Free The Shrinking Man by Richard Matheson

late afternoon. The rain had stopped. Out beyond the filmed windows was Utter stillness. He walked by the vast lawn-mower wheels, glancing up warily to see if the spider were crouching up there.
    Now he was on the open floor. He began the short hike to the water heater. His eyes went to the refrigerator, and in his mind he saw the newspaper up there, and he endured again the agony of the photographer’s invasion of his home. They had posed him in his old shoes, which were five sizes too large, and Berg said, “Look like ya was rememberin’ when ya could wear ’em, Scotty.” Then they posed him beside Beth, beside Lou, beside a hanging suit of his old clothes; standing beside the tape measure, Hammer’s big, disembodied hand sticking out from the edge of the photograph, pointing at the proper mark; being examined by the doctors appointed by the
Globe-Post
. His case history had been rehashed for a million readers, while he suffered a new mental torture each day, thrashing in bed at night, telling himself that he was going to break the contract he’d signed whether they needed the money or not, whether Lou hated him for it or not.
    He had gone on with it anyway.
    And the offers came in. Offers for radio and television and stage and night-club appearances, for articles in all kinds of magazines except the better ones, for syndication of the
Globe-Post
series. People started to gather outside the apartment, staring at him, even asking for his autograph. Religious fanatics exhorted him, in person and by mail, to join their saving cults. Obscene letters arrived from weirdly frustrated women—and men.
    His face was blank and unmoving as he reached the concrete block. He stood there a moment, still thinking of the past. Then he refocused his eyes and started, realizing that the spider might be up there waiting to spring.
    Slowly he climbed the block, pin always ready for use if necessary. He peered over the edge of the block. His sleeping place was empty.
    With a sigh, he slung the pin over the edge and watched it roll to a stop against his bed. Then he climbed down again for the crackers.
    After three trips he had all the cracker bits in a pile beside his bed. He sat there crunching on a fist-sized piece, wishing he had some water. He didn’t dare go down to the pump, though; it was getting dark, and even the pin was not enough assurance in the dark.
    When he’d finished eating, he dragged the box top over his bed, then sank back on the sponge with a soft groan. He was still exhausted. The nap in the carton had done little to refresh him.
    He remembered and, reaching around, he searched for the wood and charcoal. Finding them, he scratched a careless stroke. It would probably cross another stroke, but that hardly mattered. Chronology became less of a concern each day. There was Wednesday and there was Thursday, there were Friday and Saturday.
    Then nothing.
    He shuddered in the darkness. Like death, his fate was impossible to conceive. No, even worse than death. Death, at least, was a concept; it was a part of life, however strangely unknown. But who had ever shrunk into nothingness?
    He rolled on his side and propped his head on an arm. If only he could tell someone what he felt. If only he could be with Lou; see her, touch her. Yes, even if she didn’t know it, it would be a comfort. But he was alone.
    He thought again of the newspaper stories, and of how sick it had made him to become a spectacle, how it had driven him into nerve-screaming wrath, making him maniacal with fury against his plight.
    Until, at the peak of that fury, he had sped to the city and told the paper he was breaking his contract, and stormed away in a palsy of hatred.
    42″
    Two miles beyond Baldwin, a tire blew out with a crack like the blast of a shotgun.
    Gasping, Scott froze to the wheel as the Ford lurched off balance, scouring wide tire marks across the pavement. It took all the strength in his arms to keep the car from ramming the center