Lovers and Other Monsters

by Marvin Kaye (ed)

  “To work, Hippolyte—be quick!”

  The machinist had evidently been coached before he came. With slender, long-fingered hands, which trembled at first, he selected certain tools with nice precision, made some rapid measurements of the weapon and of the cleared space around it, and began to adjust the parts of a queer little machine. Arnold watched him curiously.

  “What—” he began to say; but he ceased; a deeper pallor set on his face, his hands relaxed, and his eyelids fell.

  “Thank God!” exclaimed Entrefort; “he has fainted—he can’t stop us now. Quick, Hippolyte!”

  The machinist attached the queer little machine to the handle of the weapon, seized the stiletto in his left hand, and with his right began a series of sharp, rapid movements backward and forward.

  “Hurry, Hippolyte!” urged Entrefort.

  “The metal is very hard.”

  “Is it cutting?”

  “I can’t see for the blood.”

  In another moment something snapped. Hippolyte started; he was very nervous. He removed the little machine.

  “The metal is very hard,” he said; “it breaks the saws.”

  He adjusted another tiny saw and resumed work. After a little while he picked up the handle of the stiletto and laid it on the table. He had cut it off, leaving the blade inside Arnold’s body.

  “Good, Hippolyte!” exclaimed Entrefort. In a minute he had closed the bright end of the blade from view by drawing together the skin-flaps and sewing them firmly.

  Arnold returned to consciousness and glanced down at his breast. He seemed puzzled. “Where is the weapon?” he asked.

  “Here is part of it,” answered Entrefort, holding up the handle.

  “And the blade—”

  “That is an irremovable part of your internal machinery.” Arnold was silent. “It had to be cut off,” pursued Entrefort, “not only because it would be troublesome and an undesirable ornament, but also because it was advisable to remove every possibility of its withdrawal,” Arnold said nothing. “Here is a prescription,” said Entrefort; “take the medicine as directed for the next five years without fail.”

  “What for? I see that it contains muriatic acid.”

  “If necessary I will explain five years from now.”

  “If I live.”

  “If you live.”

  Arnold drew me down to him and whispered, “Tell her to fly at once; this man may make trouble for her.”

  Was there ever a more generous fellow?

  ❖

  I thought that I recognized a thin, pale, bright face among the passengers who were leaving an Australian steamer which had just arrived at San Francisco.

  “Doctor Entrefort!” I cried.

  “Ah!” he said, peering up into my face and grasping my hand; “I know you now, but you have changed. You remember that I was called away immediately after I had performed that crazy operation on your friend. I have spent the intervening four years in India, China, Tibet, Siberia, the South Seas, and God knows where not. But wasn’t that a most absurd, hare-brained experiment that I tried on your friend! Still, it was all that could have been done. I have dropped all that nonsense long ago. It is better, for more reasons than one, to let them die at once. Poor fellow! he bore it so bravely! Did he suffer much afterward? How long did he live? A week—perhaps a month?”

  “He is alive yet.”

  “What!” exclaimed Entrefort, startled.

  “He is, indeed, and is in this city.”

  “Incredible!”

  “It is true; you shall see him.”

  “But tell me about him now!” cried the surgeon, his eager eyes glittering with the peculiar light which I had seen in them on the night of the operation. “Has he regularly taken the medicine which I prescribed?”

  “He has. Well, the change in him, from what he was before the operation, is shocking. Imagine a young daredevil of twenty-two, who had no greater fear of danger or death than of a cold, now a cringing, cowering fellow; apparently an old man, nursing his life with pitiful tenderness, fearful that at any moment something may happen to break the hold of his aorta-walls on the stiletto-blade; a confirmed hypochondriac, peevish, melancholic, unhappy in the extreme. He keeps himself confined as closely as possible, avoiding all excitement and exercise, and even reads nothing exciting. The constant danger has worn out the last shred of his manhood and left him a pitiful wreck. Can nothing be done for him?”

  “Possibly. But has he consulted no physician?”

  “None whatever; he has been afraid that he might learn the worst.”

  “Let us find him at once. Ah, here comes my wife to meet me! She arrived by the other steamer.”

  I recognized her immediately and was overcome with astonishment.

  “Charming woman,” said Entrefort; “you’ll like her. We were married three years ago at Bombay. She belongs to a noble Italian family and has traveled a great deal.”

  He introduced us. To my unspeakable relief she remembered neither my name nor my face. I must have appeared odd to her, but it was impossible for me to be perfectly unconcerned. We went to Arnold’s rooms, I with much dread. I left her in the reception room and took Entrefort within. Arnold was too greatly absorbed in his own troubles to be dangerously excited by meeting Entrefort, whom he greeted with indifferent hospitality.

  “But I heard a woman’s voice,” he said. “It sounds—” He checked himself, and before I could intercept him he had gone to the reception room; and there he stood face to face with the beautiful adventuress—none other than Entrefort’s wife now—who, wickedly desperate, had driven a stiletto into Arnold’s vitals in a hotel four years before because he had refused to marry her. They recognized each other instantly and both grew pale; but she, quicker witted, recovered her composure at once and advanced toward him with a smile and an extended hand. He stepped back, his face ghastly with fear.

  “Oh!” he gasped, “the excitement, the shock—it has made the blade slip out! The blood is pouring from the opening—it burns—I am dying!” and he fell into my arms and instantly expired.

  The autopsy revealed the surprising fact that there was no blade in his thorax at all; it had been gradually consumed by the muriatic acid which Entrefort had prescribed for that very purpose, and the perforations in the aorta had closed up gradually with the wasting of the blade and had been perfectly healed for a long time. All his vital organs were sound. My poor friend, once so reckless and brave, had died simply of a childish and groundless fear, and the woman unwittingly had accomplished her revenge.

  Joan Vander Putten

  In the Shadows of My Fear

  Joan Vander Putten, a mother of five who resides on New York’s Long Island, left a banking career to devote herself to writing. Her wicked tale of marital strife, “Just a Little Thing” was included in my Doubleday collection Devils & Demons, and the following nightmare originally appeared in Kathryn Ptacek’s anthology, Women of Darkness.

  I OPEN MY EYES, and I am afraid. Again. Each day the fear licks me awake, follows me around the house, like an unwelcome pet. It is nearly ready, I think, to metamorphose into something tangible. But not yet, I sense, not until it wrings the last ounce of courage and sanity from my soul. It hounds me, a living thing at my side, ever present, as I move from room to room in Felicia’s house; the house she so loved and invited me to live in with her. My house now, my lonely house, since her death.

  Listening, I hear only the gentle kiss of the Gulf’s waves as they meet the sandy beach below my window. I could swear to a movement at the edge of my vision, but when I turn quickly to catch the phantom I see only a lamp, a chair. The beast hides in the shadows of my fear, cautious as a stalking lion. Its origins are unknown to me, yet of one thing I am certain. It intends to win. I sense this with every nerve in my body, every pore that sweats icy anxiety.

  I rise from Felicia’s bed, noting that sometime during the night the mattress has become metal spikes. My skin is pricked and bleeding sli
ghtly. There is no pain, and I head for the bathroom. All the doorknobs in the house have become miniature skulls; their tiny teeth nip the heel of my hand as I grasp them, and the small bites never heal. The water in the basin becomes blood that stains my face red when I wash, making me use the drinking water in the refrigerator to scrub myself clean. I can never really get clean. My toothbrush is a small, steel rake that combs blood from my gums in tiny streams. I rinse and spit out repeatedly, until my spittle is no longer red-flecked. Still, I imagine I see blood.

  Why do you do these things, Felicia? I refused to spill one drop of your blood. But if it is my blood you want, take it, with my assent. Take whatever it is you want of me. I am yours, and always will be. Oh, my darling, if only you knew your tortures go unheeded, perhaps you would stop these silly games of spite.

  I have grown inured to Felicia’s spite. Nothing the house, Felicia’s house, can do hurts me, regardless of what orders she gives it. I am sure it is her spirit, seeking a vengeful justice, which plagues me.

  But I no longer care about her tricks, for the fear is all-consuming, blinding me to slow changes of objects around me. The fear is not part of her tricks. It is part of me, joined to me, like a sinister Siamese twin. It tolerates no scrutiny, allows me no peace. Helpless to defend myself against it, I am slowly sinking into its hopeless depths.

  And day by day, I find myself caring less.

  I remember the days before the fear, the days when I laughed, and played, and loved my beautiful Felicia. Oh, how I loved! Too much, some would say; others, not enough. And because of my love I suffer now—and will for all eternity, I am convinced. But to have had the love of Felicia for even so short a time, to know that while she loved me I was complete—ah, that must suffice. But it does not, and the fear nibbles at my mind. The memories of her beautiful features and shining hair fade, lost in the whispers and mists of the past, escaping my outstretched fingers.

  To have her here now, to feel her silken hands soothe and banish the constant trembling of my limbs, for that I would gladly deliver my soul into the hands of the hulking menace which is my constant companion. But it can never be, for my Felicia floats, slave to the whim of the tides, ever straining at her anchor.

  I weep, sometimes, guilty with the knowledge it was wrong to put her there. But I could not bear to think of her young body ravaged by worms and ants, deep under the firm soil where I could never visit. Due to my forethought, we can spend happy hours in each other’s company. Only occasionally, when I visit, do some bold fish swim over to bid us good day. For the most part they avoid us, choosing instead to explore other mysteries of their watery home.

  Soon it will be time to leave for our tryst. I anticipate the daily appointed time I have set, and know that Felicia expects me there at the stroke of ten, much as a wife awaits her husband’s nightly homecoming.

  The fear will trail me into the warm Gulf, a hated sleuth that dogs my steps. But once I am with Felicia, it is strangely impotent. When I am with her, it skulks into the shadows of the deep—hiding, perhaps, among the brightly colored coral—impatient for my ascent, when it can leech itself to me once more.

  I hurry to the bedroom to dress. I choose the shirt Felicia loved, the bathing suit she picked out. But when I don my clothes they flame up, scorching my body before they disintegrate, leaving a film of black smoke covering my skin. I must wash again to cleanse myself. Perhaps if I felt pain I would not be so annoyed by the delay they cause.

  As it is, I feel nothing. Nothing except fear.

  I sigh, and dress in other clothes. These behave normally, and it seems that for the time being the house, or Felicia, is done with tricks. I leave quickly, unwilling to keep my dearest waiting.

  ❖

  My boat breaks free of its tethers and runs across the waves, like an eager pup seeking its mistress. It, too, was Felicia’s, and seems to know the place she rests; it stops, almost unaided, at her exact position on the charts. I prepare to dive, anxious fingers fumbling with the oxygen tank on my back. The fear dives with me. I try to outdistance it with fast strokes of my flippers, and as I swim to the ocean’s floor, I see the outline of my love’s pliable, eternal home grow nearer. The fear slips further and further behind until I escape it completely. Although I know it merely lies in wait for my return, I am free, for a while, and I swim toward my darling.

  Felicia’s arm waves gracefully and I fancy she greets me, rather than admit she moves from the capricious tide. I embrace her gently, careful not to squeeze too hard. Bloated, her smooth skin rubs against the clear plastic bag encasing her, her body filling it almost completely. It was an oversight to neglect calculating how badly the water would swell her; the bag should have been larger. But she doesn’t mind—not now, nor will she ever. Her silent swaying calls forth images of an embryo cozy in its placenta.

  And here she will stay, that I may adore.

  But her current situation is hazardous, I suddenly realize, when I see holes nipped in the plastic surface by curious fish. I frown, curse my stupidity and lack of forethought. Soon, I fear, the fish will shred the plastic enough to reach my beloved; another thing I failed to take into account when I conceived what seemed, in the heat of the moment, the perfect solution. Before they can harm her, I must take action; find a place where we can be together always, undisturbed and undiscovered. That is my goal, my only goal, my reason for living only to be with Felicia. At the present, my mind is empty of alternatives to her current predicament. Later, when not distracted by her nearness, I will puzzle it through, find the ultimate and only answer for us both—a place where we can finally be together for all eternity, never separated. But for now, my attention is focused on Felicia.

  The green fungus on the plastic distorts her face, making it look pleated and sickly. Wiping it away, I gaze at her beauty. I am able to see beyond the water’s destruction; her exquisite features are branded in my memory by love’s blind vision. Blond hair, once bleached by the sun, floats lackluster and lackadaisically around her head. Her wide eyes still accuse, although each day they become more like raisins lost in the puffy dough of her face. And her mouth, her perfect, rosebud mouth, still forms its round scream of horror, though silent these many days.

  You have not yet forgiven me, my beautiful Felicia. Will you ever? You must. For now I am all you have, and you are mine alone. Why, my dearest, why did you drive me to this? We could be making love now on the beaches’ warm sand, swimming in the Gulfs azure bath, instead of meeting secretly in its sepulchral depths.

  What made you grow tired of our love, torment me with the threat of ending it? From the first time we kissed I knew that our destinies were inextricably woven together, meshed finer than the silk of your favorite mauve scarf, the one with which I ended your life.

  “Marry me,” I had asked.

  But you only laughed, and called me silly.

  “Come live with me,” you said. “We’ll have all of the fun, and none of the commitment.”

  So I did, even though it was your commitment I needed.

  We lived in your house by the sea, with no one but the gulls for company. Our love nest, you called it. As the days went by, my life with you became my only memory. It blotted out my past, with its unhappy history of cruel women who left me—or tried to. None ever succeeded. I couldn’t let them, of course. The pain would have been too great. But none, Felicia, none, I swear, did I love as much as you. Of them all, you are the only one I have wanted to keep.

  As I explain all this to my love the water around us darkens, as if something blocks the sun from above me. I look up, just in time to catch a monstrous shape dart behind a coral reef. My fear, lying in wait to pounce upon me when I leave. But while there is oxygen in my tanks, I will remain. I check my gauges, surprised to find the oxygen supply so quickly diminishing. Did I bother to check it before I dived, or have I a death wish? No, no death wish. For my own death would end forever this last, tenuous tie between us, and that I could not bear. I must live; for it i
s only through my own life that Felicia will continue to exist. Without me, her memory, her very being, would deteriorate into nothingness. The escaping air hisses warning bubbles into the water above me and I resume my adoration. Time grows short.

  Ah, Felicia, while you lived, we had such happy times! You bewitched me, spinning your magical web of enchantment ever tighter around my heart, until I thought it would burst from loving. Then, one day, you voiced your boredom with our love. I was slashed by your words, as the throats of those other women were, by my knife.

  “I’m going out for a while to have some fun,” you said.

  “Fun? Without me?” I couldn’t understand.

  You laughed, but it was not your silvery, moonlight laugh. It was cold and derisive, filled with a loathing that made me shudder.

  “You naïve, romantic fool,” you said, your beautiful eyes slitting into blue gashes, your perfect lips stretched in a sneer. And those were your last words.

  I could hardly see your scarf for the tears in my eyes, but my pain helped me pick it up and wind it around your neck. No knife for you, my dearest. No ugly, gaping wounds that wept blood, not for the woman I had hoped to marry. Your body would be unscarred, preserved in its perfection.

  Those same tears blurred my vision of your face as we kissed goodbye, a moment before you lost consciousness. Was that kiss as bittersweet for you as it was for me? I couldn’t see.

  The darkness has returned, hovering above and now closing in, it seems, on every side. My fear is finally solidifying. I will ignore it as long as I can. The water ripples strongly, as if trying to tug Felicia from my grasp. I continue our conversation, aware of a giddy light-headedness.

  Do you remember, my love, our last, moonlit ride, to this place? I carried you to the boat over my shoulder. It was so late, and there was no one on the beach to see us. I held you in my arms with your head cradled close to my chest as your boat reluctantly took us to where we must part.