Stories (2011) (91 page)

Shaking his head, he staggered to his feet. His body was
crisscrossed with wounds from the barbs, and the punctures stung violently
Worst of all was the bee in his bonnet. There was a roaring in his head like —
Wait a minute. It wasn't in his head. It was the sound of the engine.

Terrified, he turned.

Grill and headlights absorbed him...

It was solidly morning when they opened the doors of the
truck, climbed out, and stood over Maynard's body.

"Dead," said Ted. "He's dead. We've killed
the lieutenant."

"Seemed to just come out of nowhere," said Martin,
"like he was tossed."

"Dead," Ted repeated, "and I killed
him."

–•–

The lieutenant sat up and held his hand to his head.
"Oh, shut up, will you, Ted?"

"You're alive!" Ted yelled.

"No joke," the lieutenant said, and then he
remembered the bulls. He looked at the fence he had catapulted over. The sun
was bright now, and he could see through the trees to the pasture beyond. Way
out there he could make out something moving—a cow, of the real variety. He had
made it back home, through the gate of twilight.

Or he'd been sleepwalking, which seemed more likely.

In either case, Lieutenant Maynard felt it would be a while
before he could eat a hamburger.

"It was an accident, Lieutenant," Martin said.
"The kid couldn't help it.

But why—"

"Uh, did I get hit before I went into the
pasture?" Maynard interrupted.

Ted and Martin looked at one another, then back at the
lieutenant.

"Never mind," said Maynard. "Well, are you
going to just stand there with your mouths open, or are you going to help me
up?"

"Sure," Ted said. "But Lieutenant—?"

"Yeah, what?"

"Uh, why are you naked?"

Hey, what’s happening?

Not much, eh?

No, no, we haven’t met. But I’m here to brighten your day. I
got a story you aren’t going to believe ... No, no, I’m not looking for money,
and I’m not drunk. This is my first beer. I just seen you come in, and I was
sitting over there by my lonesome, and I says to myself, self, there’s a guy
that could use some company.

Sure you can. Everyone needs some company. And you look like
a guy that likes to hear a first-class story, and that’s just the kind of story
I got: first class.

Naw, this isn’t going to take too long. I’ll keep it short.

You see, I’m a spy.

No, no, no. Not that kind of spy. No double-ought stuff. I’m
not working for the CIA or the KGB. I work for Mudziplickt.

Yeah, I know you never heard of it. Few have.

Just us Martians.

Oh yeah, that’s right. I said Martians. I’m from Mars

No, I tell you, I’m not drunk.

Well, it doesn’t matter what the scientists or the space
probes say. I’m from Mars.

You see, we Martians have been monitoring this planet of
your for years, and now with you guys landing up there, saying there’s no life
and all, we figure things are getting too close for comfort, so we’ve decided
to beat you to it and come down here. I’m what you might call part of the
advance landing force. A spy, so to speak. You see, we Martians aren’t visible
to your satellite cameras. Has to do with light waves, and an ability we have
to make ourselves blend with the landscape. Chameleon-like, you might say. And
we’d just scare you anyway if you saw us. We’d look pretty strange to you
Earthlings.

Oh this. This isn’t the real me. Just a body I made up out
of protoplasmic energy.

The way I talk? Oh, I know your culture well. I’ve studied
it for years. I’ve even got a job.

Huh?

Oh. Well, I’m telling you all this for one simple reason. We
Martians can adapt to almost everything on this world-even all this oxygen. But
the food, that’s a problem. We find alcohol agrees pretty well with us, but the
food makes us sick. Sort of like you going down to Mexico and eating something
off a street vendor’s cart and getting ill ... only it’s a lot worse for us.

Blood is the ticket.

Yeah, human blood.

Find that funny, huh? Vampires from Mars? Yeah, does sound
like a cheap science-fiction flick, doesn’t it?

You see-ho, hold it. Almost fell off your stool there. No, I
don’t think the beer here is that strong. There, just put your head on the bar.
Yeah, weak, I understand. I know why you’re feeling that way. It’s this little
tube that comes out of my side, through the slit in my clothing. I stuck it in
you when I sat down here. Doesn’t hurt. Has a special coating on it, a natural
anesthesia, you might say. That’s why you didn’t notice. Actually, if you could
see me without this human shell, you’d find I’m covered with the things. Sort
of like a big jellyfish, only cuter.

Just rest.

No use trying to call out. Nothing will work now. The
muscles in your throat just won’t have enough strength to make your voice work.
They’re paralyzed. The fluid that keeps the tube from hurting you also deadens
the nerves and muscles in your body, while allowing me to draw your blood.

There’s some folks looking over here right now, but they
aren’t thinking a thing about it. They can’t see the tube from this angle; just
me smiling, and you looking like a passed-out drunk. They think it’s kind of
funny, actually. They’ve seen drunks before.

Yeah, that’s it. Just relax. Go with the flow, as you people
say. Can’t really do anything else but that anyway. Won’t be a drop of blood
left in you in a few seconds anyway. I’ll have it all and I’ll feel great. Only
food here that really agrees with us. That and a spot of alcohol now and then.

But I’ve told you all that. There, I’m finished. I feel like
a million dollars.

Don’t know if you can still hear me or not, but I’m taking
the tube out now. Thanks for the nourishment. Nothing personal. And don’t worry
about the beer you ordered. I’ll pay for it on the way out. It’s the least I
can do.

Tim Burke was the only one to take the experimental pill.
Nothing as complex as this pill had ever been invented, but since he was five
foot one, his penis was small, he was balding, had flat feet and one leg
shorter than the other, and an oversized mole on his nose that made that part
of his face looked like an odd-shaped potato, he thought, what the hell?

As it was, his time on earth had been lowdown, sexless,
without need of a comb, and much of his free time spent in search of
well-fitting shoes, so he took the pill for the promise of all things better,
and didn’t care if it killed him, which he knew it might. He took the pill and
in one day he noted a difference. He didn’t get taller or gain hair or grow
inches on his penis and his feet were still flat, but he noticed that he looked
younger than his forty-five years; the pores in his skin were as smooth as
African ivory; even his teeth looked thicker and whiter and the gums pinker and
tighter around his teeth.

Within a week he not only looked younger in the face, dark
tufts of hair like planted vegetables sprouted on his head, and he was waking
up with a hard-on you could use to pop a tire off a rim, not to mention that he
was having nightly emissions of the size and quality that might require a
mayonnaise jar to contain. The potato had abandoned his face to be replaced by
a fine, straight, masculine nose. Sometimes he awakened to the movement of his
bones and muscles and nerves in his skin. They crawled, they flexed, the
popped, they changed.

Another week and he was taller and more muscular and felt
better than he had ever felt. He discovered he could twist a fire poker into a
knot without so much as straining. He could pick up the back end of his car,
bend and support it on one knee with his hands free.

He had to buy new clothes and new shoes, and the drug had
even corrected the flat foot problem. He stood now at six-two, well hung, with
a head and chest-full of black hair you could have used to knit a sweater and a
throw rug and maybe one mitten.

It was terrific. He went out with women for the first time.
In fact, they came to him. He enjoyed sex and he enjoyed the way they squealed
when they saw his equipment, and the way they squealed more when they
experienced it.

A couple weeks later they didn’t squeal, they shrieked. His
penis was almost to his knees, flaccid, and erect it was no longer an organ of
sensual pleasure–it was a battering ram.

His feet were soon hanging off his bed. He had grown taller
and wider. He was in perfect proportion, but there was a lot to be
proportioned. He called the doctor and got a quick appointment. The doctor
measured and weighed him, stuck a finger up his ass and palmed his balls like a
shopper choosing grapefruits.

“Well,” the doctor said. “You are now six eight and you
weight three hundred and ten pounds, all of it muscle. Your penis, flaccid, is
twelve inches long and your testicles weigh four pounds and three ounces each
and your feet aren’t flat, and frankly, I can hardly recognize you with that
face and all that hair. And you’re still growing.”

“Still growing? I don’t want to grow anymore. You said the
pill would fix my body, make it healthier, make things work beautifully. That’s
what you said.”

“I said if it worked, and, it has worked. You are a
stronger, finer, and better looking specimen than when you came to me.

Tim studied the overweight doctor with the gray patches of
hair over his ears, his head shiny as a baby’s ass.

“Why don’t you take the pill?” Tim asked.

“Side effects.”

“You didn’t tell me about any side effects. You said it
could kill me, things went wrong. Dying is one thing, but this, this isn’t
dying. This is…Well, this is…it’s a mess.”

“I told you it was experimental and that you were the only
volunteer, and we had no idea what it might do.”

Tim remembered this to be true, but he didn’t like it. He
had been so anxious to try anything to change his life he hadn’t embraced the
potential for negative possibilities.

Tim thought a moment, said, “Am I through growing?”

“I don’t know. I hope so. You should be. Maybe. Can’t say.”

Tim left the doctor’s office feeling confused. The pants he
wore were up to his knees and he was barefoot. He had on a triple-X tee-shirt,
and it was splitting across his broad shoulders. He could hardly get in the
car, it was so small. He drove over to place that sold clothes to big men and
bought sizes that fit and sizes that were larger than he was. Within a week,
the over-large sizes were too tight. He was seven five in another week, and
then it was as if the pill really decided to kick in.

Within a month, he was ten feet high. He was also four feet
across and if he dropped his pants his penis coiled out of it like an anaconda
descending from an overhanging limb. He had to take a sheet and hitch his
testicles up so they wouldn’t bang against his legs or swing painfully. He
couldn’t find any shoes that fit now, and he had taken to making flip-flops out
of patches of leather. They were thin and uncomfortable. Hair sprouted from his
nose and ears and groin area, and he was covered in a dark pelt from head to
toe. He gave up shaving. It was like trying to cut through wire. He tried
waxing once, but when he went to have it done, took off his shirt and his dark
chest hair sprang free, the lady attendant whirled and vomited into a trash
can. He went home.

He had a computer job, so he could stay home easily, which
was good in a way, but it was one reason he had taken the pill, to be normal.
To go out of the house and meet people and live a life. Now, even though he was
healthier, he was a freak. The benefits of the pill had disappeared.

He had been ducking through doors for some time, able only
to stand up fully in the living room area with its twenty foot, beamed
ceilings. But pretty soon he was brushing his head on the beams and was forced
to live outside, in the yard. Which was bad enough, but in rainy weather it was
horrible.

Finally, with his bare hands he ripped open the back porch,
tearing out the door, and ripped a section wide enough where he could crawl
inside and lay down and sleep through the night.

One morning, he awoke with his head, arms and legs, jutting
out of the porch’s confines. His head was hanging off the end of the porch, and
he had a neck ache from it. His left arm had punctured the wall to the house,
and his right poked through the side of the porch and was lying out in the
yard. His legs and feet were jutting out into his driveway, and they had
overturned his car, which was all right. He had traded several times for bigger
automobiles, but he hadn’t been able to get inside his Hummer for a long time
now, let alone drive.

He had taken to wearing only the sheet around his groin, and
on this day he took it off and went to town naked, letting his testicles swing
like a pendulum, his penis like a bridge support cable; there was no longer any
pain. In fact, the rhythm of their swing seemed to balance his walk. People
screamed, cars crashed.

Tim went to his doctor’s office and ripped the roof off the
place and reached in and got his doctor and wadded him up like a piece of
aluminum foil. The nurse screamed all the while he did it. He picked her up and
bit off her head and sucked out her blood and threw her away. He went to a
nearby grocery store and hammered a hole in the roof and drank a whole
refrigerated case of orange juice and ate about three thousand packages of
sweet rolls, honey buns, chocolate cakes, and four cans of Spam, thinking: Got
to have your protein.

On the way back to his house he stepped on cars, kicked a
young woman with her child about a thousand yards, and by the time he was home,
helicopters were buzzing overhead and there were police and sheriff’s cars and
people in black vehicles wearing black suits with megaphones.