"Barry N. Malzberg - Transfer" - читать интересную книгу автора (Malzberg Barry N)

I can now become the beast whenever I wish.

Now it is not the beast but I who pokes his way from the covers during the hours of despair and lurches
his way to the bathroom; standing before that one mirror, I call the change upon myself, ring the changes,
and the beast, then, confronts me, a tentacle raised as if in greeting or repudiation. Shrugging, I sprint
down the stairs and into the city. At dawn I return. In between that timeтАФ

тАФI make my travels

My travels, my errands! Over manhole covers, sprinting as if filled with helium (the beast is powerful; the
beast has endless stamina) in and out of the blocks of the West Side, vaulting to heights on abandoned
stoops, then into the gutter again, cutting a swath through the city, ducking the occasional prowl cars
which come through indolently, swinging out of sight behind gates to avoid garbage trucks, no discovery
ever having been made of the beast in all the months that this has been going on тАж and between the
evasions I do my business.

Pardon. Pardon if you will. I do not do my business. The beast does his business.

I must separate the beast and myself because the one is not the other and I have very little to do with the
beast although, of course, I am he. And he is me.

And attack them in the darkness.

Seize hapless pedestrians or dawn drunks by the throat, coming up from their rear flank, diving upon
them then with facility and ease, sweeping upon them to clap a hand upon throat or groin with a touch as
sure and cunning as any I have ever known, and then, bringing them to their knees, straddling them in the
gutter, IтАФ

Well, IтАФ

тАФWell, now, is it necessary for me to say what I do? Yes, it is necessary for me to say, I suppose; these
recollections are not careless nor are they calculated but merely an attempt, as it were, to set the record
straight. The rumors, reports, and evasions about the conduct of the beast have reached the status of
full-scale lies (there is not a crew of assassins loose in the streets but merely one; there is not a carefully
organized plan to terrorize the city but merely one beast, one humble, hard-working animal wreaking his
justice), so it is to be said that as I throttle the lives and misery out of them, I often turn them over so
that they can confront the beast, see what it is doing to them, and that I see in their eyes past the horror,
the heartbreak, the beating farewell signal of their mortality.

But beyond that I see something else.

Let me tell you of this, it is crucial: I see an acceptance so enormous as almost to defy in all of its
acceptance because it is religious. The peace that passeth all understanding darts through their eyes and
finally passes through them, exiting in the last breath of life as with a crumpling sigh they die against me. I
must have killed hundreds, no, I do not want to exaggerate, it is not right, I must have killed in the high
seventies. At first I kept a chart of my travels and accomplishments, but when it verged into the high
twenties I realized that this was insane, leaving physical evidence of any sort of my accomplishments that
is, and furthermore, past that ninth murder or the nineteenth there is no longer a feeling of victory but only
necessity. It is purely business.