Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said by Dick Philip K

Author:Dick, Philip K. [Dick, Philip K.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction & Fantasy, Philip K Dick, Classics, High Tech, Science Fiction, Dystopias, Fantasy
ISBN: 9781857983418
Amazon: 1857983416
Goodreads: 22584
Publisher: Gollancz
Published: 1974-02-01T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

The four gray-wrapped pols clustered in the light of the candlelike outdoor fixture made of black iron and cone of perpetual fake flame flickering in the night dark.

“Just two left,” the corporal said almost soundlessly; he let his fingers speak for him as he drew them across the rental lists. “A Mrs. Ruth Gomen in two eleven and an Allen Mufi in two twelve. Which'll we hit first?”

“The Mufi man's,” one of the uniformed officers said; he smacked his plastic and shot nightstick against his fingers, eager in the dim light to finish it up, now that the end had at last come into sight.

“Two twelve it is,” the corporal said, and reached to stroke the door chimes. But then it occurred to him to try the doorknob.

Good. One chance out of several, a minor possibility but suddenly, usefully true. The door was unlocked. He signaled silence, grinned briefly, then pushed the door open.

They saw into a dark living room with empty and nearly empty drink glasses placed here and there, some on the floor. And a great variety of ashtrays overfilled with crushed cigarette packages and ground-out butts.

A cigarette party, the corporal decided. Broken up, now. Everyone went home. With the exception perhaps of Mr. Mufi.

He entered, shone his light here and there, shone it at last toward the far door leading deeper into the over-priced apartment. No sound. No motion. Except the dim, distant, muted chatter of a radio talk show at minimal volume.

He trod across the wall-to-wall carpet, which depicted in gold Richard M. Nixon's final ascent into heaven amid joyous singing above and wails of misery below. At the far door he trod on God, who was smiling a lot as He received his Second Only Begotten Son back into His bosom, and pushed open the bedroom door.

In the big double bed, pulpy-soft, a man asleep, shoulders and arms bare. His clothes heaped on a handy chair. Mr. Allen Mufi, of course. Safe and home in his own private double bed. But—Mr. Mufi was not alone in his very own private bed. Involved with the pastel sheets and blankets a second indistinct shape lay curled up, asleep. Mrs. Mufi, the corporal thought, and shone his light toward her, with mannish curiosity.

All at once Allen Mufi—assuming it was he—stirred. He opened his eyes. And instantly sat bolt upright, staring fixedly at the pols. At the light of the flashlight.

“What?” he said, and he rasped with fear, a deep, convulsive release of shaking breath. “No,” Mufi said, and then snatched for some object on the table beside his bed; he dove into the darkness, white and hairy and naked, for something invisible but precious to him. Desperately. He sat back up then, panting, clutching it. A pair of scissors.

“What's that for?” the corporal asked, shining the light into the metal of the scissors.

“I'll kill myself,” Mufi said. “If you don't go away and—leave us alone.” He stuck the closed blades of the scissors against his hair-darkened chest, near his heart.

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