Стивен Кинг - The Body

Chris’s mouth dropped open, and I felt all the blood in my body go as cold as dry ice. Teddy screamed, his face going pale. Then all three of us were thrashing for the bank, going just as fast as we could. I know more about freshwater slugs now than I did then, but the fact that they are mostly harmless has done nothing to allay the almost insane horror of them I’ve had ever since that day in the beaver-pool. They carry a local anesthetic and an anti-coagulant in their alien saliva, which means that the host never feels a thing when they attach themselves. If you don’t happen to see them they’ll go on feeding until their swelled, loathsome bodies fall off you, sated, or until they actually burst.

We pulled ourselves up on the bank and Teddy went into a hysterical paroxysm as he looked down at himself. He was screaming as he picked the leeches off his naked body.

Vern broke the water and looked at us, puzzled. “What the hell’s wrong with h—”

“Leeches!” Teddy screamed, pulling two of them off his trembling thighs and throwing them just as far as he could. “Dirty mother-fuckin bloodsuckers !” His voice broke shrilly on the last word.

“OhGodOhGodOhGod!” Vern cried. He paddled across the pool and stumbled out.

I was still cold; the heat of the day had been suspended. I kept telling myself to catch hold. Not to get screaming. Not to be a pussy. I picked half a dozen off my arms and several more off my chest.

Chris turned his back to me. “Gordie? Are there any more? Take em off if there are, please, Gordie!” There were more, five or six, running down his back like grotesque black buttons. I pulled their soft, boneless bodies off him.

I brushed even more off my legs, then got Chris to do my back.

I was starting to relax a little—and that was when I looked down at myself and saw the granddaddy of them all clinging to my testicles, its body swelled to four times its normal size. Its blackish-gray skin had gone a bruised purplish-red. That was when I began to lose control. Not outside, at least not in any big way, but inside, where it counts.

I brushed its slick, glutinous body with the back of my hand. It held on. I tried to do it again and couldn’t bring myself to actually touch it. I turned to Chris, tried to speak, couldn’t. I pointed instead. His cheeks, already ashy, went whiter still.

“I can’t get it off,” I said through numb lips. “You… can you…”

But he backed away, shaking his head, his mouth twisted. “I can’t, Gordie,” he said, unable to take his eyes away. “I’m sorry but I can’t. No. Oh. No.” He turned away, bowed with one hand pressed to his midsection like the butler in a musical comedy, and was sick in a stand of juniper bushes.

You got to hold onto yourself, I thought, looking at the leech that hung off me like a crazy beard. Its body was still visibly swelling. You got to hold onto yourself and get him. Be tough. It’s the last one. The. Last. One.

I reached down again and picked it off and it burst between my fingers. My own blood ran across my palm and inner wrist in a warm flood. I began to cry.

Still crying, I walked back to my clothes and put them on. I wanted to stop crying, but I just didn’t seem able to turn off the waterworks. Then the shakes set in, making it worse. Vern ran up to me, still naked.

“They off, Gordie? They off me? They off me?”

He twirled in front of me like an insane dancer on a carnival stage.

“They off? Huh? Huh? They off me, Gordie?”

His eyes kept going past me, as wide and white as the eyes of a plaster horse on a merry-go-round.

I nodded that they were and just kept on crying. It seemed that crying was going to be my new career. I tucked my shirt in and then buttoned it all the way to the neck. I put on my socks and my sneakers. Little by little the tears began to slow down. Finally there was nothing left but a few hitches and moans, and then they stopped, too.

Chris walked over to me, wiping his mouth with a handful of elm leaves. His eyes were wide and mute and apologetic.

When we were all dressed we just stood there looking at each other for a moment, and then we began to climb the railroad embankment. I looked back once at the burst leech lying on top of the tromped-down bushes where we had danced and screamed and groaned them off. It looked deflated… but still ominous.

Fourteen years later I sold my first novel and made my first trip to New York. “It’s going to be a three-day celebration,” my new editor told me over the phone. “People slinging bullshit will be summarily shot.” But of course it was three days of unmitigated bullshit.

While I was there I wanted to do all the standard out-of-towner things—see a stage show at the Radio City Music Hall, go to the top of the Empire State Building (fuck the World Trade Center; the building King Kong climbed in 1933 is always gonna be the tallest one in the world for me), visit Times Square by night. Keith, my editor, seemed more than pleased to show his city off. The last touristy thing we did was to take a ride on the Staten Island Ferry, and while leaning on the rail I happened to look down and see scores of used condoms floating on the mild swells. And I had a moment of almost total recall—or perhaps it was an actual incidence of time-travel. Either way, for one second I was literally in the past, pausing halfway up that embankment and looking back at the burst leech: dead, deflated… but still ominous.

Keith must have seen something in my face because he said: “Not very pretty, are they?”

I only shook my head, wanting to tell him not to apologize, wanting to tell him that you didn’t have to come to the Apple and ride the ferry to see used rubbers, wanting to say: The only reason anyone writes stories is so they can understand the past and get ready for some future mortality; that’s why all the verbs in stories have -ed endings, Keith my good man, even the ones that sell millions of paperbacks. The only two useful artforms are religion and stories.

I was pretty drunk that night, as you may have guessed.

What I did tell him was: “I was thinking of something else, that’s all.” The most important things are the hardest things to say.

We walked further down the tracks—I don’t know just how far—and I was starting to think: Well, okay, I’m going to be able to handle it, it’s all over anyway, just a bunch of leeches, what the fuck; I was still thinking it when waves of whiteness suddenly began to come over my sight and I fell down.

I must have fallen hard, but landing on the crossties was like plunging into a warm and puffy feather bed. Someone turned me over. The touch of hands was faint and unimportant. Their faces were disembodied balloons looking down at me from miles up. They looked the way the ref’s face must look to a fighter who has been punched silly and is currently taking a ten-second rest on the canvas. Their words came in gentle oscillations, fading in and out.

“…him?”

“…be all…”

“…if you think the sun…”

“Gordie, are you…”

Then I must have said something that didn’t make much sense because they began to look really worried.

“We better take him back, man,” Teddy said, and then the whiteness came over everything again.

When it cleared, I seemed to be all right. Chris was squatting next to me, saying: “Can you hear me, Gordie? You there, man?”

“Yes,” I said, and sat up. A swarm of black dots exploded in front of my eyes, and then went away. I waited to see if they’d come back, and when they didn’t, I stood up.

“You scared the cheesly old shit outta me, Gordie,” he said. “You want a drink of water?”