Harlan Ellison: Ellison Wonderland

Oh, it was too deep for her to worry about. They must have some way of insuring delivery. She set the box top beside her chair, and pulled away the tissue paper double-folded over the carton’s contents.

What odd-looking mechanisms. Even for 1977, which Madge had always called—in the sanctum of her mind, where profanity was permitted—”too damned machiney for its own good!” these were strange.

There was a long, thin, coiled sticky-looking tube of grey something-or-other with a valve at one end, and a blow-nozzle attached. Was it one of those dragon balloons that you blew up so big? But what did that have to do with—

She would not think of what this kit had been invented to do. She would look at it as though it were some laborsaving household appliance, like her Dinner Dialer (that did not dial at all, but was punched, instead) or her Dustomat. Well, and she giggled, wasn’t it?

Do-it-by-golly-yourself!

Beside the coil of grey tubing, hooked to it by soft wire and wrapped in tissue paper like a Christmas necklace, was another small parcel. She lifted it out, surprised at its heaviness, and stripped away the tissue. It was a small glass square, obviously a bottle of some sort, filled with a murky, mercurial-seeming liquid that moved rapidly as she turned the container, sending up no air bubbles as it roiled in the bottle. It had a tiny, pinlike protuberance at one corner, with a boot fastened down on it, easily snapped off to open the vial. Quicksilver? She found this item as mystifying as the preceding one. She stared at it a moment longer, with no apparent function coming to mind, and then she laid it aside.

It slipped down behind the chair’s pillow, and she retrieved it at once, without examining the carton further. Madge Rubichek was a methodical woman.

The next was a layer in itself; rather thick and quite black, it was almost of the consistency of an old beach ball, or a fish skin without scales, or

What?

Rotten flesh…perhaps. Though she had no conception of what rotten flesh felt like. Or something. She pulled it free, and almost immediately let it drop into the leaning carton top beside her chair. She just didn’t want to touch it. Mental images of dead babies and salamanders and polyethylene bags filled with vomit came to mind when her fingers touched that night-black stuff.

She dropped it free, and found beneath.it a pamphlet without a title, and a small glass globe with all the attributes of a snowstorm paperweight, the kind her Grandfather had had on his desk in the old law offices in Prestonsburg. It was on an onyx stand of some cheap material, and the globe itself swirled and frothed with the artificial whateveritwas inside. But there was no little town once the snow settled, and no large-thoraxed snowman with anthracite eyes, and no church. There was nothing in there but the lacy swirlingness. The snow just continued to whirl about, no matter how long it lay in one position. It would not settle.

She put it beside her on the chair, and nudged the carton, now empty, off her lap. She took the pamphlet in her hands, and opened it to the first page.

“Hello,” it said.

It did not read hello, it said hello. In a rich baritone, vaguely reminiscent of old-fashioned styrene records she had heard of pressings taken off even older platters made by Peter Ustinov, a mimic comedian of the Fifties. It was in many ways a comforting voice, and one that was subtly reassuring, as well as inviting attention and forthrightness of manner, clarity of thinking, boldness of approach.

It was a mellow and warm voice.

It was, apparently, the voice of murder.

“Hello,” it said again, and this time there was a tinge of apprehension in its voice, as though it was not certain there was anyone on the holding end of the pamphlet.

“Uh, hello,” she replied, not at all certain it was good taste to be conversing with a pamphlet. There was, in fact, a sense of Carrollian madness about it. Had a Dormouse erupted from the delicate Chinese teapot on the coffee table before the sofa, clearly enunciating Twinkle, twinkle, little bat. ..she would not have been overly surprised; it would have fitted in nicely.

“This is your own Do-It-Yourself Murder Kit,” the pamphlet broke her literary reverie with harsh reality. “The new guaranteed Murder Kit, with the double-your-money-back warranty, for your protection.” Well, she thought, frugally, that’s nice, anyway. That double-your-money-back thing. She shivered a little with suppressed anticipation. There was going to be profit… one way…or the other. “Uh, where are you?” Madge asked nervously.

“Where am I where?” the pamphlet responded in confusion.

“Yes, precisely,” she concurred.

“Dear Purchaser, you are perplexing me,” cried the pamphlet. “If you wish to carry forward smartly to the objective for which this Kit was designed, please do not strain my conversational and analytical faculties.” “But I only—”

“Madam, if you desire success, you must put yourself wholly in my—er—hands. Do I make myself clear?” Madge drew herself up, and an expression of haughty resignation suffused her face. “I understand quite well, thank you.” After all, Grandfather Tabakow on her mother’s side had been Southern aristocracy, well hadn’t he? She felt imposed upon, this mere. booklet talking to her that way.

And a booklet without even the common self-respect of having a title. After all, a title-less pamphlet. And wasn’t the customer always supposed to be right?

It didn’t seem so with this Kit.

The phrase nouveau-riche flitted across Madge’s mind, with ill-concealed contempt. “This guaranteed Murder Kit,” the voice continued, “was shipped to you by our robotic mailer. There is no record of its sale in our hands. So in case you wish to exercise the warranty you must return the numbered warranty sheet on the last page of this pamphlet. To return the numbered warranty sheet to our files, merely bum same in a non-chemical fire; this will automatically cancel the sympathetic-sheet in our files, and your money will be doubly, cheerfully refunded.

“This Kit contains three sure, clean and undetectable, I repeat, undetectable, ways to commit murder. No two kits are the same, through repetition occasionally occurs where the subjects to be murdered have common character traits. Again, though, no two kits are the same. Each of the three modus operandi is designed for you according to the application blank you sent us when you contracted for this Kit. Now. To prepare yourself for your murder—”

She snapped the pamphlet shut with quick, suddenly-sweating hands.

Do I hate him that much?

Where had their marriage gone wrong…somewhere in the eleven years? Where? An infinite sadness stole over her as she remembered Carl the way be had been when they first met. She remembered his ways, that had seemed rough and yet gentle, masculine yet graceful. And she recalled her own aristocratic nature, the fine background, and the womanly ways. But how bad it changed? How was it now?

She conjured up visions of it now. The ashes on the carpets and the smell of musty cigar smoke that stayed in the curtains and chair coverings no matter bow much she aired and cleaned. She remembered the fat, nasty belly of the man while he sat pouring bock down his dribble-chinned throat, the clothes rank with sweat strewn across her immaculate bedroom, the rings in the bathtub, his rotten teeth and the odor when he kissed her…

And of course the quick animal urges all panting and grunting that were as nothing to her. Nothing but revulsion.

She answered her question firmly: Yes, yes, I hate him that much. And morel