Harlan Ellison - Shatterday

“You’ll find peace,” the calm woman said.

“Thank you,” Moth said, rising and leaving them.

The man and woman sank back in their chairs, and the lights that had been lit in their eyes as they spoke to Moth… dimmed and grew sullen. Moth moved through the lounge.

A young man with an intense expression and nervous hand movements sat alone. He stared out the port at the megaflow.

“May I sit down here?” Moth asked.

The young man looked at him, taking his eyes off the swirling, bubbling jelly of the megaflow reluctantly. But he did not reply. There was loathing in his expression. He turned back to the crystal port without answering Moth.

“Please. May I sit with you? I want to talk to you.”

“I don’t talk to cowards,” the young man said. His jaw muscles spasmed with anger.

“I’m a coward, yes, I’ll admit it;” Moth said helplessly. “But, please, let me sit.”

“Oh, for Christ’s sake, sit already! But just shut your mouth; don’t speak to me!” He turned once again to the port.

Moth sat down, folded his hands on the table, did not speak, stared steadily at the young man’s profile.

After a few moments the young man turned his face. He looked at Moth. “You make me sick. I’d like to punch you in the face, you disgusting coward.”

“Yes,” said Moth miserably, “I wouldn’t stop you. I’m a coward, as you say.”

“Worse! Worse than just a coward. A hypocrite, a silly posturing fool! You spent your whole life playing the big man, the big stud, the cavalier. The tough, cynical mover and shaker. But you weren’t any smarter or tougher than any other simpleminded jerk who thought with his groin.”

“I made mistakes,” Moth said. “Just like everybody else. There’s never enough experience. I thought I knew what I was doing. I fell in love with her.”

“Oh, that’s terrific,” the young man said. The tone was frankly vicious. “Terrific. You fell in love. You moron! She was nineteen. You were over twice her age. Why did you let her whipsaw you into marriage? Come on, you idiot, why?”

“She said she loved me, thought I was better than other men, said if I didn’t marry her she would go away and I’d never see her again. I was in love, I’d only been in love once before. No, that isn’t right: I’d only loved once before. The thought of never seeing that face again filled me with fear. That was it: I was afraid I’d never see her again: I couldn’t live with that.”

“So you married her.”

“Yes.”

“But you couldn’t sleep with her, couldn’t make love to her. What did you expect from her? She was a child.”

“She talked like a woman. She said all the right things an adult woman says. I didn’t realize she was still confused, didn’t know what she wanted.”

“But you couldn’t make love to her, isn’t that so?”

“Yes, it’s so. She was like a child, a daughter; my thoughts weren’t straight; I didn’t realize that was what was happening. All interest in sex just vanished; for her, for any woman. I thought—”

“What she thought. That you were impotent. That you were falling apart. She got more frightened every day. A lifetime to spend with a man who would never show her any passion.”

“But there was love. I loved her. Without reserve. I showed it in a million ways, every hour of the day that we spent together.”

“Gifts.”

“Yes, gifts. Touches. Hugs and kisses and smiles.”

“Purchases. You tried buying her.”

“No, never that.”

“Rented, then. It was the same.”

The young man clenched and unclenched his hands. They seemed to have movement directed from somewhere outside him. The hands moved and seemed to want to strike Moth. The man in clown-white could not have failed to notice, but he did not flinch, did not move away. He sat waiting for the next assault, willing victim.

“How did it feel when you found out she was sleeping with him?”

“It hurt terribly. Worse than anything I’d ever felt. There was a ball of pain in the bottom of my lungs, like something inside breathing, a second heart. I don’t know; and every time it breathed, the pain was worse.”

The young man sneered. “And what did you do about it, big man?”

“I wanted to kill him.”

“Why him? He was only picking up on the available goodies. You leave something lying around unused, there’ll always be someone who’ll put it to use.”

Moth sat forlornly, “It was the way she was doing it.”

The young man laughed nastily. “You ass. There’s always some stupid rationalization cuckolds like you fasten on to make it seem dramatic. If it hadn’t been this way, it would have been another; and you’d have found some aspect of that in bad taste. Can’t you understand it’s all excuses?”

“But when I found out, and asked her to leave, she said she would go to stay with her family, to think it out. But she moved in with him.”

The young man moved suddenly. He leaned across and grabbed Moth’s shirt. He pulled him halfway across the table and his voice became a low snarl of hatred. “Then what did you do, hero? Huh, what happened then?”

Moth spoke softly, as if ashamed. “I loaded a gun and went down there to his apartment and kicked in the door. I put my shoe flat against the jamb right beside the lock and pulled back and slammed it as hard as I could. It popped the lock right out of the frame. I went straight through the living room of that awful little apartment and into the bedroom, and they were on the bed naked. It was just the way I’d been seeing it in my head, with him on top of her, except they’d heard the lock shatter and he was trying to get untangled from the sheets and I caught him with one foot on the floor.”

The young man shook Moth. Not too hard, but hard enough to show how angry he was, how disgusted he was. Beyond them, the megaflow took on a scar-tissue appearance, inflamed, nastily pink with burned blue tinges. He continued shaking Moth gently, as if jangling coins from a small bank.

“I rushed him and shoved the gun into his mouth. I heard him start to moan something and then his teeth broke when the muzzle of the gun went into his mouth. I pushed him flat on his back, down onto the bed, and I kneeled with my right leg on his chest, and I told her to get dressed, that I was taking her out of there.”

The young man shoved him back. Moth sat silently.

“What a stupid, miserable, pitiful little mind you are. None of that is true, is it?”

Moth looked away. Softly, he said, “No. None of it.”

“What did you do when you found out she was with him, after four months of marriage?”

“Nothing.”

“You loaded the gun and did nothing.”

“Yes.”

“You couldn’t even bring yourself to make the act real, could you?”

“No. I’m a coward. I wanted to kill him, and then kill myself.”

“But not her.”

“No. Never her. I loved her. I couldn’t kill her, so I wanted to kill everything else in the world.”

“Get away from me, you pathetic little shit. Just get up and walk away from me and don’t talk to me any more. You ran away. You’re running now. But you’re not going to escape.”

Moth said, “In time, I’ll forget.”

“You’ll never completely forget it. Time will dull it, and maybe it’ll be supportable. But you’ll never forget.”

“Perhaps not,” Moth said, and stood up. He turned away, and as he turned away, the light that had blazed madly in the young man’s eyes dimmed and went out. He turned back to the scar-tissue of the megaflow and stared at nothingness.

Moth walked through the lounge, breathing deeply.