Sitting hunched in his chair, cradling
his swollen middle while he rattled on about the King’s
intestinal blockage. He was sunk down into his chair,
skin pasty and pale, in his boxers and wife-beater, like
some character from the depression they’d both been born
too late to know.
“. . . it wasn’t fried peanut butter-and-banana
sandwiches—it was the god-damn aliens running the C.I.A.
that got him! Just like they got to Nixon’s people. Put
some parasite in his food, mixed up his medicines—somehow
it was them.”
This was the third,( or was it the
forth?) sachet Myrna’d put together this month. Merle
was stinking up the den something fierce. This one was
going to be the last, Myrna swore.
She tied off the last row and worked
the yarn through where she’d use it to tie the bag shut
once it was filled. The next thing was best done quickly.
Yarn and needles still in hand she
rose and plodded across the little room to peer over
the top of the tabloid, as if looking at a photo. Merle
lowered the paper and looked up, mouthing open to add
something about aliens, or Elvis or the C.I.A., and Myrna
shoved a knitting needle halfway into his head, right
behind his ear.
“Gah!” Merle’s tongue worked back
and forth in his mouth and his eyes bulged out like that
little man in the Mel Brook’s movies they’d used to watch
together. Myrna brought the other needle up over her
head in a big arch square through the top of her husbands
head. He jerked and his eyes glazed, though his tongue
looked like it still wanted to wiggle.
She fixed that by shoving the ball
of yarn into his gaping mouth. It was, thank god, the
last of her teal. Returning to her couch, she fished
around for the paperback she kept in with her knitting.
She doubted she’d have time to knit anything useful before
they found out and took her away, but maybe she could
at least finish her book.
She was just settling into the action
when the ball of yarn rolled into her foot. She glanced
at it quickly . . .it was teal. Myrna didn’t want to,
but she looked up at her husband’s body. The knitting
needles stuck up like a Martian’s antenna and he’d sort
collapsed inward, like his arms and legs were being drawn
down into his massive belly. His tongue was still wiggling,
though his bulged eyes were growing cloudy all ready.
His belly, where it stuck out over his boxers, was a
mottled red.
He was sinking into himself—or into
the chair! Why, his chin was all ready setting against
his chest and now his tongue was wiggling like a fish
on a hook. Myrna shifted her feet to get up—this just
wasn’t natural.
Then Merle’s gut split open. Globs
of yellow glop like rotting Jell-O fell onto the moldering
pile of pulp around his chair. Organs followed, push
from below. Intestines writhed out on their own like
a bolus of rattlesnakes. Last reared up the end of the
intestinal track, his colon, swelling like some insane
erection, throbbing and waving a moment before it burst.
Eyeless, colorless, pucker-mouth
working like an obscene kiss, the fat, wiggling body
rose up again—some sort of huge worm or maggot lodged
deep in Merle. It reared and writhed and worked closer
to Myrna as she sat frozen on her couch, staring.
It got closer, and as it did she
could hear, deep inside it, music. Rising up before her,
she knew the sounds . . ..
Dancing close to Merle, the high
school gym’s doors thrown open in a vain attempt to let
in a cool breeze the kids inside would never notice.
Dancing to that song, with that awesome voice, the voice
of the King . . .
The thing opened its maw and from
it came the voice,” I want you, I need you, I lo-ve you.
With all—my—heart!”
