So I try to look forward. The rules are changing. Soon they'll be back to the way they used to be. Take that soldier. Private Quinlan. A year from now he'll be somewhere else, in a place where he won't do the things he's doing now. He might even have a hard time believing he ever did them. It won't be much different with me.
Maybe I'll have a new house by then. Maybe I'll take off work early on Friday and push around a shopping cart, toss steaks and a couple of six packs into it. Maybe I'll even do the things I used to do. Wear a badge. Find a new deputy. Sort things out and take care of trouble. People always need someone who can do that.
To tell the truth, that would be okay with me.
That would be just fine.
An Eldritch Matter
Adam Niswander
Adam Niswander is the author of the Lovecraftian novels The Charm (Integra, 1993) and The Serpent Slayers (Integra, 1994), the first two of a series of novels set in the Southwest. The third and fourth novels of the series, The Hound Hunters and The War of the Whisperers, appeared in 2008 and 2009 from Hippocampus Press. His short stories have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies.
I am terribly confused.
I am not the adventurous type, if you know what I mean.
I like things to be a little dull, as a matter of fact.
Yesterday, my life was normal and perhaps a bit predictable, and I was happy. My wife loved me, my children looked up to me, I had a good job, and all the people we knew seemed to like me — to like us. The bills were paid on time, the house was a real home, and the biggest uncertainty in my life was not knowing if my wife would choose to prepare pork chops or spaghetti for our supper.
Then, this morning, while waiting for the bus, I happened to look down and saw a little metal disk on the curb. You wouldn't think something as silly as a hunk of cheap pot-metal could mess up your life, would you?
It didn't look like anything all that unusual to me at the time. It was just a disk of white metal with an engraved sort of tentacled — something surrounding a big red eye in the middle. I picked it up, looked at it, and figured my son, Arnie, would find it interesting. I put it in my pocket and promptly forgot about it.
When I arrived at the office, I grabbed a cup of coffee in the lobby kiosk and took the elevator to the eighth floor. I went straight to my desk, settled in, and began to begin work on a proposal that is due by the end of the week. The client is important, representing a big percentage of our total business.
I had been sitting there only minutes when, without warning, I felt a terrible stabbing pain on my right thigh. It was excruciating. as if something had taken a bite out of me, or some giant insect had stabbed me with a stinger. I jumped up and slapped at the spot, hopping around, but the pain did not abate. It burned.
And it began to spread.
And I fell to the floor.
I was yelling by now.
Several of my co-workers came to see what all the ruckus was about. Despite my obvious suffering, no one could see anything wrong. Whatever was attacking me was covered by my clothing, and my flailing gyrations kept everyone at least an arm's length away. The pain was like a palpable thing, like a flame that crawled up my leg leaving agony in its path.
And it seemed there was nothing I could do about it, no way I could alleviate it.
Bob Shaw had knelt by me and was trying to ask me what was wrong.
"What is it, Thompson?"
And I felt. well, some. weird. thing. Even through the pain, my right leg suddenly didn't feel like a leg at all, really. It felt kind of. well, boneless. And as I clutched at it through my trouser leg, my fingers didn't find anything solid. I moved my left hand down to my knee, but I didn't feel a knee. It felt the same as the upper part of my leg, and curiously not solid. And the feeling was crawling up and down my leg simultaneously. It scared the crap out of me!
If I had been yelling in pain before, now I was screaming in terror. I looked down and discovered my shoe had come off. My sock was still on, but the foot inside it was horribly shapeless — and by now my entire right leg was curved in a very unnatural way.
My co-workers had pulled back away from me.
I heard Bob Shaw on the phone. "No, I don't know what's wrong with him," he shouted, "but send an ambulance right away. The man is dying!"
But the pain was not through with me yet. It spread across my groin, scalding like acid. I can't even begin to describe my horror as it passed through my genitalia and then into my left leg, once again racing down and feeling as if it was burning my bones away.
I could not stop screaming.
The speed with which it spread through me seemed to be increasing. In moments, my left leg, like my right, was strangely limp, and I found I could no longer hold myself upright. I flopped backward just as the pain and burning began to climb up my spine.
I began to be racked by spasms that set my legs thrashing about, but they no longer bore much resemblance to legs. They rippled and squirmed, they seemed to slither across the floor. My right sock had now slipped completely off and the obscenely pink flesh it had revealed did not resemble a foot. There were no signs of toes or nails, or ankles and soles, only a featureless fleshy tube tapering gracelessly to a rounded tip. Worse, it had begun to itch mercilessly.
By now, the siren could be heard on the street below and the screech of tires braking on asphalt. I hoped the paramedics would hurry.
My co-workers, my office-mates, had backed as far away as they could, and panic spread among them.
"Oh God! Look! His skin is writhing."
"What's happening to him?"
"It's like his bones are melting!"
"Do you think it could be catching?"
That last question sent some of them fleeing to the elevators and the rest strained to back yet further away.
I wanted to sit up and gain control of myself, but I could not. The strange tide of transformation continued unabated and the pain seemed to be increasing. I fear my yelling had degenerated into bursts of sound that hardly resembled anything human. I was exhausted, my throat raw from screaming at the top of my voice. My cries now were more a harsh bleating and moaning.
Strangely, no matter how my body was being changed, I could feel my heart steadily beating. It was a hypnotic rhythm that was at once petrifying and weirdly reassuring.
The feeling of something coursing through me had now reached my neck and shoulders, and spread rapidly into my arms. I was still thrashing about, but it was as if I had been trapped inside my head and was being forced to watch as everything about me — everything that went into my concept of me — was irrevocably changed.
Then, suddenly — mercifully — the pain stopped.
And I looked over to see my left hand, which had been flailing uncontrollably, and saw no hand at all. My eyes grew wider as I stared in terror. It looked as if some giant pink worm was crawling out of my coat-sleeve.
There was a commotion over by the door and three paramedics came bustling through, pushing people aside. Two maneuvered a gurney and the third carried the medical bag. But even as they approached, I felt/heard/guessed the final transformation occur. My head sank back squishily and I knew that my skull had just gone the way of the rest of the bones in my body.
As the lead medic knelt by me, I attempted to speak and tell him I was in no pain. I could not lift my head, yet I still was under the delusion that I would be able to communicate. I was wrong. What issued from my mouth was a gelatinous baritone belch, accompanied by a horrible stench.