The Man Who Talled Tales: Collected Short Stories of R.A. Lafferty

by R. A. Lafferty

  “I did not see the woman.”

  “Tell me, if you had your choice of running down me or a dog, which would you do?”

  “I would unhesitatingly run you down.”

  He shouldn't have said that; it was the wrong thing to say. It angered all the policemen, and there were at least a dozen of them present. He was in trouble. If he had really killed the woman, and they said that he had, then he was in trouble such as he had never been in his life.

  “If I have any credit at all Out There,” said Izzie (not to the policemen, but to those weirdies out of his childhood he said it) “If I have any wish still ungranted, I would wish that this had never happened, and that I was back in my bed.”

  Others have wished the same thing when in the same or worse spots, and for them it did not work, and there is no reason why it would. Izzie himself had wished it before when in troubles less grave, and it had not worked. But perhaps the times before he had not wished it with the same degree of seriousness. And he did in fact have some credit due to his account Out There, some wishes still ungranted.

  The difficulty of accepting or not accepting this is that it cannot be proved. Should we wish that a happening had not happened, and we are granted our wish, then what results? So it did not happen! There are many things that never happened, and it is not amazing that they shouldn't.

  And yet he was a little amazed to find himself in bed. Whether he was still in bed or in bed again would be a difficult question to answer, and we hope that it will not be asked.

  “I was lucky to get out of that one,” said Izzie. “What a wild notion it was anyhow! I thought that I had ran down and killed a woman, and here I have not even been out of bed. Well, I'll just start this morning off a little different. Not too different though; it might be disastrous.”

  He stood up in bed, did a couple of knee-bends to get the feel of the morning surging through his frame, stepped on Irene, and jumped to the floor. This always woke her up, and she often wondered why she woke up gasping for breath. It was a good thing that she was a good-natured woman.

  “Irene, where are my cowboy boots? I'll just wear them today to see what the boys say. Do something a little different, you know.”

  “You don't have any. You never did have any. I never heard of such a thing.”

  “That's right, I don't. I wonder if we have any cold rabbit left? It would be different to have that for breakfast.”

  “We never did have any rabbit. I don't think either of us ever ate it in our lives.”

  “Ah — I had forgotten.”

  He ate breakfast, kissed Irene on the inside corner of her right eye (it comes to the bridge of the nose oddly and attractively in Irene) and left.

  “Good morning, Mr. Isom,” said Cornelia, the elevator girl.

  “Let us skip the intervening steps and come out where you say you might give me some ideas about a change of pace, Cornelia,” said Izzie.

  “All right. Let's.”

  She sat on that little stool and seemed to be all knees and mouth.

  He sat on her knees and kissed her mouth.

  “Well, aren't you the one!” said Cornelia. “And now, do you know what I'm going to do about this, sweet?”

  “What are you going to do, Cornelia?”

  “I am going to put you in a very costly frame. Don't worry about how I will do it; we have it all set up. The elevator starter is in on it, and you never will know who else. I hope you have a lot of money, because we like a lot of money. Now I will just begin to scream, and I will claim that you assaulted me. And you'll be so flustered that you'll be perfect for the set-up. Here we are at the bottom, and wasn't that a nice ride you had on my lap? But this is where you get off, in more ways than one.”

  “But Cornelia, I was just fooling around, and you've always been a flirt.”

  “I wouldn't be very good at rigging a frame if I weren't, would I, dear? And now did you ever hear a woman scream who knows how to do it?”

  But she didn't. He couldn't let her. He smothered the scream in her throat. She was very strong, that little girl, and her throat like a corded cable so that his fingers could hardly bite into it. Their eyes locked as they struggled, and then the eyes of Cornelia grew dim, and she wilted and went limp.

  “Cornelia, girl, did I hurt you? Are you just faking? How did I get into a thing like this, and more important, how am I going to get out? Cornelia, I'll pay! Straighten up!”

  But she was dead, and there was no way at all to straighten her up. Someone was hammering on the outside of the elevator door. The starter would soon have it opened.

  “If this is really happening to me, and it is more real than anything else except one thing that ever happened, then I'm in a fix that there's no coming out of. There has to be a way to make it unhappen. If I have any credit at all to my account Out There—”

  The hammering and shouting at the elevator door had become quite loud. And there was a great rasping sigh and tremor that may have been the elevator cables above, or may have been a weird voice whispering ‘Not again! O, not again!’

  “If I have any wish still ungranted,” sniffled Izzie, “I would wish that this had never happened and that I was back in my own bed.”

  The hammering at the elevator door was still louder, and the rasping sigh overhead was one of complete exasperation.

  The difficulty of this is that it cannot be proved; and the only thing certain is that whatever had happened, hadn't.

  Izzie was in bed. But was he back in bed or still in bed?

  “That is the problem,” said Izzie, “and I will be quite content to let it go unanswered. A healthy man would not have nightmares like that. Either there is something the matter with me, or they are not nightmares. I must be very careful how I begin this day.”

  He got up slowly and climbed over Irene and to the floor without touching her. He shaved and ate breakfast.

  “Isadore Isom,” called Irene, “how did you get out of bed without me knowing it?”

  “I just crawled out, Irene.”

  “Why didn't you bounce on me? How am I supposed to wake up if you don't bounce on me? Are you mad at me?”

  “No dear, I am mad at no one. And I will be very careful to be mad at no one this day.”

  “You used to say that if you couldn't stick the needle into someone your day was lost.”

  “I will say that no more.”

  He kissed her softly on the mouth: not on the back of her ear or the inside of her elbow, not on her shoulder blade or her nape, but on her mouth.

  “Izzie, what an odd thing to do!”

  He went out.

  “Good morning, Mr. Isom,” said Cornelia, the elevator girl, in such a husky voice that he could hardly hear her. “Why, what is the matter, girl?”

  “I don't know. My throat is bruised and it's like fire. I can hardly talk.”

  Down in the street he went to his car. On a sudden impulse he felt and examined it. It was warm. It should not have been if it had not been driven since he parked it the night before.

  “Perhaps in my bewitched state I shouldn't drive at all,” he said. “It would be safer if I took a taxi.”

  He hailed one and got nervously into the back. Not till they were underway did he notice that he was not the only passenger. There was a dark woman there, muffled in a coat.

  “I didn't notice that you had another passenger,” said Izzie. “You can let me off as near Sixth Street as you go.”

  “We are not going that way at all,” said the driver; he made a sudden U-turn, and sure enough they were not going that way.

  “Then let me out again and I'll take another cab.”

  “That would be quite impossible. This taxi goes all the way. There will be no getting out till the end.”

  “You might just as well begin to talk sense, driver.”

  “Are you sure that you want me to?”

  “No. I am not quite sure that I do.”

  They drove out of town too quickly; there
should have been more town than that; there always had been. And the early morning had become earlier still till now it was scarcely light. They stopped when they were out of town.

  Then the three of them got out, and two of them were armed. “And just what is going to happen now?” asked Isadore.

  “You guess,” said the woman.

  “I am not called Izzie the Whizzie for nothing. It may be that I will find a way to decide what is going to happen.”

  This seemed to amuse them both.

  “Yes, you can decide,” said the driver. “You can decide whether the woman is going to kill you, or whether I'm going to kill you. But that is all the decision that you are going to make.”

  “Now listen you two. I've been having a series of nightmares all morning, and I'm convinced that you two belong in that series. I'll wake up and make you go away.”

  “It is very hard to wake from a nightmare,” said the woman, “and we do not admit that we belong to such.”

  “And there is an old belief,” said the driver, “that if you are killed in a nightmare you are really killed. But make your choice. The gun of the woman is a small one and will make quite a small hole. And mine is a blaster and will be messy.”

  “If I have any credit at all to my account Out There—” cried Izzie, raising his voice in invocation.

  “Oh, now you're going to call on them! You're making a nuisance of yourself.”

  He wasn't. It was the woman who was making a nuisance of herself with her plain intent to shoot him. Well, she was the more immediate threat. He grappled with her, and turned her hand with the little gun in it; and whichever of them fired it he did not know, but it was the woman who was shot, and he knew fatally.

  “That is three women I have killed this morning, and it is still early.”

  “Yes, quite early,” said the driver.

  “And I just believe that if I call on them hard enough it will work again. And when I am safe back in bed I will not get up at all today.”

  “No. You will not get up at all this day.”

  “If I have any wish still ungranted, I would wish that this had never happened and that I was back in my bed.”

  “Call on them. It will do you no good.”

  “It will. I feel myself go. If you kill me now it will only be in a dream.”

  “But you will be dead none the less.”

  The driver shot him. That was the last thing he knew. And the other last thing he knew was that he was in his bed, though whether again in his own bed or still there is questionable.

  There is no way to prove that any of it happened, or that it was made to unhappen. Isadore was in bed.

  But he was dead in bed.

  Irene woke to the shot and to the blood.

  “Isadore!”

  And then she began.

  Did you ever hear a woman who knew how to do it really scream?

  Dream

  He was a morning type, so it was unusual that he should feel depressed in the morning. He tried to account for it, and could not. He was a healthy man, so he ate a healthy breakfast. He was not too depressed for that. And he listened unconsciously to the dark girl with the musical voice. Often she ate at Cahill's in the mornings with her girl friend.

  Grape juice, pineapple juice, orange juice, apple juice… why did people look at him suspiciously just because he took four or five sorts of juice for breakfast?

  “Agnes, it was ghastly. I was built like a sack. A sackful of skunk cabbage, I swear. And I was a green-brown color and had hair like a latrine mop. Agnes, I was sick with misery. It just isn't possible for anybody to feel so low. I can't shake it at all. And the whole world was like the underside of a log. It wasn't that, though. It wasn't just one bunch of things. It was everything. It was a world where things just weren't worth living. I can't come out of it…” “Teresa, it was only a dream.”

  Sausage, only four little links for an order. Did people think he was a glutton because he had four orders of sausage? It didn't seem like very much. “My mother was a monster. She was a wart-hoggish animal. And yet she was still recognizable. How could my mother look like a wart hog and still look like my mother? Mama's pretty!”

  “Teresa, it was only a dream. Forget it.”

  The stares a man must suffer just to get a dozen pancakes on his plate! What was the matter with people who called four pancakes a tall stack? And what was odd about ordering a quarter of a pound of butter? It was better than having twenty of those little pats each on its coaster.

  “Agnes, we all of us had eyes that bugged out. And we stank! We were bloated, and all the time it rained a dirty green rain that smelled like a four-letter word. Good grief, girl! We had hair all over us where we weren't warts. And we talked like cracked crows. We had crawlers. I itch just from thinking about it. And the dirty parts of the dream I won't even tell you. I've never felt so blue in my life. I just don't know how I'll make the day through.” “Teresa, doll, how could a dream upset you so much?”

  There isn't a thing wrong with ordering three eggs sunny-side up, and three over easy, and three poached ever so soft, and six of them scrambled. What law says a man should have all of his eggs fixed alike? Nor is there anything wrong with ordering five cups of coffee. That way the girl doesn't have to keep running over with refills. Bascomb Swicegood liked to have bacon and waffles after the egg interlude and the earlier courses. But he was nearly at the end of his breakfast when he jumped up.

  “What did she say?”

  He was surprised at the violence of his own voice.

  “What did who say, Mr. Swicegood?”

  “The girl that was just here, that just left with the other girl.”

  “That was Teresa, and the other girl was Agnes. Or else that was Agnes and the other girl was Teresa. It depends on which girl you mean. I don't know what either of them said.”

  Bascomb ran out into the street.

  “Girl, the girl who said it rained dirty green all the time, what's your name?”

  “My name is Teresa. You've met me four times. Every morning you look like you never saw me before.”

  “I'm Agnes,” said Agnes.

  “What did you mean it rained dirty green all the time? Tell me all about it.”

  “I will not, Mr. Swicegood. I was just telling a dream I had to Agnes. It isn't any of your business.”

  “Well, I have to hear all of it. Tell me everything you dreamed.”

  “I will not. It was a dirty dream. It isn't any of your business. If you weren't a friend of my Uncle Ed Kelly, I'd call a policeman for your bothering me.”

  “Did you have things like live rats in your stomach to digest for you? Did they—”

  “Oh! How did you know? Get away from me. I will call a policeman. Mr. McCarty, this man is annoying me.”

  “The devil he is, Miss Ananias. Old Bascomb just doesn't have it in him any more. There's no more harm in him than a lamppost.”

  “Did the lampposts have hair on them, Miss Teresa? Did they pant and swell and smell green….”

  “Oh! You couldn't know! You awful man!”

  “I'm Agnes,” said Agnes; but Teresa dragged Agnes away with her.

  “What is the lamppost jag, Bascomb?” asked Officer Mossback McCarty.

  “Ah—I know what it is like to be in hell, Mossback. I dreamed of it last night.”

  “And well you should, a man who neglects his Easter duty year after year. But the lamppost jag? If it concerns anything on my beat, I have to know about it.”

  “It seems that I had the same depressing dream as the young lady, identical in every detail.”

  Not knowing what dreams are (and we do not know), we should not find it strange that two people might have the same dream. There may not be enough of them to go around, and most dreams are forgotten in the morning. Bascomb Swicegood had forgotten his dismal dream. He could not account for his state of depression until he heard Teresa Ananias telling pieces of her own dream to Agnes Schoenapfel. Even then it
came back to him slowly at first, but afterwards with a rush.

  The oddity wasn't that two people should have the same dream, but that they should discover the coincidence, what with the thousands of people running around and most of the dreams forgotten.

  Yet, if it were a coincidence, it was a multiplex one. On the night when it was first made manifest it must have been dreamed by quite a number of people in one medium-large city. There was a small piece in an afternoon paper. One doctor had five different worried patients who had had dreams of rats in their stomachs, and hair growing on the insides of their mouths. This was the first publication of the shared-dream phenomenon.

  The squib did not mention the foul-green-rain background, but later investigation uncovered that this and other details were common to the dreams.

  But it was a reporter named Willy Wagoner who really put the town on the map. Until he did the job, the incidents and notices had been isolated. Doctor Herome Judas had been putting together some notes on the Green-rain Syndrome. Doctor Florenz Appian had been working up his evidence on the Surex Ventriculus Trauma, and Professor Gideon Greathouse had come to some learned conclusions on the inner meaning of warts. But it was Willy Wagoner who went to the people for it, and then gave his conclusions back to the people.

  Willy said that he had interviewed a thousand people at random. (He hadn't really; he had talked to about twenty. It takes longer than you might think to interview a thousand people.) He reported that slightly more than sixty-seven percent had had a dream of the same repulsive world. He reported that more than forty-four percent had had the dream more than once, thirty two percent more than twice, twenty-seven percent more than three times. Many had had it every damned night. And many refused frostily to answer questions on the subject at all.

  This was ten days after Bascomb Swicegood had heard Teresa Ananias tell her dream to Agnes.

  Willy published the opinions of the three learned gentlemen above, and the theories and comments of many more. He also appended a hatful of answers he had received that were sheer levity.