Jack Ketchum - Sleep Disorder

And then some kind of bubbling sound. Breathing , he thought. It must be. It's loathsome .

Finally he started talking.

"I heard you got it all figured out," he said. And then something that was much too soft to hear or for the recorder to pick up, unintelligible. Then he said, "You should have seen it coming."

The tape only rolled when he spoke or when there was noise in the room so it was impossible to tell what the interval was.

"You should have heard the Grateful Dead," he said, "they played that Peter-and-the-Wolf song. You know the one. ’All I said was come on in.’" It made no sense at all.

Then suddenly he started howling, bellowing, slamming at the headboard so loud he had to turn the level down. Bits of words and phrases came flying though like shrapnel.

"Ahhhhh!..you don't not to me you don't…dammit! Dammit!..frrrrragggh!..break him!..break him up!..get even!..mmmmmmmmm…break him utterly!.."

And then he had to turn it up again. Because what he was saying was so much softer than the rest of it — he had to hit rewind twice to hear it all. "Tell Millie not to die until the divorce comes through. It's going to get messy."

Not buy. Die. Annie'd got it wrong.

He wasn't trading.

It hardly even sounded like his own voice. He listened again. Something too…musical about it. In the tones. He couldn't say what.

Almost like a woman's voice. It was low and hard to hear. He decided to go on. But the rest of the tape was just more roaring. More pounding. No wonder the neighbors complained.

He went back to that line and listened again. "Tell Millie not to die until the divorce comes through. It's going to get very messy."

He took a stiff shot of scotch from the bottle on the sideboard and then another and another. Where the hell was that doctor?

He curled up in the bed, shivering, the recorder held in both hands like some sort of shiny metallic teddy bear. Except that it wasn't very comforting. He played the tape over and over — and just before he drifted off to sleep again he thought it's not Millie it's Willie, and Willie was what Laura called him sometimes.

Laura. Who'd just got her divorce.

Tell Willie not to die before the divorce comes through. It's going to get very messy.

And for the first time in memory remembered what he dreamed. In the dream he was glutinizing.

He was lying on the bed and it was as though he were on a spit or a bed of stoked hot coals or something instead of a Sealy Posturepedic because his flesh was melting, fat running streaming down his body, staining the sheets yellow, brown, then red — and finally black as charred skin broke and slid across his chest, his thighs, his belly, all of it pooling underneath him like some foul overflowing stew, dripping off the sides of his bed and pooling there too. Messy. Horribly messy.

But there wasn't any pain. Only a sick, dreadful sensation in his stomach that he'd really gone and done it this time, he'd lost control in the worst possible way and that this was what, disgustingly, it all came down to, no boiled down to ha ha ha, flesh and fat breaking up and sliding, falling, dripping on the Persian rug.

"It's going to get very messy," he heard himself say and then there was good old Harry standing at a psych podium saying, "what you dream is how you see other people seeing you," and then Laura stood over him watching. "You really are slime, you know?" she said. And this time he had to agree.

He really was.

As he woke — as his left eye oozed down over his cheek to join the right eye already melting on his chest — he saw he really was.

By Edward Lee

This story is the basis for the Ketchum/Lee collaboration I'D GIVE ANYTHING FOR YOU

"Please, please don't do this to us, Clare!" Roderic pleaded from the flagstone steps of the great house. It was his mother's house, for God's sake. He's thirty years old , Clare thought, and he still lives with his mother . Forlorn, nasal-voiced, Roderic attested: "I would do anything for you!"

How many times had he said that in the last nine months? Big deal! Clare wanted to shout as she turned in the court. Can't you take a hint? "It's just not working," she said.

He splayed his hands, befuddled. "What do you mean it's not working? Things are great. You said you'd marry me!"

"Oh, Roderic, I did not," she lied. Early on, of course, she had responded very positively to his nuptial allusions. Clare, at thirty-three, wasn't getting any younger, and there were literally millions of reasons why a girl might want to be married to Roderic. But… Money isn't everything, she pondered. It got to the point where the relationship simply didn't suffice. "I'm sorry," she feebled. "But I just can't see you anymore."

Roderic's gape turned vapid. "Is it another guy?"

"Of course not!" she chose to spat. How dare he suspect her of sleeping around! Besides, Fudd was more than just another guy. He was everything Roderic wasn't: strong, handsome, assertive, and…well, he had a big penis. She opened the door to the 300ZX (which Roderic had bought her, by the way) and was about to get in.

"But what about the trip to Paris?" came his next idiotic query. "Don't you want to go?"

Paris might be fun, but there was a catch. Roderic's mother would be going too, along with Dallas, that ruffian manservant of hers. Fuck that shit , Clare articulated. Anyway, Fudd would be taking her to Cancun after his next score. "Roderic, I'm not going to Paris with you. Our relationship is over. Get it?"

Obviously, he didn't, but Dallas did. The sinister manservant, in his long leather jacket, glanced up blank-faced from the side of the house. He was stacking a cord of firewood, after dividing each round cut in one of those automatic log-splitters. The glint in his eyes just then…terrified her.

Worse, though, was the look of disdain on Roderic's mother's face, which could be seen now in the sitting-room window. The crinkled visage peered through the glass, causing tiny hairs on the back of Clare's neck to stand on end. Weirdoes! she thought.

"Darling, please," Roderic yammered on. "Come back inside. We'll sit by the fire, I'll open the Louis XIII, and we can talk. We'll talk this thing out."

"Roderic, read my lips! No new to—" Clare blinked. "Er, I mean, it's over!"

For God's sake, he was crying now! Men were such babies. "I would do anything for you," he sobbed. "I would build a temple. I would row a league. I would climb the highest mountain, cross the driest, hottest desert—"

Clare rolled her eyes. What a romantic putz!

"Anything, Clare," he wept on. "I would do anything." He paused to sniffle. "Tell me how I can prove my love."

Play in traffic, how about that? "Goodbye, Roderic!" she shouted. She slammed the car door and drove off. The estate shrunk behind her amid glowing topiary. In the rearview, as she descended, Roderic fell to his knees in grief as his mother and her leather-clad servant approached the porch to comfort him.

Poor Roderic , Clare mused. Have a nice life .

"There's my juicy little love-muffin," Fudd said when Clare came back to her apartment. His tongue roved her mouth in greeting; her 36C's tingled against his muscled chest. Already, the deft, strong hands unbuttoned her blouse. "You break the news to the wimp?"

"Yes," she said rather sadly. Aftermath. Guilt. But why should I feel guilty? She'd told Roderic the truth, and now it was done. "I'm surprised he didn't take back the car," she remarked.

Fudd's hands shucked her out of the blouse, baring her unfettered breasts. "That little creamcake fairy can't take back the car," he informed her. "He put the title in your name."