Free Twilight Zone The Movie by Robert Bloch Page B

hard,” he murmured.
    “I had a swell life,” Mr. Agee said. “I can do sixty years more standing on my head.”
    “So who wants to live upside down?” Mr. Weinstein smiled. “Me, I was just beginning to look forward to senility.”
    His wife shivered in the breeze rising from beyond the hedge. “I’m cold. Where are we going to spend the night? Where can we go? Who’ll take care of us?”
    Mr. Weinstein put his arms around her. “No problem,” he said. “We’ll just knock on our son’s door and say, ‘Let us in, Murray, we’re your parents.’ Don’t worry—you know how he loves kids.”
    Mrs. Weinstein sighed. “I love you, Harry, but I don’t want to go back and do it all over again.”
    “Now wait a minute,” Mr. Agee said. “Let’s think this over. There’s a lot to look forward to.”
    Mrs. Dempsey was dismayed. “Jack Dempsey isn’t here. I’ll never meet him—” As she spoke, she glanced down at her hand. Then cried out, “My ring! My wedding ring. It fell off!”
    Dropping to her knees, she began to search the lawn. The others came to her aid.
    Hands scrabbling desperately through the grass, Mrs. Dempsey shook her head. “I didn’t really ask to be young again, all I wanted to do was dance! I can be old and dance.”
    Beside her Mr. Mute nodded. “I’m not going to school again,” he declared.
    “School is easy,” Mr. Weinstein said. “But work another forty years? Forget it!” Now he noticed that his wife was barefooted again. Pointing at oversized shoes lying discarded near the bench, he issued his orders. “Put ’em on. Nobody died here!”
    Mrs. Weinstein obeyed, but the mention of death brought a look of sadness to her girlish face. “I don’t want to lose the people I love again, one by one. I remember the night my father passed away. They laid him out and then they sent all us children outside. We saw Halley’s Comet.”
    “I was too young to see Halley’s Comet,” Mrs. Dempsey told her. “I was going to see it when I was eighty years old.”
    Bloom spoke gently. “That’s only two more birthdays, Mrs. Dempsey. Would you like to see it at eight, or at eighty?”
    Mrs. Dempsey reached down and lifted her kitten from the lawn. “Eighty,” she murmured.
    Bloom nodded, then extended his hand. “Look—I seem to have found your ring.”
    Smiling gratefully, Mrs. Dempsey slid the large loop onto a small finger. “I’ll still have this,” she said, “and all the memories that go with it.”
    “Me too,” said Mrs. Weinstein. “In spite of everything, I’m satisfied with my life the way it was. We should take one day at a time.”
    “I agree,” her husband said. “What we got to do is try to make those days a little better.”
    Bloom smiled. “In that case, let’s all go back to bed. Maybe you could wake up in your old bodies again, but with fresh young minds.”
    Picking up the tin can, he moved to the back door and the group trailed after him—children following the Pied Piper.
    Only Mr. Agee seemed reluctant. “Can’t we discuss it? I’m not tired yet!”
    “You can’t go on like this forever,” said Mr. Weinstein. “It’s fun for a while, but who wants to spend the rest of their lives playing kick-the-can?”
    Bloom opened the door and gestured. “In you go,” he whispered. “And remember—no noise.”
    They stepped past him into the hall one by one, tiptoeing quietly. Mr. Mute brought up the rear and as he reached the doorway he paused and glanced up at the tin can Bloom was holding in his hand. “One question,” he murmured. “I still don’t see how you did it. Is there some kind of magical property in that can?”
    “Not really.” Bloom tossed the can away, sailing it through the moonlight to land in the shadows beyond. He smiled.
    “The magic is in yourselves.”
    Mr. Conroy was still asleep when his fellow residents moved into the dormitory. It was only the whispering in the hall outside that awakened him.
    “But I’m not