100 Menacing Little Murder Stories by Robert Weinberg Martin H. Greenberg (et al)

Author:Robert Weinberg, Martin H. Greenberg (et al) [Robert Weinberg, Martin H. Greenberg (et al)]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mysteries & Detective
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

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Joe R. Lansdale

THE PSYCHIATRIST WORE BLUE, the color of Merguson’s mood. “Mr…uh?” the psychiatrist asked.

“Merguson. Floyd Merguson.”

“Sure, Mr…”

“Merguson.”

“Right. Come into the office.”

It was a sleek office full of sleek black chairs the texture of a lizard’s underbelly. The walls were decorated with paintings of explosive color; a metal-drip sculpture resided on the large walnut desk. And there was the couch, of course, just like in the movies. It was a chocolate-brown with throw-pillows at each end. It looked as if you could drift down into it and disappear in its softness.

They sat in chairs, however. The psychiatrist on his side of the desk, Merguson on the client’s side.

The psychiatrist was a youngish man with a fine touch of premature white at the temples. He looked every inch the intelligent professional.

“Now,” the psychiatrist said, “what exactly is your problem?”

Merguson fiddled his fingers, licked his lips, and looked away.

“Come on, now. You came here for help, so let’s get started.”

“Well,” Merguson said cautiously. “No one takes me seriously.”

“Tell me about it.”

“No one listens to me. I can’t take it anymore. Not another moment. I feel like I’m going to explode if I don’t get help. Sometimes I just want to yell out, Listen to me!”

Merguson leaned forward and said confidentially, “Actually, I think it’s a disease. Yeah, I know how that sounds, but I believe it is, and I believe I’m approaching the terminal stage of the illness.

“I got this theory that there are people others don’t notice, that they’re almost invisible. There’s just something genetically wrong with them that causes them to go unnoticed. Like a little clock that ticks inside them, and the closer it gets to the hour hand the more unnoticed these people become.

“I’ve always had the problem of being shy and introverted—and that’s the first sign of the disease. You either shake it early or you don’t. If you don’t, it just grows like cancer and consumes you. With me the problem gets worse every year, and lately by the moment.

“My wife, she used to tell me it’s all in my head, but lately she doesn’t bother. But let me start at the first, when I finally decided I was ill, that the illness was getting worse and that it wasn’t just in my head, not some sort of complex.

“Just last week I went to the butcher, the butcher I been going to for ten years. We were never chummy, no one has ever been chummy to me but my wife, and she married me for my money. I was at least visible then; I mean you had to go to at least some effort to ignore me, but my God, it’s gotten worse…

“I’m off the track. I went to the butcher, asked him for some choice cuts of meat. Another man comes in while I’m talking to him and asks for a pound of hamburger. Talks right over me, mind you. What happens? You guessed it. The butcher starts shooting the breeze with the guy, wraps

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