Lizard World Read online

  “You like surprises, cupcake?” said the voice.

  A red-and-white Coca-Cola logo came slowly into focus; beside it a bottle of Coke was being downed by a lovely young flapper with bobbed blonde hair while, behind her and in the background, a handsome young frat boy in a racoon coat looked on with rapt and lascivious attention.

  “Upsy-daisy,” said the voice. It was true that Smedlow couldn’t actually feel himself being lifted: but the Coke ad now scrolled quickly upward as the hanging straps, broken windows and graffittied benches of an abandoned subway car came bounding into view.

  “Now, don’t you go nowhere, ace,” said the voice.

  It did seem reasonable to conclude that he now was sitting on some kind of chair. However, since he could neither move his head on his neck nor sufficiently shift his eyes in their sockets to look downward, it was impossible to determine this with absolute certainty. Instead, the frame of his vision was limited to the far end of the subway car where a discolored mattress, a stove, a refrigerator and a rusted freezer speckled with wads of gum huddled in the gloom between the facing doors. Girlie pictures wallpapered the ceiling. Blocking the aisle between the benches a humongous snake, apparently a python, slumbered in a huge terrarium.

  “Well, I just bet you’d like a little peek, wouldn’t ya?” said the voice, which suddenly he could definitely identify since now he was looking directly at Lem’s lean and pockmarked face -- that scraggly mustache like a clump of misplaced pubic hair, those black eyes twitching with moronic depravity. But, just as suddenly, Lem’s face disappeared and, in its stead, a mirror was thrust before Smedlow’s eyes -- and then immediately retracted.

  It had happened so very quickly that he really couldn’t be sure of what he’d seen. But his first thought was that he had never, ever, seen an older and more repulsive face: a mummy’s mask of wrinkles, flaking skin, bloodshot eyes and agespots. His second thought was that it could not possibly be his.

  As if it were a giant lollipop, his captor held the mirror by its stem, coyly hiding its reflective surface on the frayed strap of his soiled T-shirt.

  “Now I suppose you’re already hankerin’ for another peek, ain’t ya?” he said.

  The golden backside of the mirror bore a small, enamelled, chipped, faded and almost indecipherable coat of arms. Smedlow, who was a sucker for antiquities, did his very best to make out the age-worn heraldry: a field sable, three rowels silver in a chief azure and a wyvern rampant vert over all.

  “Well, maybe just one more itty-bitty peek -- real quick,” said his captor: and then, just as suddenly, the death’s-head in the mirror reappeared and vanished.

  “You see how I’m always givin’ you every teeny thing yer heart desires? Didn’t I tell you I’m the only pal you got?”

  Plastic surgery, thought Smedlow, grabbing for a lifeline in his panic: it simply must be plastic surgery.

  “Yep,” continued Lem, “we’re such pals we’re like brothers now, ain’t we? That’s how come I’m gonna treat you to a big surprise.”

  Smedlow now saw his captor brush past him, step over the calico snake in the terrarium, saunter down the aisle through the facing benches and come to a halt among the kitchen appliances and other junk crammed together at the far end of the subway car.

  “You all ready now, pal?” he said. Then he swung the freezer open, revealing thick ice, frozen pizzas, hamburger patties, a pink-smeared box of strawberry ice cream and (occupying the bottom half of the compartment) a bulging large green garbage bag -- of the yellow-drawstringed variety which Smedlow preferred for lining the trash can in his kitchen back home or for gathering up a load of autumn leaves.

  Although this garbage bag -- owing undoubtedly to its weight -- could not easily be coaxed from its ice-encrusted nest, Lem kept on tugging until finally he managed to yank it out -- and drag it close enough so that Smedlow could see a steak-red clump lurking in its drawstringed mouth.

  “Just like Christmas, ain’t it?” said Lem, pulling the yellow bow and peeling down the bag to expose both the fore and hindquarters of the body: “Now ain’t that somethin’? Why, I bet you ain’t never before seen how damn big your keester was.”

  Smedlow -- could he still call himself that? -- wanted desperately to scream, but again was blocked by the failure of his larynx. His own head, its top removed like the lid of a tuna fish can, lay gaping in the aisle before him. Ice crystals had formed on the raw meat of the forehead and in the carnage of the hollow cavity. The tongue slumped out between the teeth. The eyes -- his eyes -- stared blankly at a dustball on the floor.

  A convulsion of horror and pity overtook him. There was the scar on his chin that he’d gotten when he’d been pushed off a seesaw. There were the thick shrubbery and broad bulb of his nose. Was this odd terror what astronauts felt when they saw the distant earth? And why, why had he allowed himself to smoke so much and let his buttocks get so fat? In a sickening aftershock he noticed that they had tied him with electric cord into a fetal position and that his twilled slacks had been crunched up into a wad below his rump because something apparently was missing. Only then did he finally see that despite all this -- and without him -- his beard had kept right on growing, and this felt like an intimate betrayal.

  “Well, pal,” said Lem at last, pulling the green bag up and tying it closed again, “I sure do hate to bring bad news, but it looks like you ain’t nothin’ now but just one more goddamn splicer.”

  Chapter VII.

  In which the Dentist takes a joyride.

  With each pothole, each sudden stop and each sharp curve, the bulging green bag kept sliding and slumping over on him, oozing reddish rivulets on the white backseat of the limousine and the mauve thigh of his linen trousers.

  “Now are you boys behavin’ back there? You fellas better keep to yer own sides or I’m gonna have to spank yer heinies.”

  It was just possible, Smedlow thought, that he might now, finally, be going mad. The only reasonable thing to do was to try -- try very, very hard -- to calm down and somehow stop looking at that loathsome bag. Yes, but he would also have to force himself to withstand this destructive, but irresistibly itching urge to look in the opposite direction: but, oh no, no -- he had already done it and was now once again staring at the pale, wrinkled, blotched and hairless old reflection which repulsively stared back at him from the darkness of the rainstreaked window.

  But this time Smedlow didn’t look away. So far this atrocious, alien body had cleverly eluded his control -- except, that is, for the muscles which rolled the eyeballs and blinked the lids. And even these paltry muscles were extremely hard to locate, all too often slipping from his mental grasp and only forced to do his bidding by the most sustained and exhausting concentration.

  “And do you really think you can so easily vanquish Max Nathan Smedlow?” thought Smedlow, challenging his revolting reflection, summoning his strength: and with two more sudden efforts he made the drooping eyelids in the window blink -- first left, then right. It was as if, from the depths of this new prison, he had managed to smuggle out a small secret message to himself. “Max Smedlow is locked up inside of here,” this message said, “but he is still alive and very much capable of action.”

  A horn honked. Brakes screeched -- and Smedlow was suddenly aware that his head had jolted forward so that he was looking at a gnarled talon on his lap. If a large brown spider had been placed before his eyes, he could not have been more horrified and disgusted. No, he could not, would not, ever think of this repulsive hand as his own. The nails themselves were bad enough, brown and thick and long. But those warped, thin fingers and that bony leather like an open fan: why, this was less a hand than the wing of a crippled pterodactyl. The gold ring, of course, was something else again: the setting was appallingly baroque, but that ruby was easily fifteen carats. -- Oh Good God, thought Smedlow, suddenly focused on his purple lap: those scrawny thighs -- why, they were little better than sticks! And what horrid, shriveled hose lurked beneath that fly he coul
d only shudder to imagine.

  “Now it ain’t like you was dead,” yelled his captor from the front seat, figurin’ it was only right to cheer the sucker up and takin’ his eyes off the road for just a sec so that he could see the prisoner in the rearview mirror. Hell, that cut around his head was healin’ up real good. All that mess and swellin’ was nearly gone. Only a few more days and he could snip out all them stitches. A prolonged honk roused him, and just in time Lem looked ahead to see the yellow cab cut him off, forcing him to slam on his brakes, change lanes, floor the gas, cut back in front, and jam down the other pedal at the red light. “Asshole!” shouted Lem, giving him the finger as Smedlow’s head smacked forward into a crystal decanter on the mahogany bar.

  “Hell, now I just can’t let you go an’ bust yer goddamn stitches,” said Lem, taking advantage of the red light to open the front door, get out, open the back door, push the prisoner up and finally click on his seat belt: Smedlow caught a ghostly glimpse of his wrinkled reflection as the congested traffic, gaudy lights and brazen marquees of midtown appeared in the tinted rectangle of his window.

  WHIP KITTENS OF SODOM,

  said the large block letters.

  HORNY SLUTS LAND ON MARS

  Lookin’ at the signs he near forgot where he was goin’ -- forcing him to hang such a screeching left toward the highway that old Blitz, curled up on the seat beside him, decided to give up on sleep, contenting himself instead with a stretch and scratch and a noseful of cold air at the sliver of open window. Blitz sniffed in the heavy damp of rain as they merged onto the highway and, when they turned off the interstate an hour later, the frozen damp of snow, a few nose-stinging flakes, had become a steady fall of feathers by the time the headlights chased them down the long, bumping dirt road to the dump.

  ”Now don’t you just hate takin’ out the garbage?” asked Lem, using all his strength to drag out the heavy bag.

  A moment later and Smedlow himself was aware of being yanked up rudely from his seat, thrown -- as limp as a ragdoll -- over Lem’s shoulder and dropped into a waiting wheelchair. The large flakes were falling, with silent determination, on a necropolis of crushed cars, gutted sofas, rusted toasters and derelict tv’s piled high like so many murdered cyclopses. That goddamn dog -- whom Smedlow remembered only too well -- jumped out of the front seat carrying a long, thick and still meaty bone. With renewed horror Smedlow watched it being carried by those yellow teeth while the animal wagged its tail, sniffed the ground, and raised its leg beside a heap of treadless tires.

  “What the hell!” said Lem, trying to dig the crabgrass with his shovel, “this damn ground’s all froze! Now ain’t that just my stinkin’ luck?”

  A pickaxe, retrieved from the limousine’s trunk, bit into the earth with more success, eventually loosening chunks of sod which the shovel pried up, lifted -- and dropped into a pile beside the deepening pit. But the work was slow and a few more inches of snow had fallen by the time Smedlow saw his captor throw the shovel down. The next moment he was conscious of being shoved, wheeled quickly past the limousine’s black hood and glaring headlights -- and brought close enough to look down at the chocolate dirt waiting at the bottom of the narrow trench.

  “Well, it sure looks like the time has come to split you boys up,” said Lem as the dog came closer, sniffing at the large green plastic bag.

  Smedlow wanted to say a few words on behalf of the deceased, something appreciative about the many pleasures his body had given him, about what a very good home it had been during all those years he had abused it and taken it for granted. But once again his larynx failed him and he was constrained to watch the tumbling of the bag and to hear its gentle thud with the horrified impotence of a silent scream.

  Chapter VIII.

  In which the Dentist drowses and his Lordship wakens.

  It was that monster woman Ligeia, dressed in the white pinafore and lace cap of a chambermaid, who brought him his breakfast tray the following morning. Suddenly awakening to her double chin and sagging bust was unpleasant enough. But the shock was worsened by the observation that now she waddled faster, that her swollen ankles were much thinner, and that the sickly yellow of her skin had been replaced by an equally unnatural orange. The thought that his own precious organs had worked this transformation, that even now as she poured his tea they labored in the service of her blood and urine, was enough to shake Smedlow from his drowsiness. But was he still Smedlow? All at once his dreams -- a low-cut bodice, a heaving bosom in a formal garden -- receded and the horrors of his own burial came rushing back.

  Once again he tried to scream, to flail his arms, to make some muscles of this hideous body express the anguish of his plight. He watched her bitch eyes look up from buttering his toast to relish the completeness of his torment. At last he did manage to blink his lids and gently whimper. But otherwise his paralysis was wretchedly complete -- and in the frenzy of his stifled horror she curtsied.

  If she had beaten his buttocks with a wirebrush, as she had done before, it would have been far better than this mocking courtesy. Why exactly had she brought him tea which he couldn’t drink -- and scrambled eggs, bacon, sausages, kippers, toast, and orange marmalade which he couldn’t possibly eat? Was that nitwit Lem going to shove it down his throat?

  “Now don’t you think for one minute, mister, I like to fetch yer grub and and change yer goddamn diapers. So you just play it smart and be a real good boy.”

  It wasn’t until after her huge thighs and broad rump had waddled out the door that Smedlow noticed all the paintings. The night before, after his captors had removed his blindfold and fiddled with his stitches, after they had skewered his arm with the intravenous drip and left him to the weight of sleep, he had only vaguely seen some shadowed portraits as he drifted off. Now, in the morning light, he could see that there were several of these monumental oils -- a gold-framed gallery of haughty faces, powdered wigs, flintlock guns and hunting dogs. But it was the painting at the foot of his bed that most attracted his attention.

  It was, like most of the others, a hunting scene. While a bucolic vista of hills and hedgerows stretched into the background, the foreground was occupied by the hunting party who, judging from the fresh slaughter at their feet, had rested from their pastime for a family portrait. The proud and fleshy father of this family, his white satin pants gleaming, his black boot upon the antler of a dead buck, stared back at Smedlow with ruddy and stupid complacency. His lady, a forbidding woman with a face only slightly less horsey than that of the chestnut mare behind her, stood beside her lord, her right hand on the shoulder of her eldest son, a fat and sober diminutive of his father. But it was the other boy in the picture, standing to his brother’s right and in his portly shadow, whose sallow face and sunken eyes were so terribly disquieting. Smaller and slighter than his brother, this was a boy who would not be mastered by his little wig and damask waistcoat, a face of proud and sickly malice.

  It was only now -- beneath the gilt frame of this unsettling painting, beneath the gilt railing of his canopied bedstead -- that Smedlow finally saw his feet. His own feet, as he remembered them, had never (owing to the shortness of his legs) protruded beyond the sheets and blankets. But these new legs were apparently far longer, so much so that now two brown and wrinkled feet were exposed, right up to their scarred ankles, beyond the silken hills and valleys of the bedclothes. The hideousness of these feet was of a far different order than the reptilian repulsiveness of his hands. For what made them so hideous was not their ugliness but their almost feminine delicacy.

  He had spent several moments repelled by the decay of their shapely smallness, when he heard the voices whispering in the hall, speaking about the seizure, about the hospital, saying that now, thank God, the old gentleman was resting quietly, that he -- whoever he now was -- was not to be disturbed. It seemed, from what they were saying, that he was someone terribly important. He had already guessed that he was rich. The limousine, the gigantic ruby, the paintings, the silver tea se
rvice, this garish Louis Quatorze bed, had all made that absolutely obvious. Up till now he had been so absorbed by the horror of his plight that he hadn’t realized what he’d been given. Why, he might have a yacht, a plane, a castle -- maybe even a private island.

  The voices in the hall stopped whispering. Footsteps clicked into the distance. A faraway clock chimed the quarter hour.

  No, this disgusting body’s money did not belong to him. Absolutely not: he would not now -- must not ever -- allow himself to think of this abominable carcass as his own. Instead, he would barricade himself against it, build a mental wall which nothing -- not any amount of money -- could possibly breach. Oh, they thought they had him beaten, he told himself: but Smedlow the steadfast, Smedlow the invincible, would now and forever remain Smedlow. -- But what if, for example, these appalling feet were to start itching? Would it be his itch?

  “Well now, don’t you look all warm an’ comfy,” said Lem, suddenly bursting into his room, flicking on the light and pulling up a chair: “lyin’ in yer big bed there like you was some kind a goddamn king. Folks to bring yer grub. Folks to change yer diapers. Nothin’ to do all day but lie around an’ snooze. Shucks,” he said, looking down at the breakfast tray: “you didn’t eat nothin’! How you gonna get all big an’ strong if you don’t eat yer grub?”