Horrible Imaginings

by Fritz Leiber

  He got back in bed and watched her. She had found a chair-arm and was looking out the window. The bathrobe had fallen back from her shoulders. He felt wide awake, his mind crawlingly active.

  “You know, Alice,” he said, “there may be a psychoanalytic angle to your fear.”

  “Yes?” She did not turn her head.

  “Maybe, in a sense, your libido is still tied to the past. Unconsciously, you may still have that distorted conception of sex your aunt drilled into you, something sadistic and murderous. And it’s possible your unconscious mind had tied your allergy in with it—you said it was a dusty couch. See what I’m getting at?”

  She still looked out the window.

  “It’s an ugly idea and of course your conscious mind wouldn’t entertain it for a moment, but your aunt’s influence set the stage and, when all’s said and done, he was your first experience of men. Maybe in some small way, your libido is still linked to... him.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  Rather late next morning he awoke feeling sluggish and irritable. He got out of the room quietly, leaving her still asleep, breathing easily. As he was getting a second cup of coffee, a jarringly loud knocking summoned him to the door. It was a messenger with the shots from the Allergy Lab. On his way to the examination room he phoned Engstrand again, heard him promise he’d be over in a half hour sure, cut short a long-winded explanation as to what had tied up the electrician last night.

  He started to phone Mrs. Easton’s place, decided against it.

  He heard Alice in the kitchen.

  In the examination room he set some water to boil in the sterilizing pan, got out instruments. He opened the package from the Allergy Lab, frowned at the inscription HOUSEHOLD DUST, set down the container, walked over to the window, came back and frowned again, went to his office and dialed the Lab.

  “Renshaw?”

  “Uh huh. Get the shots?”

  “Yes, many thanks. But I was just wondering... you know, it’s rather odd we should hit it with household dust after so many misses.”

  “Not so odd, when you consider...”

  “Yes, but I was wondering exactly where the stuff came from.”

  “Just a minute.”

  He shifted around in his swivel chair. In the kitchen Alice was humming a tune.

  “Say, Howard, look. I’m awfully sorry, but Johnson seems to have gone off with the records. I’m afraid I won’t be able to get hold of them ‘til afternoon.”

  “Oh, that’s all right. Just curiosity. You don’t have to bother.”

  “No, I’ll let you know. Well, I suppose you’ll be making the first injection this morning?”

  “Right away. You know we’re both grateful to you for having hit on the substance responsible.”

  “No credit due me. Just a...” Renshaw chuckled “… shot in the dark.”

  Some twenty minutes later, when Alice came into the examination room, Howard was struck, to a degree that quite startled him, with how pretty and desirable she looked. She had put on a white dress and her smiling face showed no signs of last night’s attack. For a moment he had the impulse to take her in his arms, but then he remembered last night and decided against it.

  As he prepared to make the injection, she eyed the hypodermics, bronchoscope, and scalpels laid out on the sterile towel.

  “What are those for?” she asked lightly.

  “Just routine stuff, never use them.”

  “You know,” she said laughingly, “I was an awful ninny last night. Maybe you’re right about my libido. At any rate, I’ve put him out of my life forever. He can’t ever get at me again. From now on, you’re the only one.”

  He grinned, very happily. Then his eyes grew serious and observant as he made the injection, first withdrawing the needle repeatedly to make sure there were no signs of venous blood. He watched her closely.

  The phone jangled.

  Damn,” he said. “That’ll be Mrs. Easton’s nurse. Come along with me.”

  He hurried through the swinging door. She started after him.

  But it wasn’t Mrs. Easton’s nurse. It was Renshaw. Found the records. Johnson didn’t have them after all. Just misplaced. And there is something out of the way. That dust didn’t come from there at all. It came from...

  There came a knocking. He strained to hear what Renshaw was saying.

  “What?” He whipped out a pencil. “Say that again. Don’t mind the noise. It’s just our electrician coming to fix the bell. What was that city?”

  The knocking was repeated.

  “Yes, I’ve got that. And the exact address of the place the dust came from?”

  There came a third and louder burst of knocking, which grew to a violent tattoo.

  Finishing his scribbling, he hung up with a bare “Thanks,” to Renshaw, and hurried to the door just as the knocking died.

  There was no one there.

  Then he realized. He hardly dared push open the door to the examination room, yet no one could have gone more quickly.

  Alice’s agonizingly arched, suffocated body was lying on the rug. Her heels, which just reached the hardwood flooring, made a final, weak knock-knock. Her throat was swollen like a toad’s.

  Before he made another movement he could not stop himself from glaring around, window and door, as if for an escaping intruder.

  As he snatched for his instruments, knowing for an absolute certainty that it would be too late, a slip of paper floated down from his hand.

  On it was scribbled, “LANSING, 1555 Kinsey Street.”

  SKINNY’S WONDERFUL

  I bet a lot of these lads beef to you about their wives... you must get sick of it... but not me. I think Skinny’s wonderful. It isn’t every man has a wife who is loving, hardworking, brainy as they make them, talented seventeen different ways, and a professional dancer. You could draw me another beer. Hot as the hinges, isn’t it? Thanks.

  I started calling her Skinny because she wasn’t meaty like the other girls, though she could outlast any ten of them dancing. They has nice enough figures if you go for that sort of thing, but they were meaty... not in the old-time beef-trust class, but the grits and greens and side meat showed. You know how they round them up. Lad goes south and puts an ad in the country papers: Girls One Hundred Dollars a Week. Likely looking ones he asks to strip. If they will and the figure’s okay they’re in.

  Skinny’s no stripper. They always try to have one real dancer in those shows so they can call them artistic and give the boobs’ libidos a rest. Of course Skinny always sheds a few clothes... that’s a must... but she never goes all the way. Shinny provides the touch of imagination. She’s an Aztec priestess with a glass knife or a Russian duchess with a whip. Once she was Joan of Arc holding a cross and her robe got burned off six times a night... quite a lighting effect... and she does a half-and-half apache dance where she throws herself all over the stage and kicks herself. She was going to be Queen Theodora once with blue and gold robes and a jeweled cross, but they told her the Irish boobs would think it was supposed to be the Virgin Mary.

  No wonder she’s skinny the way she’s always worked on those routines. Rehearse, rehearse, over and over. All around the living room. Whew! You could draw me another and have one yourself this time. Okay, a shortie. Once before I knew her she was working a bog club date where the boobs sat at tables having dinner. Skinny was doing a slow backbend, bare middle, when one of the yells, “That girl looks starved, Let’s give her something to eat,” and he throws a roll. Right away hard rolls are skidding all over all over the stage and a few thudding on her ribs. She finished the act though. Some of those club dates are pretty terrible. They even expect the pianist to play naked. Can you imagine?

  But Skinny’s no stripper and be damned to my mother for calling her one. Just after we got married Skinny gave a dance recital in our back garden for some of mother’s friends and a few of ours. Mother said afterwards she was trying to give Skinny every chance. It was very beautiful, blue
spotlights, Greek robes; Isadora Duncan sort of thing, Skinny’s really an artist. But right in the middle of one number she popped a shoulder strap. I don’t see anything wrong about a breast, certainly not one of Skinny’s, it’s sort of tiny and tender, its makes you think of little kids. Naturally Skinny finished the act, she always does, but Mother thought, she should have stopped... made like September Morn I suppose... or worn a brassiere. Mother also said Shinny wasn’t careful about drawing the alcove curtains when she changed costumes and that she shouldn’t have stood on the alcove table to do it. She worries and fusses and criticizes all the time.

  Skinny’s nothing like that. She has a wonderful disposition. That’s why I’m telling you about her. I wouldn’t want to bore you with my woes. Of course she screams at me sometimes and throws the soup, but it’s generally lukewarm soup, Skinny believes hot foods give you cancer... I’m a lucky man, wouldn’t you say? Once she did throw some paint at me, I mean trip me and shove me into a bog slopping puddle of it. She’d got me to help her paint the living room ceiling... she’s always redecorating the apartment... and I climbed on the stepladder and right away spilled a two-gallon can. She had justification that time, you must admit. It wasn’t anything like the night she got mad at me in the car and started stamping on my ankle and finally hit the gas pedal. We went off the road... no bones broken though the birdcage got knocked open and the white rats escaped out of it. But that night Skinny had been drinking and I must have been beefing to her. Normally she has a wonderful disposition, it’s just that she has all this energy and it has to find an outlet.

  Skinny has energy enough for ten women. Did I say ten? I meant two hundred. By contrast I have what you might call a lethargic disposition, I need Skinny to balance me off.

  It’s not only energy. Skinny has brains. You may think I’m exaggerating, you may think I’m just a lad mooning about his girl, but I actually believe Skinny has brains enough to be president of the United States, if we had women presidents. Something like a combination of Claire Booth Luce and Bridgitte Bardot. Once an intellectual lad told Skinny she had no brains at all, but she argued him down. She’s talented in all sorts of directions. Take interior decoration...

  No, no, that’s all right. Go ahead and serve them, it’s your vocation. Hello, friend. Join me in a beer? Has it ever occurred to you, friend, that women have a nest-building instinct? Take my wife Skinny. Every six months, regular as clockwork, she has to rent a new apartment and redecorate it from vestibule to garbage can. If she doesn’t she starts brooding. She does a wonderful job... white woolly rugs, low tables, dramatic simplicity. My mother’s all wet when she says our places always look like night clubs when Skinny’s through with them. Mother’s never been inside a burlesque bar in her life.

  Skinny’s awfully smart about figuring out stuff to use in decorating, stuff nobody else would think of, and finding places where you can pick it up for nothing or sort of snitch it. Driftwood, big branches with leaves on, travel posters, old spotlights and gelatin from the night clubs, wicker baskets a yard across, ten-gallon green glass carboys, bricks and tiles, you name it. We can’t drive past a house that’s being torn down but what we have to stop and rummage for old ironwork. We generally find it too and it’s always the biggest heaviest piece. She’s always calling me up at the last minute to tell me to stop off somewhere on the way and bring home the damndest things. She never stops hunting. Sometimes when it’s a snitch operation she gets caught, but she always has an explanation. One night when she was tearing down flowered branches in a private forest just off the highway a watchman yelled at her and started to come running, but she screamed back that she was only going to the powder room and what sort of a filthy old Peeping Tom was he, anyway? I’m generally along to carry the branches and tear down the bigger ones she points out.

  But of course moving every six months is the real monster job. Especially lugging and repotting all these tremendous plants. Skinny hammers nails in the living room and drapes the vines around. Striped and spotted leaves bigger than your two hands. You felt you’re right in the jungle.

  No, we haven’t any children. I suppose if we did she’d take out her nest-building instinct on them. Still, I don’t know. She has an awful lot of excess energy, there might still be some left over for plants and things. Besides, she likes to entertain. She lives for her parties.

  Skinny’s a great little hostess. She knocks herself out getting ready for her parties... all sorts of smorgasbord spread out, a huge punchbowl with colored ice, the kitchen set up for making pizza. And she’s generally stayed up housecleaning the whole night before... those are the nights we get our complaints from the neighbors, not on the party nights. Our parties are pretty quite, even Skinny doesn’t have much energy left, and then our friends are an odd lot, they’re all sorts... show people, some of Mother’s friends. Skinny’s father’s social-minded characters, some of the people from the dime store, and now my securities lads... they don’t mix so well and Skinny always invites them all. You know, it’s only on party nights that Skinny gets even the teeniest bit rubber-kneed drunk... it’s simply that getting ready has taken it out of her. She knocks herself out giving us all a good time.

  Skinny’s been a wonderful wife to me. Really. Of course she hasn’t been able to get along with Mother, especially when Mother didn’t pass on as we expected. Certainly you can’t blame Mother for that, I was happier than anybody two months ago when Mother hit eighty, but I do blame Mother for calling Skinny a communist. Unquestionably I shouldn’t have hit Mother, that was a contemptible and a big mistake that I’ll be paying for until I die, even if it was nothing more than an accidental flick and anyway Skinny always gets everybody around her terribly worked up. There was absolutely nothing to Mother’s suspicions. Skinny’s father had all sorts of upside down social ideas in the old days... as who didn’t, they tell me... but now the only subversive literature you’ll find in his place of business is on Russian wolfhounds. Supplying dogs and cats and birds to stabilize the American home is just about the most patriotic job a man can do, in a way, wouldn’t you say? Skinny’s own interest in Russia is strictly limited to music, ballet, and Orthodox Church decor. A balalaika hanging on the wall against jewel-crusted brocade, that about sums up the Soviets for Skinny, though it’s true she once had the ice in the punchbowl frozen in a big red star at one of the parties Mother came to, I don’t know why. Certainly the detective Mother hired to investigate Skinny never turned up anything except the lunch dates she was having with a mocky screenwriter, or so he claimed to be... but that’s another story. And in a way the trouble with Mother hasn’t turned out so badly. She and Skinny stay away from each other, which is a relief, and although I can’t expect any lump-sum money when Mother dies I’ll get something in trust... she’ll probably live to one hundred anyway... and meanwhile she puts up a little cash from time to time for me to study my new job of selling securities in preparation for getting a license to sell them. Buy you another beer?

  I’ve been slow getting my license, I have to admit. There are all sorts of tests you have to pass and I don’t have Skinny’s kind of ambition though tries hard enough to give it to me. Maybe I should go back to an office job. Skinny herself is almost coming around to think there are advantages, even if no future, in a biweekly paycheck. I don’t know.

  Skinny’s still terrifically ambitious, though. As always, not barring childhood. She ran off and got a job dancing with a carnival when she was fourteen. She looked older then, just as she looks younger now. The girls had to turn cartwheels in one number. Skinny swore she could though she knew she couldn’t. That night she went out to the park and practiced. When dawn came she could turn cartwheels. That’s how I sometimes think of Skinny... a little girl all alone in the park turning cartwheels at 3 A.M.

  The carnival had its points, Skinny said. They had a pit of rattlesnakes in the sideshow and she got a kick out of looking down into it.

  Her father wasn’t much help to her... that
was before the pet shop and he was saving humanity and shifting around in these free-love situations. Skinny wanted to dance in ballet... she knew it was tops, her father did give her that scrap of information... but those were depression times and the big ballet troupes weren’t going strong yet. Skinny got a job dancing in the Palace lone. She held it for five years.

  I imagine you’ve been to enough burlesque shows, friend, probably more than I have, but it was little Skinny who told me how hard those line-girls worked. Fours shows a day seven days a week and five on Saturdays. A day off when and if. Rehearsal every weekday morning, early on Fridays to fit costumes for the new show. Playing one show, rehearsing another, and learning routines for the third. Monotony for the headlined strippers, boredom for the stand-around showgirls, but those little line-dancers got their tails worked off. Because Skinny was the most active and ambitions, they put her on the end of the line where she had to dance twice as far... when the line danced off sideways into the wings she was the last to leave the stage. By the time they exited high-kicking into the other wing, the line was reversed and she was still at the on-stage end... they somehow arranged it that way, Skinny told me, though at one point she’d have to sprint from one end of the line to the other to make it come out right.

  I can’t speak for the showgirls, friend, but I can assure you that the girls of the burlesque line were virtuous... those routines left them with no energy for anything else. Skinny told me she’d wake up nights counting five-six and she said that when the Midnight Shambles came along on Saturday it was just that.

  Skinny rose to being a specialty dancer a few times at the Palace. Her high point was a poison dance as Lucretia Borgia... she carried a bottle of green dye and dripped it in the goblets of ten showgirls. But then stage burlesque faded and Skinny got started on club dates. She auditioned for ballet a few times, but it’s my honest opinion Skinny simply had more than ballet knew what to do with. Same with movies, the stage and now TV. Skinny’s an endless dynamo. Another beer would go fine. Thanks.