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  my balls are crawling like in grammar school the old bitch shes

  laughing she found it the old fat shebitch goddam her goddam her

  goddam her you old whore youre doing that cause im out here you

  old she bitch whore you piece of shit

  * * *

  He went to the door in one step and pulled it open. She was sitting

  next to the small space-heater in the sh ed, her dress pulled up over

  oak-stump knees to allow her to sit cross-legged, and his

  manuscript was held, dwarfed, in her bloated hands.

  Her laughter roared and racketed around him. Gerald Nately saw

  bursting colors in front of his eyes. She it-as a slug, a maggot, a

  gigantic crawling thing evolved in the cellar of the shadowy house

  by the sea. a dark bug that had swaddled itself in grotesque human

  form.

  In the flat light from the one cobwebbed window her face became

  a hanging graveyard moon, pocked by the Sterile craters of her

  eyes and the Tagged earthquake rift of her mouth.

  "Don't you laugh," Gerald said stiffly.

  "Oh Gerald," she said, laughing all the same. "This is such a bad

  story. I don't blame you for using a penname. it's-" she wiped tears

  of laughter from her eyes"it's abominable!"

  He began to walk toward her stiffly.

  "You haven't made me big enough, Gerald. That's the trouble. I'm

  too big for you. Perhaps Poe, or Dosteyevsky, or Melville. . . but

  not you, Gerald. Not even under your royal pen-name. Not you.

  Not you.

  She began to laugh again, huge racking explosions of sound.

  "Don't you laugh," Gerald said stiffly.

  * * *

  The tool-shed, after the manner of Zola:

  Wooden walls, which showed occasional chinks of light,

  surrounded rabbit-traps hung and slung in corners; a pair of dusty,

  unstrung snow-shoes: a rusty spaceheater showing flickers of

  yellow flame like cat's eyes; Tales; 2 shovel; hedgeclippers; an

  ancient green hose coiled like a garter-snake; four bald tires

  stacked like doughnuts; a rust), Winchester rifle with no bolt; a

  twohanded saw; a dusty work-bench covered with nails, screws,

  bolts, washers, two hammers, a plane, a broken level, a dismantled

  carburetor which one sat inside a 1949 Packard convertible; a 4 hp.

  air-compressor painted electric blue, plugged into an extension

  cord running back into the house.

  * * *

  "Don't you laugh," Gerald said again, but she continued to rock

  back and forth, holding her stomach and flapping the manuscript

  with her wheezing breath like a white bird.

  His hand found the rusty Winchester rifle and he pole-axed her

  with it.

  * * *

  Most horror stories are sexual in nature.

  I'm sorry to break in with this information, but feel I must in order

  to make the way clear for the grisly conclusion of this piece, which

  is (at least psychologically) a clear metaphor for fears of sexual

  impotence on in), part. Mrs. Leighton's large mouth is symbolic of

  the vagina; the hose of the compressor is a penis. Her female bu Ik

  huge and overpowering, is a mythic representation of the sexual

  fear that lives in every male, to a greater or lesser degree: that the

  woman, with her opening, is a devouter.

  * * *

  In the works of Edgar A. Poe, Stephen King, Gerald Nately, and

  others who practice this particular literary form, we are apt to find

  locked rooms, dungeons. empty mansions (all symbols of the

  womb); scenes of living burial (sexual impotence); the dead

  returned from the grave (necrophilia); grotesque monsters or

  human be ings (externalized fear of the sexual act itself); torture

  and/or murder (a viable alternativ e to the sexual act).

  These possibilities are not always valid, but the postfreild reader

  and writer must take them into consideration when attempting the

  genre.

  Abnormal psychology has become a part of the human experience.

  * * *

  She made thick, unconscious noises in her throat as he whirled

  around madly, looking for an instrument; her head lolled brokenly

  on the thick stalk of her neck.

  * * *

  He seized the hose of the air-compressor.

  "All right," he said thickly. "All right, now. All Tight."

  * * *

  bitch fat old bitch youve had yours not big enough is that right well

  youll be bigger youll be bigger still

  * * *

  He ripped her head back by the hair and rammed the hose into her

  mouth, into her gullet. She screamed around it, a scund like a cat.

  * * *

  Part of the inspiration for this story came from an old E. C. horror

  comic boo), which I bought in a Lisbon Falls drugstore. In one

  particular story, a husband and wife murdered each other

  simultaneous))- in mutually ironic (and brilliant) fashion. He was

  very fat; she was very thin. He shoved the hose of an

  aircompressor down her throat and blew her up to dirigible size.

  On his way downstairs a booby-trap she had rigged fell on him and

  squashed him to a shadow.

  Any author who tells you he has never plagiarized is 2 liar. A good

  author begins with bad ideas and improbabilities and fashions them

  into comments on the human condition.

  In a horror story, it is imperative that the grotesque be elevated to

  the status of the abnormal.

  * * *

  The compressor turned on with a whoosh and a chug. The hose

  flew out of Mrs. Leighton's mouth. Giggling and gibbering, Gerald

  stuffed it back in. Her feet drummed and thumped on the floor. The

  flesh of her checks and diaphragm began to swell rhythmically.

  Her eyes bulged, and became glass marbles. Her torso began to

  expand.

  * * *

  here it is here it is you lousy louse are you big enough yet are you

  big enough

  * * *

  The compressor wheezed and racketed. Mrs. Leighton swelled like

  a beachball. Her lungs became Straining blowfish.

  * * *

  Fiends! Devils' Dissemble no morel Here! Here! It is the beating of

  his hideous heart!

  * * *

  She seemed to explode all at once.

  * * *

  Sitting in a boilin hotel room in Bombay, Gerald re-wrote the story

  he had begun at the cottage on the other side of the world. The

  original title had been "The Hog." After some deliberation he

  retitled it "The Blue Air Compressor."

  He had resolved it to his own satisfaction. There was a certain lack

  of motivation concerning the final scene where the fat old woman

  was murdered, but he did not see that as a fault. In "The Tell-Tale

  Heart," Edgar A. Poe's finest story, there is no real motivation for

  the murder of the old man, and that was as it should be. The motive

  is not the point.

  * * *

  She got very big just before the end: even her legs swelled up to

  twice their normal size. At the very end, her tongue popped out of

  her mouth like a party-favor.

  * * *

  After leaving Bombay, Gerald Nately went on to Hong Kong, then

  to Kowloon. The ivory guillotine caught h
is fancy immediately.

  * * *

  As the author, I can see only one correct omega to this story, and

  that is to tell you how Gerald Nately got rid of the body. He tore up

  the floor boards of the shed, dismembered Mrs. Leighton, and

  buried the sections in the sand beneath.

  When he notified the police that she had been rnissing for a week,

  the local constable and a State Policeman came at once. Gerald

  entertained them quite naturalIy, even offering them coffee. He

  heard no beating heart, but then--the interview was conducted in

  the big house.

  On the following day he flew away, toward Bombay, Hong Kong,

  and Kowloon.

  The Cat from Hell

  By STEPHEN

  KING

  First appeared in

  Cavalier Magazine, 1971

  Halston thought the old man in the wheelchair looked sick,

  terrified, and ready to die. He had experience in seeing such things.

  Death was Halston's business; he had brought it to eighteen men

  and six women in his career as an independent hitter. He knew the

  death look.

  The house - mansion, actually - was cold and quiet. The only

  sounds were the low snap of the fire on the big stone hearth and the

  low whine of the November wind outside.

  "I want you to make a kill," the old man said. His voice was

  quavery and high, peevish. "I understand that is what you do."

  "Who did you talk to?" Halston asked.

  "With a man named Saul Loggia. He says you know him."

  Halston nodded. If Loggia was the go-between, it was all right.

  And if there was a bug in the room, anything the old man - Drogan

  - said was entrapment.

  "Who do you want hit?"

  Drogan pressed a button on the console built into the arm of his

  wheelchair and it buzzed forward. Closeup, Halston could smell

  the yellow odors of fear, age, and urine all mixed.

  They disgusted him, but he made no sign. His face was still and

  smooth. "Your victim is right behind you," Drogan said softly.

  Halston moved quickly. His reflexes were his life and they were

  always set on a filed pin. He was off the couch, falling to one knee,

  turning, hand inside his specially tailored sport coat, gripping the

  handle of the short-barreled .45 hybrid that hung below his armpit

  in a spring-loaded holster that laid it in his palm at a touch. A

  moment later it was out and pointed at ... a cat.

  For a moment Halston and the cat stared at each other. It was a

  strange moment for Halston, who was an unimaginative man with

  no superstitions. For that one moment as he knelt on the floor with

  the gun pointed, he felt that he knew this cat, although if he had

  ever seen one with such unusual markings he surely would have

  remembered.

  Its face was an even split: half black, half white. The dividing line

  ran from the top of its flat skull and down its nose to its mouth,

  straight-arrow. Its eyes were huge in the gloom, and caught in each

  nearly circular black pupil was a prism of firelight, like a sullen

  coal of hate.

  And the thought echoed back to Halston: We know each other, you

  and I. Then it passed. He put the gun away and stood up. "I ought

  to kill you for that, old man. I don't take a joke."

  "And I don't make them," Drogan said. "Sit down. Look in here."

  He had taken a fat envelope out from beneath the blanket that

  covered his legs.

  Halston sat. The cat, which had been crouched on the back of the

  sofa, jumped lightly down into his lap. It looked up at Halston for a

  moment with those huge dark eyes, the pupils surrounded by thin

  green-gold rings, and then it settled down and began to purr.

  Halston looked at Drogan questioningly.

  "He's very friendly," Drogan said. "At first. Nice friendly pussy

  has killed three people in this household. That leaves only me. I am

  old, I am sick ... but I prefer to die in my own time."

  "I can't believe this," Halston said. "You hired me to hit a cat?"

  "Look in the envelope, please."

  Halston did. It was filled with hundreds and fifties, all of them old.

  "How much is it?"

  "Six thousand dollars. There will be another six when you bring

  me proof that the cat is dead. Mr. Loggia said twelve thousand was

  your usual fee?"

  Halston nodded, his hand automatically stroking the cat in his lap.

  It was asleep, still purring. Halston liked cats. They were the only

  animals he did like, as a matter of fact. They got along on their

  own. God - if there was one - had made them into perfect, aloof

  killing machines. Cats were the hitters of the animal world, and

  Halston gave them his respect.

  "I need not explain anything, but I will," Drogan said. "Forewarned

  is forearmed, they say, and I would not want you to go into this

  lightly. And I seem to need to justify myself. So you'll not think

  I'm insane."

  Halston nodded again. He had already decided to make this

  peculiar hit, and no further talk was needed. But if Drogan wanted

  to talk, he would listen. "First of all, you know who I am? Where

  the money comes from?"

  "Drogan Pharmaceuticals."

  "Yes. One of the biggest drug companies in the world. And the

  cornerstone of our financial success has been this." From the

  pocket of his robe he handed Halston a small, unmarked vial of

  pills. "Tri-Dormal-phenobarbin, compound G. Prescribed almost

  exclusively for the terminally ill. It's extremely habit-forming, you

  see. It's a combination painkiller, tranquilizer, and mild

  hallucinogen. It is remarkably helpful in helping the terminally ill

  face their conditions and adjust to them."

  "Do you take it?" Halston asked.

  Drogan ignored the question. "It is widely prescribed throughout

  the world. It's a synthetic, was developed in the fifties at our New

  Jersey labs. Our testing was confined almost solely to cats, because

  of the unique quality of the feline nervous system."

  "How many did you wipe out?"

  Drogan stiffened. "That is an unfair and prejudicial way to put it."

  Halston shrugged.

  "In the four-year testing period which led to FDA approval of Tri-

  Dormal-G, about fifteen thousand cats ... uh, expired."

  Halston whistled. About four thousand cats a year. "And now you

  think this one's back to get you, huh?"

  "I don't feel guilty in the slightest," Drogan said, but that

  quavering, petulant note was back in his voice. "Fifteen thousand

  test animals died so that hundreds of thousands of human beings -

  "

  "Never mind that," Halston said. Justifications bored him.

  "That cat came here seven months ago. I've never liked cats. Nasty,

  disease-bearing animals ... always out in the fields ... crawling

  around in barns ... picking up God knows what germs in their fur ...

  always trying to bring something with its insides falling out into

  the house for you to look at ... it was my sister who wanted to take

  it in. She found out. She paid." He looked at the cat sleeping on

  Halston's lap with dead hate.

  "You said the cat kill
ed three people."

  Drogan began to speak. The cat dozed and purred on Halston's lap

  under the soft, scratching strokes of Halston's strong and expert

  killer's fingers.

  Occasionally a pine knot would explode on the hearth, making it

  tense like a series of steel springs covered with hide and muscle.

  Outside the wind whined around the big stone house far out in the

  Connecticut countryside. There was winter in that wind's throat.

  The old man's voice droned on and on.

  Seven months ago there had been four of them here-Drogan, his

  sister Amanda, who at seventy-four was two years Drogan's elder,

  her lifelong friend Carolyn Broadmoor ("of the Westchester

  Broadmoors," Drogan.said), who was badly afflicted with

  emphysema, and Dick Gage, a hired man who had been with the

  Drogan family for twenty years. Gage, who was past sixty himself,

  drove the big Lincoln Mark IV, cooked, served the evening sherry.

  A day maid came in. The four of them had lived this way for

  nearly two years, a dull collection of old people and their family

  retainer. Their only pleasures were The Hollywood Squares and

  waiting to see who would outlive whom.

  Then the cat had come.

  "It was Gage who saw it first, whining and skulking around the

  house. He tried to drive it away He threw sticks and small rocks at

  it, and hit it several times. But it wouldn't go. It smelled the food,

  of course. It was little more than a bag of bones. People put them

  out beside the road to die at the end of the summer season, you

  know. A terrible, inhumane thing."

  "Better to fry their nerves?" Halston asked.

  Drogan ignored that and went on. He hated cats. He always had.

  When the cat refused to be driven away, he had instructed Gage to

  put out poisoned food. Large, tempting dishes of Calo cat food

  spiked with Tri-Dormal-G, as a matter of fact. The cat ignored the

  food. At that point Amanda Drogan had noticed the cat and had

  insisted they take it in. Drogan had protested vehemently, but

  Amanda - had gotten her way. She always did, apparently.

  "But she found out," Drogan said. "She brought it inside herself, in

  her arms. It was purring, just as it is now. But it wouldn't come

  near me. It never has ... yet. She poured it a saucer of milk. 'Oh,

  look at the poor thing, it's starving,' she cooed. She and Carolyn

  both cooed over it. Disgusting. It was their way of getting back at

  me, of course. They knew the way I've felt about felines ever since