The Ultimate Egoist (41 page)

“That’s the way you do things, isn’t it?” he said almost adoringly.

“Well, sure. And you could if you tried. Come on, Drip. Make an effort.”

His forehead wrinkled up and he said, “You don’t know the kind of things I’m afraid of.”

“Name ’em!”

“You’d laugh.”

“No!”

“Well, like now, there’s a—a— right outside the door. Oh, it’s horrible!”

I got up and opened the door. “There’s nothing there but some dirt that should have been swept up three days ago.”

“You see?” he said. “You want me to see things your way and you can’t begin to see the things I see.” And he began to cry.

I put my hand on his shoulder. “Drip. Cut it out. I can see everything you can. I can—” Why—of
course
I could! Drip was a part of—of everything. His ideas, his way of thought were a part of everything. Why not see what he saw? “Drip, I’ll see things the way you do. I
will!
I’ll see everything with your eyes. I’ll show you!”

And immediately the room began to shake itself; things wavered uncomfortably; then I realized that Drip was astigmatic. I also realized with a powerful shock that I had been nearly colorblind, compared with the vividness with which he saw things.
Whew!

Then I became conscious of the terrors—the million unidentifiable fears with which the poor dope had been living, day and night.

The ceiling was going to crush me. The floor was going to rise up and strike me. There was something in the closet, and it would jump out at me any second. I was going to swell inside my clothes and choke to death—I was going to go blind any day now—I was
going to be run over if I went outside, suffocate if I stayed in. My appendix was going to burst some night when I was alone and I would die in agony. I was going to catch some terrible disease. People hated me. And laughed … I was alone. I was on the outside looking in. I was on the inside looking on. I hated myself.

Gradually the impact of the thing faded while the horror grew. I glanced at Drip; he was still crying into his coffee, but at least he was not trembling. I was trembling … poor, scared, morbid, dismal Drip was, in that moment, a tower of strength.

I must have stood there for quite a while, pulling out of it. I had to
do
something! I couldn’t shrink against Drip! I had my self-respect to think of. I—

“Wh-what was that you said about … outside the door?”

He started, looked up at me, pointed wordlessly at the door. I reached out and opened it.

It
was out there, crunched in a corner in the dimness, waiting for someone to come along. I slammed the door and leaned against it, mopping my forehead with my sleeve.

“Is it out there?” whispered Drip.

I nodded. “It’s … covered with mouths,” I gasped. “It’s all
wet!
”

He got up and peeked out. Then he laughed. “Oh, that’s just the little one. He won’t hurt you. Wait till you see the others. Gee? Woodie. You’re the first one who ever saw them, besides me. Come on? I’ll show you more.”

He got up and went out, waiting just outside for me. I realized now why he had always refused to precede me through a door. When he went out he trod on a writhing thing and killed it so it would not creep up my legs. I realized that I must have done it for him many times in the past without realizing it.

We came to the top of the stairs. They wound away from under my feet. They looked fragile. They looked dangerous. But it seemed all right as long as he led the way. He had a certain control over the thousands of creeping, crawling, fluttering things around us. He passed the little landing and something tentacular melted into the wall. Little slimy things slid out from under his feet and reappeared
just behind mine. I pressed very close to him, crushed by the power of hate which oozed from them.

When we reached his room, which was just above mine, he put his hand on the doorknob and turned to me. “We have to burst in,” he whispered, “there’s a big one that hides here. We can frighten him away if we come suddenly. Otherwise he might not know we were inside. And if he found us in there he would. Eat us?”

Drip turned the knob silently and hurled the door open. A livid mass of blood and blackness that filled the whole room shrank into itself, melting down like ice in a furnace. When it was in midair, and about the size of a plum, it dropped squashily to the floor and rolled under the bed. “You see,” said Drip with conviction. “If we went in quietly we would shrink down. With it?”

“My God!” I said hoarsely. “Let’s get out of here!”

“Oh, it’s all right,” he said almost casually. “As long as we know exactly what time it is, he can’t come back until we go.” I understood now why Drip had his wall covered with clocks.

I was going to sink down on a chair because I felt a little weak, but I noticed that the seat of the straight-back he had—it was red plush—was quivering. I pointed to it.

“What? Oh, don’t mind that,” said Drip. “I think it’s stuffed with spiders. They haven’t bitten anyone yet, but soon they will. Burst the seat. And swarm all over the room?”

I looked at him. “This is hor—Drip! What are you grinning about?”

“Grinning. I’m sorry? You see, I never saw anyone frightened before by my things?”

“
Your
things?”

“Certainly. I made them up.”

I have never been so furious. That he should terrify me—
me—
with figments of his phobiacal imagination; make me envy him for knowing his way about his terrifying world; put me in an inferior position—it was unthinkable! It was—impossible!

“Why did you make them up?” I asked him with frozen intensity.

His answer, of all things in the fluid universe, was the most rational. I have thought of it since. He said:

“I made them up because I was afraid of things. Ever since I could remember. So I didn’t know what it was I was afraid of, and I had to make up something to fear. If I didn’t do that
I would go crazy …
”

I backed away from him, mouthing curses, and the lines of the room straightened out as I regained my own point of view. The colors dulled to my old familiar tones, and Drip, that improbable person, that hypothesis, faded out, lingering a moment like a double exposure, and then vanished.

I went downstairs. Drip was better off nonexistent, I thought as I tuned out a jam session. He was a subversive influence in this—my universe. He was as horrible a figment of imagination as was that thing in the hall of his. And just as unbelievable … I got me Tchaikovsky’s B minor concerto on the radio because that’s the way I felt, and I lay down on the bed. Jive would have driven me morbid, because Drip had been a hep-cat, and I didn’t want to think of him somehow.

Footsteps came soft-shoeing up the corridor and stopped outside my door. “Woodie—”

“Oh, damn,” I said. “Come in, Judith.”

She passed the knob from one hand to the other as she entered, looking at me.

“I must be quite a guy to have such a lovely shadow.”

“Every man in the world seems to be after me,” she said, “and I’m stupid enough to follow you. I came back to say goodbye.”

“Where are you going?”

“No place.”

“Where am I going?”

“You’ve already gone.”

“I … Where?”

“Here. From the camp. You forgot to kiss me before you left. You can’t get away with that.”

“Oh.” I got up and kissed her. “Now why did you follow me?” “I was afraid.”

“What; that I’d jump a ship?”

She nodded. “That and … I dunno. I was afraid, thassall.”

“I promised you I’d stay ashore, didn’t I?”

“You’re such an awful liar,” she reminded me without malice.

“Heh!” I said. “Always?”

“As long as I’ve known you—”

“I love you.”

“—except when you say that. Woodie, that’s one thing I
have
to be sure of.”

“I know how it is, insect.” I let her go and reached for my hat. “Let’s eat.”

I remember that meal. It was the last meal I ate on earth. Minestrone, chicken cacciatore and black coffee at a little Italian kitchen. And over the coffee I explained it to her again, the thing that had happened to me.

“Woodie, you’re impossible!”

“Could be. Could be. I’ve found a lot of things impossible in the last couple of days. They don’t exist any more. Drip, for instance.”

“Drip? What happened?”

I told her. She began putting on her hat.

“Wait,” I said. “I haven’t finished my coffee.”

“Do you realize what you’re telling me? Woodie, if you’re wrong about all this, you don’t know it—you believe it—and you’re insane. If you’re right—you
murdered
that boy!”

“I did nothing of the kind. I did nothing of any kind. Damn it, darling, I know this is a little hard to take. But the universe is my dream, and that’s … all. Drip couldn’t have existed—you told me that yourself when you first met him.”

“That was strictly a gag,” she said, and stood up.

“Where are you going?”

“I don’t know.” She sounded tired. “Anywhere … away from you, Woodie. Let me know when you’ve got all this out of your head. I’ve never heard anything so … Oh, well. And anyway, there’s a natural explanation for everything that’s happened.”

“Sure. I’ve given you one and you won’t believe it.”

She threw up her hands in what I saw was very real disgust. I caught her hand as she turned away. “Judith!” She stood there not looking at me, not trying to get away, simply not
caring
. “You don’t mean this, Judy kid. You can’t. You’re the only thing I can believe in now.”

“When you ‘dreamed’ me up, Woodie, you let me have too much discernment to stay in love with a … a lunatic,” she said quietly. She slipped her hand out of mine and went away from there.

I sat still for a long time watching tomato sauce seep into a piece of Italian bread. “When it gets to that pore in the bread,” I told myself, “she’ll come back.” A little later, “When it gets to the crust—” It took quite a while, and she still didn’t come back. I tried to laugh it off, but laughing hurt my face. I paid my way out and drifted down the street. I found me a ginmill and I got good … and … plastered.

Listen, winged things. Listen, things that delight in liveness and greenness. I am sorry I created you, I am sorry I dreamed of you, watched you grow, watched you die and die and live again to see your ultimate death. You were made of laughter and of the warmth in my heart. You were made of the light of the sun I made. You and shy creatures, and strong and beautiful things and people, and music, and richness, and magic, and the beat of hearts; you are gone because I was awakened. Forgive me, my glorious phantasms!

I knew what to start on. It’s called Habañera Seco and they brew it in Guatemala and it’s smooth like scotch and strong like vodka and worse all around than absinthe. If you can’t stand to mix these—and who can?—you can’t drink Habañera …

One drink and I felt better. Two, much better. Three, and I was back where I started from. Four, I started getting dismal. Seven, I was definitely morbid. Great stuff. Far as I was concerned, the woes of the world were in a bottomless bottle, and it was my duty and desire to empty the bottle and buy another. Judith was gone, and without Judith there was no sun anymore, and nothing for it to shine on. Everything was over, I said dramatically to myself; and, by God, I’d see that a good job was done of it. I staggered out and leaned against the doorpost, looking up the street.

“Wake up, Woodie,” I quavered. “It’s all over now. It’s all done. There’s nothing left any more, anywhere, anywhere. A life is an improbable louse on a sterile sphere. A man is a monster and a woman is a wraith! I am not a man but a consciousness asleep, and now I wake! Now I wake!” I pushed away from the doorpost and began screaming, “Wake! Wake!”

Just how it happened I can’t say. Things slipped and slid out of existence. There was no violence, nothing fell; everything went out of focus and left me alone in an element which was deep and thick and the essence of solitude. What struck coldly into me was something I saw just before I … went. It was Judith. She was running down the street toward me with her arms out, and a smile keeping tears from running all the way down her face. She had come back after all, but the thing couldn’t be stopped now. My dream was gone!

I and that thick element expanded soundlessly to the limits of my dream, the universe, and where we passed, mighty suns and nebulae joined the nothingness of us. I rode again in a place where there is no time, where I had been before I dreamed up a universe. I thought about it then, how birds and rocks and wars and loveliness and choking exultance had been figments of my proud imagination.

Only now can I dare to face that ultimate question, that last, deep, inclusive conception …

 … for if all things in a universe were but peopling a dream, and if they could not exist when their existence was doubted, then it is possible that I myself am a mere figment of my imagi

I
T WALKED IN
the woods.

It was never born. It existed. Under the pine needles the fires burn, deep and smokeless in the mold. In heat and in darkness and decay there is growth. There is life and there is growth. It grew, but it was not alive. It walked unbreathing through the woods, and thought and saw and was hideous and strong, and it was not born and it did not live. It grew and moved about without living.

It crawled out of the darkness and hot damp mold into the cool of a morning. It was huge. It was lumped and crusted with its own hateful substances, and pieces of it dropped off as it went its way, dropped off and lay writhing, and stilled, and sank putrescent into the forest loam.

It had no mercy, no laughter, no beauty. It had strength and great intelligence. And—perhaps it could not be destroyed. It crawled out of its mound in the wood and lay pulsing in the sunlight for a long moment. Patches of it shone wetly in the golden glow, parts of it were nubbled and flaked. And whose dead bones had given it the form of a man?

It scrabbled painfully with its half-formed hands, beating the ground and the bole of a tree. It rolled and lifted itself up on its crumbling elbows, and it tore up a great handful of herbs and shredded them against its chest, and it paused and gazed at the gray-green juices with intelligent calm. It wavered to its feet, and seized a young sapling and destroyed it, folding the slender trunk back on itself again and again, watching attentively the useless, fibered splinters. And it snatched up a fear-frozen field creature, crushing it slowly, letting blood and pulpy flesh and fur ooze from between its fingers, run down and rot on the forearms.