Harlan Ellison - Spider Kiss

Shelly watched as his own personal God fell apart. It was something to see; a definite facial and metaphysical altering of Freeport’s appearance. More than merely his substance: his reality. The Colonel took a faltering step backward, found the bar stool with his searching fingers and plumped onto the edge of the seat. The Pimm’s Cup might have helped, but it was unnoticed by Freeport’s elbow. The room had abruptly gone darker, to Shelly, with Freeport’s blue eyes that peculiar almost-albino white that seemed lifeless.

“A Nig rah…”

As though someone had just told him all fifty-dollar bills were counterfeit. As though he had opened his wallet to examine the sheaf of fifty-dollar bills therein and had found not Ulysses S. Grant staring up at him, but a winking jester, an epileptic leper, motley, insipid, rotting, leering. Then he would turn and say, “Counterfeit…” the way he had said, “A Nig rah…”

Golightly looked to Shelly for an explanation. “Didn’t he … ?” Shelly shook his head.

“Uh-uh. He didn’t know.” They both watched the Colonel. It was an unpleasant but fascinating thing to watch—a man’s face shriveling and changing and changing again. Emotions played like heat lightning across Freeport’s countenance, finally settling into a semblance of normalcy.

Normal to anyone but Shelly, who had worked under Freeport long enough to recognize the restrained fury the man was trying to conceal. Freeport was a man who felt he could get more by speaking softly, by operating gently, until that final instant when the hound catches the hare and snaps its neck with one twist and bite. Now he was like that. Calm to the eye of Golightly, seething to the more practiced eye of Shelly.

“I want the boy up here,” the Colonel said gently.

Shelly moved to the house phone, waited, spoke into it softly. Before he was finished, Freeport was speaking to Golightly. The manager seemed disinclined to argue, and as Shelly hung the receiver he heard Freeport saying, “just go to your room and wait for my call. Keep that girl with you. If she speaks to anyone , sir, I’ll hold you directly responsible.”

Golightly mumbled something slight but appropriate, retrieved his Tyrolean hat, and made a hasty exit. Then the Colonel turned to Shelly. The face dissolved from its posture of composure and the fire that licked at Freeport’s brain sent visible shoots of red into his cheeks. “This time, Shelly, that rotten boy has gone too far.” Then he cursed.

In all the years Sheldon Morgenstern had worked for Freeport, he had never heard the man swear. It was a mark of character, something you could hang your identification on: Colonel Jack Freeport never used foul language. He had taken on awkward speaking habits to avoid swearing, referring to something as “cursed” or “rotten” before he would offer up even a mild damn. Now, he cursed.

Foully. In a torrent that Shelly never thought possible from anyone playing the role of aristocracy as heavily as Freeport played it.

And when Freeport was silent, Shelly knew twinkling words would not mend this rift. Stag had stepped over the line. The Colonel had been piqued by Stag’s amour, was even more annoyed by his carelessness. But with a Nig rah…

It was more than shocking; it was a personal affront.

The knocker clanged twice and Shelly stepped around the Colonel to answer the door.

Stag bowled through, a wide, slap-happy grin on his face; the charm that turned millions of women on was now coruscating around him like a halo.

“Hey! The Man and my favorite personal bodyguard, Sheld—”

His bubbling friendliness was cut short as the Colonel took a short two-step and met the oncoming singer with his fist. He drew back and punched Stag Preston full in the mouth. The boy’s rapid advance and the force of the older man’s blow combined to spin Stag sidewise, blood pouring from his torn lip. He stumbled, caught himself on a pedestal table, tripped over it and crashed to the floor, whimpering in pain.

Shelly stood transfixed as Freeport moved with the grace of the trained boxer, dipping, grasping Stag by his jacket front and bodily jerking him erect. He stood paralyzed the way any bystander must stand paralyzed in the face of sudden, unexpected violence. Violence on the tv screen never takes anyone by surprise, because that is the home of sudden movement, senseless violence … but life is filled with side-steppings, avoidances of conflict, and the abrupt clash of two people shocks, stiffens, frightens.

The Colonel held Stag away from him—now Shelly knew the Colonel’s muscled back and shoulders were not merely for the young chippies—one-handed, the other hand a pendulum, flat and hard and back and forth that cracked against the boy’s face with systematic, agonizing open-handed blows. He was not pulling his punches. He was not using his fist to break bone and shatter cartilage, so his property would be unable to perform … he was not that insane with fury, but he was racking the boy.

Stag’s eyes began to glaze as the fifteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth blows tick-tocked against his skin. His head slipped to the side, escape! The Colonel grasped him by the hair, dragging his face close. Then he spat in Stag’s face!

“ Little scud !” he cursed him, teeth clenched, lips drawn back till the skin about his mouth went pale. He shook Stag furiously; but the boy was half-conscious. Terror and pain had combined to drain away all the arrogance and shine from Stag Preston.

The Colonel, impelled by his anger, released Stag’s hair and drew back for another full-fist smash, driven past the hounds of sense by the very fury of his actions. Then Shelly moved. Abruptly galvanized, he ran across the room, wrapping his arm about the Colonel’s.

Freeport bellowed like a beast, trying to wrench loose, with his other hand shaking Stag till the boy’s eyes closed and he went limp. Shelly dragged back on the Colonel, adroitly twisting his wrist, pulling it up behind the bigger man’s back.

No one spoke, and the jagged rasp of breath in and out of Freeport was a steam engine gone berserk. Finally Shelly applied so much leverage that the pain filtered through to Freeport and the big man began to cast off fury. It was very much like the final percolating of a coffee pot, with rapid exhalations and madness in the eyes, then tapering with longer periods of breath-catching silence, then a final upsurge of insanity, and all at once the Colonel was restored.

“Let me go, Shelly. Please let go of my arm; you’re hurting my arm.” Shelly gently disengaged himself.

The Colonel shook out Stag as though he were a drip-dry shirt, and cast him away. Stag bumbled once and collapsed in a heap on the carpet. Shelly still could not reconcile what he had seen with the portraits of these people built up in the past. Freeport—the quiet, deadly gentleman more adept at screwing the opposition than at clouting them; Stag—almost six feet of young hotblood, well-built, full of arrogance and self-importance.

Now here they were: Freeport a madman, as easily able to break a man in half as he was to destroy him financially. Stag a taffy-limbed, spastic bundle of dirty clothes unable to stand or speak or see straight.

The façades had been ripped away.

This was the true face of the creatures that prowled Jungle York.

Shelly elbowed past the Colonel, stooped to one knee and lifted Stag’s shoulders. The boy was semiconscious, barely able to draw breath. “Colonel, help me get him on the sofa, he may have a concussion.”

Freeport came to them and bent from the knees, jacking the singer into his arms with a fluid movement. Without help he carried Stag to the big sofa and dumped him there. Then he went into the bathroom and Shelly could hear water running in the sink.