Free Hunger and Thirst by Richard Matheson Page B

in an instant.
    Don’t fight it. He told himself to relax.
    He relaxed. It’s simple, he thought, regimenting his body, wiping away unheeded tears. I need money, that’s all. I must have it. There’s no other point to debate. I need money and I’ll get it from the old man, the old man, the old man, the old man, the old…
    * * * *
    He got up from the bed and turned on the light.
    It was nine thirty. The old man always stayed open late. He’d get there in a while. The shop was usually empty around ten.
    He stood up sleepily on the patched rug, watching his shadow sway on the blue striped bedcover as the bulb swung in short choppy arcs overhead. The shadow of the radiator moved back and forth and the shadow of the rose moved on the white towel that was supposed to be a table cloth. The glass shadow seemed to get longer and shorter, longer and shorter.
    Wearily he sank down on the bed. It squeaked. Squeak ahead mousie, spoke his slowly awakening brain. He licked his lips. It was such a dry room, such an airless room when there was no breeze coming in. He had to have a drink of water, his throat was parched.
    He bent over with a grunt and slipped the shoes over his feet. They are old, those shoes, his mind observed in sleepy abandon. Look at them. They are caked with dirt and there are threads coming out at the seams and the sides are white where the shoes rub together as I walk.
    He slanted his feet on their outside edges and looked at the heels. How can I walk so cockeyed, he wondered. The heels were like hills running from inner to outer edge.
    He sat there staring at the shoes.
    And began to wonder if his plan to rob the old man was just a dream. He had to concentrate very hard before he realized he had made up his mind before he went to sleep and not while he was asleep.
    It took a little while for resolve to return. He had to go over all the arguments again in his mind, citing fact after fact that made it irrefutable he must rob the old man and leave town. He was angry with himself for going to sleep and making it necessary for him to stand up again in the court of his mind and argue his case through again in its entirety.
    It was a waste of time.
    Finally, he stood and walked to the door, opened it and went down to the bathroom. There he ran water from the sink faucet and threw it in his face. He looked up at himself in the mirror and made a face as he realized he’d forgotten his towel.
    He pulled paper from the rack. “No waste, “he muttered drowsily. “That a boy, Palmer.”
    He felt quietly assured now, somehow, pleased with himself. He watched himself rub his hands with the dry, antiseptic smelling paper and it seemed to him as though his hands were very strong looking and assured. He dried his face and wrinkled up his nostrils at the musty smell of the paper. Then he threw the paper down the toilet.
    “That son of a bitch has pissed on the seat again,” he muttered and shook his head, more amused than annoyed, not trying very hard to keep the edges of his mouth from twitching up as he visualized the drunk wavering over the toilet and spraying the floor and walls and toilet seat with his urine.
    Everything is set, his mind reported. Tomorrow I’ll be away from it all. And
she
can go scratch.
Ditch delivered by a drab
, another phrase dripped appropriately from a corner of his mind.
    He ran some water into his palm and drank it. Palm, no waste. The water was warm and it tasted stale. He spit most of it back into the sink. Some of it splattered on the bottom part of the mirror.
    He looked.
    That’s me.
    His eyes were lost in dark circles, his hair a tangled mass of unwashed sallow strands. His hair looked like a dirty blonde plant going berserk, firing up clumps of threadlike shoots in every direction with the utmost abandon. His ears looked like whitish tabs, like scar flesh that had been ripped up and hung off each side of his head.
    He looked closely at the blackheads in his nose. Around the puffy