is down in the pits every day, her sleeves rolled up, smudges of inferno soot on her cheeks, stoking the Edgeworks machinery.
(But to the one or two of you who are so goddam ignorant that you don't appreciate the unjustified "deckle-edge" margin—considered
very
chic in the best publishing and design venues—which have been integrated into the page layouts by Richard Thomas and Larry Friedman, well, let's be frank with each other: don't you, finally, get exhausted with embarrassment as you continue to demonstrate your penchant for Not Getting The Word? You keep wandering into the meeting half an hour late, and you ask questions that were dealt with before you stumbled into the hall. You keep going out on the Internet and wondering, "Who's this Bix Beiderbecke [Walter Damrosch, Jacqueline Cochran, Herbert Marcuse, Alexander Karensky, Alfred Krupp, Florence Mills, Lucy Terry, June Christy, Hetty Green, Clarice Cliff, Babe Zaharias, Baby Dodds, Paul Muni, pick whatever name was your most recent gaffe online], anyway?" You keep believing the bullshit that
you are entitled to your own opinion
, when I keep telling you, over and over, that you are only entitled to your
informed
opinion. You keep running your face, expressing every idiot vagrant assumption that flashed behind your eyes, and just because you see similar stupidity demonstrated every night on Letterman, you keep walking into it. And there you are, yet again, dripping your faucet as the homies put it, saying bone-dumb things like
how come you got those raggedy right-hand margins, can't you afford to do 'em the way my PC does 'em, real neat and all squared up?