Stories (2011)

by Joe R. Lansdale

  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.

  BIG MAN: A FABLE

  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.

  He grabbed up cars and people and chunked them high and far, tore the roof off of his own house and dropped it on them. It looked like a busy ant farm below, watching all the law scrambling about, and he realized that during his trip to town, he had grown once again, this time not in inches, but in feet. He had to be twenty-five to thirty feet high, and he was broad as a barn. He marched off and left them and they followed, buzzing overhead like bees, below like ants and beetles. He walked by a skyscraper that was slicked out with solar panels. He saw his reflection there; he looked like a giant of legend. Long haired, bearded, the beard matted with brains and blood from the nurse he had eaten, as well as all manner of slop from his meal at the grocery store. His penis and testicles swung like god’s own mallet.

  Stalking on through town, he ripped the tops off buildings, and finally squatted over the roof of one and shit in it, filling it up. He grabbed up some of the police and wiped his ass on them and flung them to all points of the compass. He went on through town and down to the lake and got down on his knees and drank it dry, feeling a prod in his ass as he did.

  When he stood up, he felt something between his butt cheeks, pulled out a hand launched missile that had failed to go off. He crushed it in his fist, and it exploded. He felt nothing; it was as if there was nothing to feel.

  They kept after him all day, shooting him with this, shooting him with that. They even dropped a small tactical nuke on him. All that did was take out some countryside and make his eyes water. This went on for days. Finally, they just gave up for a while and went home and left him where he had ended up, on a mountain, contemplating his situation.

  From time to time the army regrouped and tried to take him out, jets with napalm even. But all it did was burn some hair off his head and skin. He had grown impervious. Soon he was so big that at night he slept lying down in a valley. If it rained, he had to take it. If it got cold, he had to take it. But the thing was, it was nothing now. He could hardly feel anything anymore.

  He grew larger and larger, found that his eyesight had improved; he could see like a goddamn eagle, for miles. He saw towns in the distance, cities. He went to them and he tore them up; he pissed on their downtowns and shit in their reservoirs, continued to wipe his ass on humans, but he had grown so big and they were so small, there was too much break through. For awhile, cows were good.

  He was so large now, he found he could walk across much of the Atlantic Ocean, swim the rest with ease. Sharks would attack. They broke their teeth. He slapped whales around, he sucked in and chewed up dolphins.

  When he got to Africa he stalked through the country and ate what he could find and the people starved in his wake, and sometimes he ate them. He fornicated with holes in the sides of mountains; had Kilimanjaro been a woman, she would have been pregnant ten times over. He killed anything he saw, people, animals, vegetation. He breathed air so deeply, other living things died from lack of oxygen.

  Soon the messes he made, the piles of shit he left, the urine he pooled, took their toll. The world stunk, and he, who merely thought of himself now as Big Man, didn’t give a flying fuck through a rolling doughnut about the world, or about himself. It was all a matter of the now and not the tomorrow.

  He had always wanted to see Paris, and did, ripping the EiffelTower out of the ground, using it to pick his teeth. In England the army came out and a man on a tall trailer gave a speech over a megaphone saying how the English would like to live in peace. He sat on Picadilly Circus, listened intently. When they were finished, he ate the speaker and any of the others he could catch. In Ireland they just said, “Go fuck yourself.” He ate them too.

  Big Man walked across Europe. He was still growing, his head was poking up near the empty black of outer space. He had trouble breathing. He walked with his head ducked, and finally he crawled, crushing Rome and Athens and everything in his path. He crawled all the way to China, wrecking it. Nuclear bombs were tried there, not tactical nukes, but the big boys. They made his skin itch and made him mad. He destroyed everything in his path. He had a large Chinese dinner.

  He took to hanging out in the oceans, floating there to keep from standing. It gave him a feeling of comfort. He didn’t bother to leave the ocean when he relieved himself, one or two. He didn’t wipe anymore. He just filled the oceans with his waste. Pretty soon, he lay in piles of his own shit.

  Finally, he stood, wobbled, walked, his head bent low. It was uncomfortable to walk. Crawling was uncomfortable. To do almost anything was uncomfortable, and he had wrecked what there was of earth worth having.

  Big Man took a deep breath and stood. His head was in outer space, and he could see all manner of man-made debris whirl by. He felt himself growing even as he stood. He ducked his head back into the atmosphere and sucked in a tremendous breath. Anything that breathed air nearby died from lack of oxygen.

  Standing, h
is chest full, he discovered that his upper body felt light. He bent his knees and sprang. He went up, and up, and up. It was fun. It was glorious. And then he didn’t drop. No gravity. He was floating in the black, star-specked void of space. And he kept growing. His air ran out. He stopped breathing. He stopped knowing. He stopped being. Still he grew. His body became so big that from earth below, what was left of mankind could see his shape against the sun; he looked like a tremendous paper doll cut from black velvet.

  Big Man entered the gravitational pull of the sun. He shot toward it like a rocket. He grew so big his body blocked out its rays, and on earth it went dark and cold and people and animals and vegetation died. And still Big Man grew and grew and drifted toward the burning hot light of ole sol. And when he came to the sun, he was so big, with his arms outstretched, if there had been anyone left to see him, they might have thought the big dark man was about to catch a huge yellow ball.

  The sun greeted him with fire, and it was all over for BigMan. He was a huge puff of flame. Below, the cold, dead ball of the earth continued to turn and whirl around the weight of the hungry sun.

  THE COMPANION

  They weren't biting.

  Harold sat on the bank with his fishing pole and watched the clear creek water turn dark as the sunlight faded. He knew he should pack up and go. This wonderful fishing spot he'd heard about was a dud, but the idea of going home without at least one fish for supper was not a happy one. He had spent a large part of the day before bragging to his friends about what a fisherman he was. He could hear them now, laughing and joking as he talked about the big one that got away.

  And worse yet, he was out of bait.

  He had used his little camp shovel to dig around the edge of the bank for worms. But he hadn't turned up so much as a grub or a doodlebug.

  The best course of action, other than pack his gear on his bike and ride home, was to cross the bank. It was less wooded over there, and the ground might be softer. On the other side of the creek, through a thinning row of trees, he could see an old farm field. There were dried stalks of broken-down corn and tall dried weeds the plain brown color of a cardboard box.