Aftershock & Others Read Online Free PDF Page B

mouth and nose. My God, I can’t stand the odor. I want to retch but the drug in my system won’t let me.
    And then the fingers move. Quickly. Two of them slip wetly into my nostrils, clogging them, sealing them like corks in the necks of wine bottles. The other little hand darts past my gasping lips, forces its way between my teeth, and crawls down my throat.
    The unspeakable obscenity of the taste is swept away by the hunger for air. Air! I can’t breathe! I need air! My body begins to buck as my muscles spasm and cry for oxygen.
    It speaks then. In Marion’s little voice.
    Marion’s…yet changed, dried and stiff like a fallen leaf blown by autumn gusts from bright October into lifeless November.
    “ Daddy …”

“WHEN HE WAS FAB”
    Early on in 1990 my goombah Tom Monteleone asked me to contribute to the first of a series of anthologies he was starting. The Borderlands guidelines were and have always been: no topic, no restrictions, and above all, no clichés.
    “Surprise me,” Tom said.
    Well, with one project or another— Reprisal , Freak Show , Nightworld, and all the short stories—tugging me this way and that, I kept putting it off. So it wasn’t until late in the year that I started “When He Was Fab” for Tom.
    This is one of those stories where I give a blank look when asked where the idea came from. I have a vague memory that it might involve watching the original The Blob for the umpteenth time. My favorite scene has always been the one where the old guy removes the goo from the meteorite; as he holds it up on the end of a stick it seems to leap onto his arm. I may have done my turn-it-over thing and thought, What if the goo has something else in mind besides lunch? I can look back and say it’s a Cinderfella story, but during the writing it was simply happening. The working title was “Dying Outside” ( pace Bob Silverberg).
    As I was finishing it, Weird Tales came along and said they wanted to do a special “F. Paul Wilson Issue.” The magazine that had introduced H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Robert Bloch, and other behemoths in the genre wanted to devote an issue to moi ? How could I refuse? They needed stories—soon. One of the pieces I sent them was “When He Was Fab.” It’s not true horror, just strange…weird. Perfect for Weird Tales.
    Tom was ticked. So I promised him another for Borderlands 2. It’s hard to say no to Tom; you get the feeling you might end up sleeping with the fishes.
    (NB: As you read, keep in mind when this was written.)

When He Was Fab
    Floor drains.
    Sheesh. Doug hated them.
    Being super of this old rattrap building wasn’t a bad job. The hours could play hell with you sometimes, but he got a free room, he got his utilities, and he got a salary—if you wanted to call that piddly amount in his weekly check a salary. But you couldn’t knock the deal too hard. Long as he stayed on the job, he had shelter, warmth, and enough money for food, enough time to work out with his weights. Wasn’t glamorous, but a guy with his education—like, none to speak of besides seventh grade and postgrad courses in the school of hard knocks—couldn’t ask for a whole helluva lot more.
    ’Cept maybe for drains that worked.
    The basement floor drain was a royal pain. He hovered over it now in his rubber boots, squatting ankle deep in the big stinky puddle that covered it. Around him the tenants’ junk was stacked up on the high ground against the walls like a silent crowd around a drowning victim. Third time this month the damn thing had clogged up. Course there’d been a lot of rain lately, and that was part of the problem, but still the drain shoulda been working better than this.
    Now or never, he thought, unfolding his rubber gloves. He wished he had more light than that naked sixty-watter hanging from the beam overhead.
    Would’ve loved one of those big babies they used at night games up at Yankee Stadium.
    Jeez but he hated this part of the job. Last week