Backteria and Other Improbable Tales by Richard Matheson

looked in.
    His smile had no humor.
    Tidy practical vultures. Nature’s morticians. Doesn’t cost a nickel for a dignified vulture funeral. No shrouds, sobbed eulogies, thick rugs, white faces, tuxedos or tears. No corteges of coffins. No nothing.
    Mr. Jones stared at the ugly red head. He watched it rip the greenish guts from a fish.
    Who put you here? he thought. Who said, I think people will get a bang out of watching a vulture rip dead flesh with his curved and bloody beak?
    Oh, don’t turn away dear bird. Have I offended? You can’t help it. If you were put on earth to tidy up the dead, then who can shudder at your baneful carrion stare?
    Hurry back to your fish. The zoo flies are making a black crawling pattern on the rotten death of it. Suck a lively beak. Go back you tired old redheaded hunchbacked and blackfeathered monster. Eat your dead fish. Have no shame.
    Have we?
    Something burned in Mr. Jones’ stomach. An anger that would not be revealed. An uncontrollable yearning to shout out meaningful words and tell everything.
    But his mind would not shape the shapeless thoughts.
    He walked thoughtfully into the monkey house and out again, hardly glancing at the mass orgies. He felt close to something very fine and he could not stop to look at the red behinds of hairy monkeys.
    Mr. Jones stopped in front of a cage and looked in.
    You look like a hyena, Crocuta Crocuta. I have several names like things in your world. You don’t really laugh do you? Not here, there’s nothing to laugh at. Sometimes I feel like crying.
    Mr. Jones stopped momentarily to look at the skunk. He sniffed hard but smelled only warm leaves.
    He smiled tenderly.
    He walked over to the seal pool. There were many people staring down and laughing at the black mischief.
    Mr. Jones watched a while dispassionately. Then a particular dive caught his fancy and he smiled against his will.
    A chuckle followed, bubbling through his lips and then his laughter was lost in the roar.
    Man and beast, he thought, with sudden delightful clarity. The ever-turning diamond. The flash of facets. Light.
    Then dark again.

The Prisoner
    When he woke up he was lying on his right side. He felt a prickly wool blanket against his cheek. He saw a steel wall in front of his eyes.
    He listened. Dead silence. His ears strained for a sound. There was nothing.
    He became frightened. Lines sprang into his forehead.
    He pushed up on one elbow and looked over his shoulder. The skin grew taut and pale on his lean face. He twisted around and dropped his legs heavily over the side of the bunk.
    There was a stool with a tray on it; a tray of half-eaten food. He saw untouched roast chicken, fork scrapes in a mound of cold mashed potatoes, biscuit scraps in a puddle of greasy butter, an empty cup. The smell of cold food filled his nostrils.
    His head snapped around. He gaped at the barred window, at the thick-barred door. He made frightened noises in his throat.
    His shoes scraped on the hard floor. He was up, staggering. He fell against the wall and grabbed at the window bars above him. He couldn’t see out of the window.
    His body shook as he stumbled back and slid the tray of food onto the bunk. He dragged the stool to the wall. He clambered up on it awkwardly.
    He looked out.
    Gray skies, walls, barred windows, lumpy black spotlights, a courtyard far below. Drizzle hung like a shifting veil in the air.
    His tongue moved. His eyes were round with shock.
    “Uh?” he muttered thinly.
    He slipped off the edge of the stool as it toppled over. His right knee crashed against the floor, his cheek scraped against the cold metal wall. He cried out in fear and pain.
    He struggled up and fell against the bunk. He heard footsteps. He heard someone shout.
    “Shut up!”
    A fat man came up to the door. He was wearing a blue uniform. He had an angry look on his face. He looked through the bars at the prisoner.
    “What’s the matter with
you
?” he snarled.
    The prisoner stared back. His