Free Backteria and Other Improbable Tales by Richard Matheson

he turned back. Charlie was grinning at him.
    “You’re the best one yet, all right,” said Charlie.
    The prisoner looked at him.
    “Once there was a guy,” recalled Charlie. “Said he ate a bomb. Said he’d blow the place sky high if we electrocuted him.”
    He chuckled at the recollection.
    “We X-rayed him. He didn’t swallow nothing. Except electricity later.”
    The prisoner turned away and went back to his bunk. He sank down on it.
    “There was another one,” said Charlie, raising his voice so the others could hear him. “Said he was Christ. Said he couldn’t be killed. Said he’d get up in three days and come walkin’, through the wall.”
    He rubbed his nose with a bunched fist.
    “Ain’t heard from him since,” he snickered. “But I always keep an eye on the wall just in case.”
    His chest throbbed with rumbling laughter.
    “Now there was another one,” he started. The prisoner looked at him with hate burning in his eyes. Charlie shrugged his shoulders and started back up the corridor. Then he turned and went back.
    “We’ll be giving you a haircut soon,” he called in. “Any special way you’d like it?”
    “Go away.”
    “Sideburns, maybe?” Charlie said, his fat face wrinkling in amusement. The prisoner turned his head and looked at the window.
    “How about bangs?” asked Charlie. He laughed and turned back down the wall.
    “Hey Mac, how about we give big boy some bangs?”
    The prisoner bent over and pressed shaking palms over his eyes.
    The door was opening.
    The prisoner shuddered and his head snapped up from the bunk. He stared dumbly at Mac and Charlie and the third man. The third man was carrying something in his hand.
    “What do you want?” he asked thickly. Charlie snickered.
    “Man, this is rich,” he said. “What do we want?”
    His face shifted into a cruel leer. “We come to give you a haircut big boy.”
    “Where’s the priest?”
    “Out priesting,” said Charlie.
    “Shut up,” Mac said irritably.
    “I hope you’re going to take this easy son,” said the third man.
    The skin tightened on the prisoner’s skull. He backed against the wall.
    “Wait a minute,” he said fearfully. “You have the wrong man.”
    Charlie sputtered with laughter and reached down to grab him. The prisoner pulled back.
    “No!” he cried, “Where’s the priest?”
    “Come
on
,” snapped Charlie angrily.
    The prisoner’s eyes flew from Mac to the third man.
    “You don’t understand,” he said hysterically. “The priest is calling my wife in St. Louis. She’ll tell you all who I am. I’m not Riley. I’m Phillip Johnson.”
    “Come on, Riley,” said Mac.
    “Johnson, Johnson!”
    “Johnson, Johnson come and get your hair cut Johnson, Johnson,” chanted Charlie, grabbing the prisoner’s arm.
    “Let go of me!”
    Charlie jerked him to his feet and twisted his arm around. His face was taut with vicious anger.
    “Grab him,” he snapped to Mac. Mac took hold of the prisoner’s other arm.
    “For God’s sake, what do I have to do!” screamed the prisoner, writhing in their grip, “I’m not Johnson. I mean I’m not Riley.”
    “We heard you the first time,” panted Charlie. “Come on. Shave him!”
    They slammed the prisoner down on the bunk and twisted his arms behind him. He screamed until Charlie backhanded him across the mouth.
    “Shut up!”
    The prisoner sat trembling while his hair fluttered to the floor in dark heaps. Tufts of hair stuck to his eyebrows. A trickle of blood ran from the edge of his mouth. His eyes were stricken with horror.
    When the third man had finished on the prisoner’s head, he bent down and slashed open his pants.
    “Mmmm,” he grunted, “Burned legs.”
    The prisoner jerked down his head and looked. His mouth formed soundless words. The he cried out.
    “Flash burns! Can you see them? They’re from an atomic explosion.
Now
will you believe me?”
    Charlie grinned. They let go of the prisoner and he fell down on the bunk.