The Shrinking Man by Richard Matheson

Author:Richard Matheson
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: SciFi-Masterwork
ISBN: 9780812522990
Publisher: Tor Books
Published: 1956-01-23T05:00:00+00:00

He fell back with a groan and lay there limply, staring up through fever slitted eyes.

Half-conscious, he thought he heard the spider walking on the box again. One, two, three, his twisting mind began to chant. Four, five, six. Seven legs my true love has.

Distortedly, he remembered the day when he had been twenty-eight inches tall, the height of a one-year-old child, a china doll that shaved real whiskers and bathed in a dishpan and used a baby's potty chair and wore made-over baby clothes.

He had stood in the kitchen yelling at Lou because he'd suggested that she put him in a sideshow to make some money and she hadn't insisted that he shouldn't say such things; she'd only shrugged.

He'd yelled and ranted, his little face red, stamped his cunning high-topped shoes, glared up at her, until suddenly she'd turned from the sink and shouted back, "Oh, stop squeaking at me!"

In a fury so complete it blinded him, he spun and lurched for the doorway, only to trip over the cat and get badly clawed.

Lou had run to him and tried to make it up. She'd cleaned the jagged scratch on his arm and apologized. But he'd known it wasn't a woman apologizing to a man, but a woman apologizing to a midget she felt sorry for.

And when she'd finished bandaging him, he'd gone down to the cellar again; the last refuge to which he always fled in those days. And he'd stood there by the steps staring through anger and hurt at the cellar.

He'd squatted down and picked up a rock that was lying on the floor and he'd rocked there on his heels, thinking of all the things that had happened to him in the past few weeks. He'd thought of the money almost gone, of Lou unable to find a job, of Beth's increasing disrespect, of the Medical Centre never calling, of the endless shrinking of his body. And while he thought of them, his mind had grown angrier, his lips whitening on each other, his hand closed like a steel trap over the rock.

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