"James Patrick Kelly - Monsters" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kelly James Patrick)

--------------------------------------


Monsters
by
James Patrick Kelly
(c) 1992 by Davis Publications, Inc.

First Published in
Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine
June, 1992



E-history:

Provided by http://scifibooks.miningco.com/

V2.0 - Minor OCR cleanup 12/2000 by me




When Henry looked in his dad's old mirror, he couldn't see the monster. He
touched his reflection. Nothing. No shock, no secret thrill, not even a
tingle. Usually his nipples tightened or the insides of his knees would get
crinkly and if he were in a certain mood he'd crawl back under the covers and
think very hard about women in black strapless bras. But this morning --
zero. He stared at a fattish naked white man with thinning hair and yellow
teeth. A face as interesting as lint. He wished for a long purple tongue or
a disfiguring scar that forked down his cheek, except he didn't want any pain.
Not for himself, anyway. Henry hated looking so vanilla. There was nothing
terrifying about him except the bad thoughts, which he told no one, not even
God. But this morning the monster was cagy. It wanted to get loose and he
was tired of holding it back. Something was going to happen. He decided not
to shave.

The gray dacron shirt and shiny blue polyester pants hanging on the line over
the bathtub had dripped dry overnight. His nylon underwear was dry too, but
the orlon socks were still damp so he draped them over the towel bar. Henry
wore synthetics because they wouldn't shrink or wrinkle and he could wash them
in the sink. Some days, after wallowing in other people's mung, he boiled his
clothes. He liked his showers hot too; he stood in the rusty old clawfooted
tub for almost half and hour until his skin bloomed like a rose. The water
beat all the thoughts out of his head; nothing wormy had ever happened in the
tub. He opened his mouth, let it fill with hot water and spat at the wall.

He owned just five shirts: gray, white, beige, blue and blue-striped; and
three pairs of pants: blue, gray and black. As he tried to decide what to
wear to work, he had a bad thought. Not a thought exactly -- he flashed an