by Isaac Asimov
Regards,
Clark Forthcue
Forthcue:
Ninety thousand is it! Final! By midnight tomorrow in the Carver mailbox, or Pure Rotten will be disposed of. You are keeping us in an uncomfortable position and we don’t like it. We are not killers, but we can be.
A. Snatcher
Snatchers, Inc.
May 30
Dear Mr. Snatcher:
Free after many years of the agonizing pain of my ulcer, I can think quite objectively on this matter. Though my wife demands that I pay some ransom, ninety thousand dollars is out of the question. I suggest you dispose of the commodity under discussion as you earlier intimated you might. After proof of this action, twenty thousand dollars will accompany my next letter in the Garver mailbox. Since I have been honest with you and have not contacted the authorities, no one, including my wife, need know the final arrangements of our transaction.
Cordially,
Clark Forthcue
Forthcue:
Are you crazy? This is a human life. We are not killers. But you are right about one thing — no amount of money is worth more than your health. Suppose we return Pure Rotten unharmed tomorrow night? Five thousand dollars for our trouble and silence will be plenty.
A. Snatcher
Snatchers, Inc.
May 31
Dear Mr. Snatcher:
After due reflection I must unequivocally reject your last suggestion and repeat my own suggestion that you dispose of the matter at hand in your own fashion. I see no need for further correspondence in this matter.
Clark Forthcue
Snatchers, Inc.
June 1
Clark Forthcue:
There has been a take over of the bord of Snatchers, Inc. and my too vise presidents who haven’t got a choice agree with me, the new president. I have all the carbon copys of Snatchers, Inc. letters to you and all your letters back to us. The law is very seveer with kidnappers and even more seveer with people who want to kill kids.
But the law is not so seveer with kids, in fact will forgive them for almost anything if it is there first ofense. If you don’t want these letters given to the police you will leave 500,000 dollars tomorrow night in Carvers old mailbox. I meen it. Small bils is what we want but some fiftys and hundreds will be o.k.
Sincerely,
Pure Rotten
Grounds for Divorce
by James Holding
The power failure lasted less than five minutes — but it came at an awkward time.
John Marcy, soup spoon in hand, was seated at the dining table ready to start his dinner. He was hungry.
Angela, his wife, who had just carried the filled soup plates in from the kitchen and taken her own seat across the table, was reaching out a hand toward the cracker dish when the house lights flickered once, then winked out.
“Oh, dear!” Angela said, startled. “Now what? Look out the front window in the living room, John, and see if the neighbors’ lights are out, too. Maybe it’s just ours.”
John put down his soup spoon obediently, groped his way into the living room, and looked out the front window. “Even the street lights are out,” he reported over his shoulder. “It’s a general power failure, I guess.”
He could hear Angela moving in the darkness of the dining room behind him. “I’ve got candles,” she said in a moment, “if you’ll get the matches from the coffee table in there.”
John cautiously located the coffee table in the blackness and explored its surface for the book of matches always kept near the ashtray. As his hand closed on it, a match flared in the dining room, and a second later two candles set in silver candlesticks on the table were dissipating the darkness.
“Never mind, John,” Angela called, “I found a match in the buffet drawer. Come on and eat your soup now. It’ll get cold.”
Before John got back to his chair at the table, the electric lights came on again.
“Ah,” said Angela with relief. “That’s better.” She didn’t blow out the candles.
John picked up his soup spoon and then, with a distraught air, put it down again. He looked across the table at Angela whose gentle blue eyes were regarding him anxiously. “Is the soup cold, dear?” she asked. She took a sip of her own. “Mine isn’t.”
He shook his head. How lovely she is, he thought, and what a heel I’ve been to go running after those other women. His conscience was suddenly tender. An unaccustomed pang of shame caused him to lower his eyes.
“No,” he said, “I don’t suppose it’s cold, darling, but I’m not very hungry tonight.”
“It’s yellow pea soup, John. You love it.”
“I know.” He raised his head. “And I love you, too, Angela. You know that, don’t you?”
Her eyes filled with tears. “Let’s not go into that again,” she said, trembling.
John said, “I’m an All-American heel, Angela, I admit it. A woman-crazy, middle-aged wolf who ought to know better. And I’m genuinely sorry for it.”
Angela brushed aside her tears with the back of a flexed wrist, a somehow pathetic gesture. She stood up. “Now you’ve spoiled my appetite,” she said. She picked up the two soup plates and carried them out to the kitchen.
“So I want to divorce her,” John Marcy told his lawyer quietly the next day.
Bartley, the lawyer, aimed a faintly disapproving glance at his client and friend. “Divorce her?” he echoed. “You want to divorce her?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t make me laugh, John. It’s common gossip in town that she ought to divorce you. And I know the score, John, so don’t try to kid me. I haven’t forgotten those breach-of-promise suits and the paternity action I had to settle for you, John.”
“I’m not forgetting them either. I just want to divorce Angela, that’s all. And I need your advice on how to go about it. That’s simple, isn’t it?”
“Not all that simple, no. Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why do you want to divorce her all of a sudden after letting things drift along like this for years?”
“Because she won’t divorce me, that’s why. And I want to be free of her.”
“Yes, but why won’t she divorce you? Some foolish idea that this way she can punish you for your past peccadillos?”
“No. You’ll think I’m even more insufferable than you do now if I tell you the true reason.”
“Try me and see.”
John hesitated. Then he said, “Well, it’s my considered opinion, knowing Angela as I do, that she won’t divorce me because she still loves me.”
“That’s no reason,” Hartley said.
“It is if she doesn’t want another woman to get her hooks into me permanently,” John said. “She knows how vulnerable and — uh — undiscriminating I am.” He paused. “You realize it isn’t easy for me to talk like this, Bart.”
“Go on,” Bartley said, and with the privileged candor of long friendship he added, “Everybody knows you’re a heel, John. No need to be embarrassed in front of me.”
Marcy flushed and plowed on doggedly. “Angela has decided that if she can’t enjoy my full-time love and loyalty, no other woman will get a chance at it, either.”
“Is that what Angela says?”
“Not in so many words, no. But I’m positive it’s how she feels.”
“How can you be positive about a thing like that?”
“From her actions, Bart. From her attitude lately.”
“And you want to charge mental cruelty, is that it?”
“No, you don’t understand at all.” Marcy sighed.
“I’ll say I don’t. But I might remind you, John, that even in these enlightened times you need stronger grounds for divorce than a simple statement that your wife loves you and you’re sure of it.”
John said, “Don’t clown with me, I’m serious. I tell you I want to divorce Angela.”
“I’m not clowning. But you’ve got to have grounds. Angela’s got plenty —
but you haven’t. Understand?” Bartley didn’t wait for an answer. He went on, “Exactly when did you decide you had to divorce Angela? Maybe that’ll help.”
Resignedly John said, “Last night. At the dinner table.”
“What happened?”
“We had a power failure in our neighborhood. The lights went out.”
“Well, well.” Bartley lit a cigarette and examined his client’s glum face with interest. “That certainly explains a lot.”
“It did to me,” John said, “even if you think it’s some sort of joke.”
Exasperated, the lawyer leaned back in his swivel chair. “Nothing about divorce is some sort of joke, as you call it,” he snapped. “So be serious about this, John! Tell me about the lights going out, if you think it’s important.”
“It’s important, all right. The lights were out for only a couple of minutes, but during that brief period of total darkness I suddenly found out Angela’s true feelings for me, Bart.” John was dragging out the words reluctantly. “I’m being honest with you.”
“Good,” Bartley said. “So in the dark you had this great revelation of Angela’s true feelings. What did she do — try to seduce you, or what?”
Marcy shook his head. “I’m sorry to make you pry it out of me like this, Bart,” he apologized. “But I was pretty surprised at the time, and I’m not over my confusion yet.”
“Obviously. But let’s have it. You’re stalling.”
“I suppose I am,” Marcy admitted. He took a deep breath. “Well, you’ve got to get the picture. Angela had just brought in our soup. We were ready to begin eating. And it was at that instant, with our soup plates on the table before us, that the lights went out.”
“All right. What then?”
“Then,” Marcy said, “then I saw that Angela was trying to kill me.”
“Kill you!” Bartley dropped his cigarette on the rug and swore as he stamped it out.
“That’s what I said. Kill me. Poison me. She had poisoned my soup.”
Bartley stared at him, shaking his head. “But in the dark—” he began.
“If the lights hadn’t gone out, I’d be dead. I’d have eaten that damned soup and gone where no waitress or chorus girl could ever give me the come-on again.” For the first time Marcy smiled. “My soup was loaded with yellow phosphorus.”
“How did you know?”
“High school chemistry. When the lights went out, my soup glowed in the dark like a plate of incandescent paint.”
After a dazed moment Bartley managed to whisper, “Attempted murder.”
“Is that grounds for divorce?”
“Should be enough for a starter,” Bartley said, swallowing.
“Angela, poor darling, tried to distract my attention from the soup,” John went on. “She got candles lit as soon as she could, to hide the soup’s phosphorescence.” He paused. Then he said, “Understand, Bart, I’m telling this to nobody but you. If you go to Angela and tell her you know all about her attempt to murder me last night, I think that out of shame she’ll consent to divorce me for the old-fashioned reasons. But I don’t want the police to hear a word about this.”
“Why not?” asked the lawyer. “After all, attempted murder—”
“Because Angela still loves me, as I told you — enough to want to kill me, if that’s the only way she can keep me straight. And in my own stupid way I still love her — now more than ever, perhaps. I don’t want the police hounding her.”
Bartley hunched his shoulders in pure bafflement. He said, “If you and Angela still love each other so much, why not stay together? Why not go on through life hand in hand, as the poet says? Why a divorce?”
John Marcy stood up. He gave the lawyer a crooked grin. “Everybody knows I’m a heel,” he said. “But that’s a little different from being a fool. There might not be a power failure the next time.”
Inside Out
by Barry N. Malzberg
I’ve got to start stacking the corpses in the bedroom now.
The living room, alas, is all filled. It was bound to happen sooner or later. Still, it’s a shock to realize that the day of inevitability has come. There is simply no room any more. Floor to ceiling in four rows the bodies are stacked except for the little space in the corner I’ve left for my chair and footrest. Even the television set is gone. It was hard to sacrifice the television set but business is business. I put it at the foot of my bed, dreading the time when I’d have to start putting the bodies where I slept. But I must face up to reality and the living room is finished. Fini. Kaput. Used up. Cheerlessly I accept my fate. If I am to go on murdering I will have to bring the bodies, as the abbess said to the bishop, into the boudoir. And I am, of course, going to go on murdering.
When I do away with Brown the superintendent tonight, therefore, his corpse will go in the far corner beside the dresser. Virgin territory to be exploited — not that there is any sexual undertone to this matter. None whatsoever. It is what it is. It is not a metaphor. It is not a symbol. It is the pure sad business of murder.
Brown rolls the emptied garbage cans across the lobby, filling my rooms with a sound from hell. He also refuses to clean the steps more than once a week. Time and again I have asked him to desist from the one and do the other, but the man is obdurate. He pretends not to know English. He pretends he doesn’t hear me. He pretends he has other duties. This morning I saw four disgusting orange peels on the third-floor landing, already turning brown. There is no way that a man of my disposition can deal with this any more, but I’m not able to move out. For one thing, what would I do with my bodies? It would be such a job to transport them all.
Therefore Brown, or what is left of him, will repose in the bedroom tonight. Au boudoir.
The murders are Active, of course. I am not actually a mass murderer. These are imaginary murders, imagined corpses that have slowly filled these quarters since I began my difficult adjustment about a year ago. Abusive peddlers, disgusting street persons, noxious fellow employees in the Division. In my mind I act out intricate murders, in my body I pantomime the matter of conveying the corpses here, in my heart all of the dead stay here with me, mild in their state. It is a fantasy that enables me to go on with this disgusting urban existence; if I could not banish those who offend me I would be unable to go on. It is of course a perilous coupling, this fantasy, since I might plunge over the fine line someday and actually believe I’ve done away with these people, but it is the only way I can continue in circumstantial balance.
Giving the fantasy credence, however, demands discipline and a good deal of scut work. It is with regret that I have given up all of my living room except for the chair and footrest, but also out of simple respect for will. If I were not to make reasonable sacrifices in order to propitiate this accord it would be meaningless. One cannot play the violin well without years of painful work with wrists and hands acquiring technique. One cannot be a proper employee of the Division without studying its dismal and boring procedures. One cannot be an imaginary mass murderer without taking responsibility for the imaginary bodies.
The derelict who wipes my windshield with a dirty rag at the bridge exit is still there, of course, although I murdered him six months ago. This morning he cursed me when I gave him only fifteen cents through the cautiously opened window. His rag hardly infiltrated my vision, his cursing fell upon a benign and smiling countenance. How could I tell him, after all, “You no longer exist. Since I did away with you half a year ago your real activities in the real world have made no impression upon me. Your rag is a blur, your curses a song. I drove a sharp knife between your sixth and seventh ribs in this very street before witnesses, threw your body into the trunk, and conveyed it bloodless to my apartment where it now reposes. The essential you lies sandwiched in my apartment between the waitress from the Forum Diner who spilt a glass of ice water in my lap and the medical social worker from the Division who said I had no grasp at all of schizophrenia. I possess you, do you understand that?”
No, I don’t think he would understand that. This miserable creature, along with the waitress, the medical social worker, and many others, cannot appreciate the metaphysics of the situation.
I did away with Brown in his apartment two hours ago. “Mr. Brown,” I said when he opened the door, “I can’t take this any more. You’re totally irresponsible. It’s not only the orange peels, the hide-and-seek when the toilet will not flush, and the terrible smells of disinfectant when you occasionally wash the lobby. That would be enough, but it’s your insolence that degrades my spirit. You do not accept the fact that I am a human being who has a right to simple services. By ignoring my needs you ignore humanity.” I shot him in the left temple with the delicate .22 I use for extreme cases. The radio was playing Haydn’s Symphony 101 in D Major loudly as I dragged him out of there, closing the door firmly behind. I would not have suspected that he had a taste for classical music, but this doesn’t mitigate his situation. He now lies at the foot of my bed. Now and then he seems to sigh in the perfectitude of his perfect peace.
The medical social worker commented today during a conference upon my abstracted attitude and twice she tapped me on the hand to bring me back to attention. I know she feels I’m exceedingly neurotic and not a diligent caseworker, but how could I possibly explain to her that the reason my attention lapses during these conferences is that she was smothered several weeks ago and has not drawn a breath, even in my apartment, since?
Brown’s corpse is curiously odorous. This is a new phenomenon. I am a committed housekeeper and can’t abide smells of any kind in my apartment (other than pipe and coffee, of course), and my corpses are aseptic. Brown’s, however, is not. It is progressively foul and disturbed my sleep last night. Heavy sprays of household antiseptics don’t seem to work. The apartment was even worse when I came home tonight.
