The Pulp Crime by Fletcher Flora & Rufus King & Stephen Wasylyk & Joyce Kilmer & Talmage Powell

Author:Fletcher Flora & Rufus King & Stephen Wasylyk & Joyce Kilmer & Talmage Powell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: crime, mystery, noir, pulp, detective
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Published: 2016-06-12T16:00:00+00:00

—GOOD-BYE, SWEET WORLD, by Bryce Walton

Originally published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, August 1958.

A cracked mirror made me see the light. Reminded me that a drunkard is nothing less than a prolonged suicide, and that it were better for me to do myself in with dispatch. Drunkards are notoriously durable. I might go on forever, and might even get around to accepting degradation. Man gets used to anything, perhaps he gets used quickest of all to degradation. But not I.

The crack in the mirror ran directly and with suggestive sharpness of line across the image of my throat.

It was a pleasant spring day around Mrs. Farrar’s crummy rooming house, and my small room smelling of disinfectant. A warm breeze played through the open window. A lawn mower ran about with its peculiar cheerful whir. A door slammed somewhere. Mrs. Farrar screamed at one of her Persian cats.

I felt guilty for disappointing her. The old woman still believed in childish miracles, and she expected me to reform, realize my former place in society, and repay her for her many, many kindnesses to me.

“A man of your breeding and education,” she would scold. “Such a terrible shame it is. I just don’t understand it, Mr. Brooks.”

To which I would perhaps answer, “The highest of renown are the surest stricken down, but the stupid and the clown, they remain.”

A robin was sitting in a tree outside the window looking down for worms with the same ferocity with which an eagle eyes more formidable prey. Such, I thought, is vanity. Which pretty much sums up my philosophy after studying and discussing it with idiot students for years.

“Good-bye, robin,” I said. I picked up the razor blade. In the mirror I saw a thin wisp of mocking smile. Then I pulled my chin up and back with my left hand, stretching the skin and tendons taut, and with my right hand gave myself the coup de grace.

* * * *

According to authorities on human behavior—and they abound today, I assure you—you are no longer with me. According to these dogma-ridden gentlemen, you are too immature and lack the courage to face such an unpleasant subject. You have a profound distaste for suicide. You are possessed by a primitive taboo. There are some unpleasant subjects you will concern yourself with, but only in jest, as if to forestall the necessity of ever discussing them seriously. But not suicide. You read about homicide freely, treat it as a joke, an interesting crossword puzzle. You avoid suicide accounts. So great is the taboo that most of you will not even say the word. You won’t allow many newspapers to print accounts of it, nor television, movies, magazines to dramatize it. Even scientists avoid it as subject for research.

You really ought not be squeamish about it, if you’re a responsible citizen concerned with public welfare. Suicide is a serious public health problem. And your disinclination to discuss it only adds to its gravity.

Last year an estimated 17,000 persons committed suicide in the U.

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