Rare Lansdale Read online

  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 gr
owing, 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, his 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.

  Big Man copyright Joe R. Lansdale 2008

  COAT

  When James saw the man in the streetlights, he hated him on sight because of the coat. It wasn’t fashionable. If the man had been unfashionable in all other ways he could have ignored it, but no, this was a man who should have known better. He was a man with a good shirt and slacks and fine tie, and the best shoes available, and yet, he wore a coat out of style and certainly one that did not make for a proper appearance. It was an odd coat of undetermined color and absolutely no substance. It had all the grace of a car wreck. It flopped in the winter wind at the lapels like bat wings flexing, caught up in back and whipped backwards like the tail of a swallow.

  There was no excuse for it really.

  Sure, he saw plenty of unfashionable people, but this fellow must know better, having acquired the most fashionable and best clothes otherwise. It was not a matter of being uninformed, he was flaunting a disregard for the proper and the respectable, and was therefore insulting the very business James was a part of. Fashion design.

  There was no use calling him on it, James was certain. A man like that knew how things ought to be. A man with his hair perfectly cut and perfectly combed, and perfectly dressed, except for that horrid coat.

  Still, James found himself following the man, deeply bothered by it all. He was a man that understood fashion, and loved it, and believed it was more than an expression of self. That it was in fact, a kind of religion, and here was an insult to his religion.

  The man moved out of the street lights and into a dark alley near a stairwell, and James knew this was a bad place to be walking, but if the man was dull enough to do so, and in that horrid coat, then he would be brave enough to do so and call him on the matter after all. He found he just couldn’t let it rest.

  James followed as the man took the dark stairs, and when the fellow was halfway down, James called out, “Sir, that is an awful coat. I don’t mean to be rude, but really.”

  The man, nothing but a shadow on the stairs now, paused, looked back. “My coat?”

  “Of course,” James said. Do I have on a horrid coat? I think not, and nor should you, this is the finest and best of this year’s fashion that I’m wearing. Perhaps last year, next year, it will be out of favor, but it is all the rage for now, and you, sir, have plenty of fine fashionable coats to pick from, though I, of course recommend my own brand of coat..”

  “What?” said the man in the shadows.

  “The coat,” James said. “Your coat. It’s hideous.”

  The man came up the stairs and stopped only a few feet from James, looking up at him. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “I think not. That is one hideous coat.”

  The man sighed. “I can’t believe you’re concerned about my coat.”

  “It’s just…how shall we put it, an atrocity against fashion and against mankind.”

  “It was once fashionable.”

  “And, I’m quite sure that fig leaves over the testicles were once fashionable, but in our modern society, in our world, fashion is all, and it changes. Someone once thought the tie died tee-shirt and bell bottoms were fashionable, but, times change. Thank goodness.”

  “Look, not that it’s any of your business, but my father was a tailor. He made this coat—”

  “Well, it may have been something before electricity,” James said, “but now, it’s just crude.”

  “He made it for himself many years back, when he was a young man. He is dead now, gone, and though it’s none of your business whatsoever, this is an heirloom. It may not look like much, it may look thin, but it’s surprisingly warm, and very comfortable, very flexible. Happy?”

  “Not at all. Look, you seem like a nice fellow. It’s one thing for someone of…well, the lower classes to wear that coat, but for you to mix fashion like that, that dreadful coat over those fine clothes, it should be a hanging offense.”

  The man threw up his hands. “I’ve had enough of you. What business is it of yours?”

  “I spend a large part of my time designing fashion, trying to make the world and those who live in it more attractive. Take what I’m wearing for example—”

  “I wouldn’t take it if you gave it to me,” the man said. “I’m quite comfortable with my heirloom coat, and you, sir, are a weirdo who needs to go home and run his head under the shower until it clears, or, until you drown.”

  The man turned and began walking down the stairs. James felt himself heat up as if a coal had been dropped inside his body to nestle in the pit of his stomach. He let out a sound like a wounded animal and went charging down the stairway, slamming both hands into the man’s back, sending him sailing down the steps to bounce on several, and to finally land hard and bloody in a heap at the bottom.

  James stood startled, his hands still out in front of him, like a mime pretending to push at an invisible door.

  “My God,” James said aloud. He eased down the stairs and stood over the man, called out. “Hey, you okay?”

  The man didn’t move. The man didn’t speak. The man didn’t moan.

  James bent down by the man’s head and spoke again, asking if he was okay. Still no answer.

  James looked left and right, over his shoulder and up the stairs. No one had seen him. He looked about. No crime cameras. It had all happened suddenly and in darkness. He hadn’t meant for it to happen, it had merely been an angry response. Insulting fashion was not acceptable. And now, the man in the unfashionable coat lay dead at the bottom of the stairs.

  Well, thought James, dressing like that, talking like that, and knowing better, he deserved to be dead.

  James took a deep breath and rolled the man on his stomach and pulle
d the coat off of him, tucked it under his arm, started up the stairs.

  He was looking for the first large trash can to deposit the coat into, but none presented itself. Carrying the ugly coat, even rolled up in a tight bundle, made James feel somewhat ill. The thing was absolutely without design, as unfashionable as a hat made from the mangy skins of dead street rats.

  Finally, he saw a trashcan and was about to deposit it, but, there was a police officer. James paused, realized it would mean nothing to the officer to see him toss the coat, but then again, he felt very odd about the matter. Moments ago he had merely been willing to impart a bit of fashion wisdom to a man that should have known better, and in the end he had killed him. You might even call it murder, though that had not been his intent. The more James thought about it, the more he felt there had been something inside of him brewing all along, all having to do with that ugly coat and the man’s blatant insult to fashion.

  James passed the officer, still not able to toss the coat, wearing it under his arm like a cancerous tumor. He walked on, not spying another trashcan of correct size, unable to dump it. He thought of giving it to a homeless person. That would be all right. That would fit. No fashion loss there. But no homeless person presented himself, and frankly, he had come to hate the coat so much, that the idea he might give it away to someone and see it worn about the city, even on someone as unfashionable as a homeless drifter, was not appealing. And there was another factor; it would serve as a constant reminder of what he had done. Though, the more he thought about it, the more comfortable he felt with his actions. In fact, it was a kind of prize he had now, a souvenir of the event, a reminder of the moment when he had corrected a horrible wrong.

  Sometimes, you just had to take the more direct and deadly route to repair things that were socially wrong, and that coat was wrong, wrong, wrong.

  He made it all the way to his plush apartment with the coat, and decided he no longer wanted to toss it. His thoughts earlier were correct. This was an important reminder of a blow struck for the fashionable.