A Little Orange Book of Ornery Stories by Ed Gorman

Author:Ed Gorman [Gorman, Ed]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: dark fiction, thriller
Publisher: Crossroad Press
Published: 2021-01-08T00:00:00+00:00

I’ve been reading Philip K. Dick since 1956. His work has influenced several of my short stories.

Somehow in rereading A Scanner Darkly, “Cages” came about. One of the leading sf magazines held it for six or seven months. The editor begged the publisher to buy it but he said that if he published it they would lose at least several thousand readers. Given the shaky realities of sf magazines, I understood. Interzone ended up using it.

Cages

He knows the bad thing will happen, the way it always happens, his father coming home late and all dreamdusted up and his mother shrieking and screaming how he spent all the money on the dreamdust and then the—

He knows when to put the pillow over his head so he will not hear when his father slams his mother into the wall and starts hitting her.

Sometimes he tries to stop it but it never does any good. He is three foot six and has only the one arm and is no match at all for his father.

Then in the room next to his, in the darkness, after the hitting and the screaming, there are other sounds now on the bed, grunts and sighs and whimpers and then

Sleep.

A dream.

His mother and father and himself in a new car riding down the street. People pointing at them. Envious. Such a nice family. The envious people do not even seem to notice his bald head or his lone shriveled arm or the way the sticky stuff runs from his ear and

Awake.

Late night.

Sirens.

Laser blasts.

Coppers hunting down dreamduster gangs.

He wants to kill the man who invented dreamdust. All the misery it causes. Mrs. Caruso’s daughter letting all those men stick themselves up the slit between her legs. Mr. Feinmann smashing his wife’s head in with a bottle because she wouldn’t give him the tips from her waitress job. Little Betty Malloy being killed by the dreamduster who put a broomhandle up her backside and then cut her up with a butcher knife.

Night.

Hot.

Goes out on the fire escape.

Tomorrow it will just start again. The argument about you fucking cunt where’d all the money go? and her shrieking you dreamdust fucker you dreamdust fucker!

Always: money money money.

And then he remembers the commercial on the vid. Seen that commercial a lot the last five six weeks. And always has the same thought.

$

$

$

flashing on the screen and this real loud guy telling you how you can collect them.

All you gotta do see is Be so easy.

So fucking easy.

And then they’d have plenty of $.

No more fights.

No more hitting.

He lies out on the fire escape thinking about tomorrow morning. His mother will be gone to work and so will he.

No trouble going in the closet where

And getting a sack

And

Going down to the place it says in the commercial

And

He can see all those fuckers who pick on him and hit him and call him faggot and mutant and all that shit

He can see them standing enviously on the corner when he cruises by in the back

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