Gentleman Junkie and Other Stories of the Hung-Up Generation by Ellison Harlan

Author:Ellison, Harlan [Ellison, Harlan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Crime, Horror, Fantasy, Suspense
ISBN: 9780441279388
Amazon: 0441279384
Goodreads: 268098
Publisher: Ace Books
Published: 1958-03-01T08:00:00+00:00

FRENCHIE MURROW

This wasn’t no game for kids, and at least old man Mestman realized that. He hadn’t spilled the beans to Pop about that drag on the Bluffs Road. He had kept it under his lid, and if Frenchie had not hated Mestman so much—already identifying him as a symbol of authority and adult obnoxiousness—he would have respected him.

Frenchie held the cat aloft, and withdrew the switchblade from his boot top.

The cat shrieked at the first slash, and writhed maniacally in the boy’s grasp. But the third stroke did it, severing the head almost completely from the body.

Frenchie threw the dead cat onto Mestman’s breezeway, where he had found it sleeping.

Let the old sonofabitch play with that for a while.

He cut out, and wound up downtown.

For a long moment he thought he was being watched, thought he recognized the old green Plymouth that had turned the corner as he paused before the entrance to the malt shop. But he put it from his mind, and went inside. The place was quite empty, except for the jerk. He climbed onto a stool and ordered a chocolate Coke. Just enough to establish an alibi for the time; time enough to let Mestman find his scuddy cat.

He downed the chocoke and realized he wanted a beer real bad. So he walked out without paying, throwing at the jerk a particularly vicious string of curse words.

Who was that in the doorway across the street?

Frenchie saw a group of the Laughing Princes coming down the sidewalk a block away. They were ranged in their usual belligerent formation, strung out across the cement so that anyone walking past had to walk in the gutter. They looked too mean to play with today. He’d cut, and see ’em when they were mellower.

He broke into a hunching run, and rounded the corner. At Rooney’s he turned in. Nine beers later he was ready for Mr. Wiseguy Mestman. Darkness lapped at the edge of the town.

He parked the Studebaker in his own folks’ garage, and cut through the hedge to Mestman’s house.

The French windows at the back of the house were open, and he slipped in without realizing he was doing it. A fog had descended across his thinking. There was a big beat down around his neck someplace, and a snare drummer kept ti-ba-ba-ba-powing it till Frenchie wanted to snap his fingers, or get out the tire jack and belt someone or get that friggin’ cat and slice it again.

There was a woman in the living room.

He stood there, just inside the French doors, and watched her, the way her skirt was tight around her legs while she sat watching the TV. The way her dark line of eyebrow rose at something funny there. He watched her and the fog swirled the higher; he felt a great and uncontrollable wrenching in his gut.

He stepped out of the shadows of the dining room, into the half-light of the TV-illuminated living room.

She saw him at once, and her hand flew to her mouth in reflex.

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