Nightmare At 20,000 Feet by Richard Matheson Page B
Authors: Richard Matheson
Tags: General Interest
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damn it!" White teeth jam together. The knife is hurled across the room.
The woman appears, alarm etching transient scars on her forehead. Her husband is beyond himself. Her husband is shooting poison through his arteries. Her husband is releasing another cloud of animal temper. It is mist that clings. It hangs over the furniture, drips from the walls.
It is alive.
So through the days and nights. His anger falling like frenzied axe blows in his house, on everything he owns. Sprays of teeth-grinding hysteria clouding his windows and falling to his floors. Oceans of wild, uncontrolled hate flooding through every room of his house; filling each iota of space with a shifting, throbbing life.
He lay on his back and stared at the sun-mottled ceiling.
The last day, he told himself. The phrase had been creeping in and out of his brain since he'd awakened.
In the bathroom he could hear the water running. He could hear the medicine cabinet being opened and then closed again. He could hear the sound of her slippers shuffling on the tile floor.
Sally, he thought, don't leave me.
"I'll take it easy if you stay," he promised the air in a whisper.
But he knew he couldn't take it easy. That was too hard. It was easier to fly off the handle, easier to scream and rant and attack.
He turned on his side and stared out into the hall at the bathroom door. He could see the line of light under the door. Sally is in there, he thought. Sally, my wife, whom I married many years ago when I was young and full of hope.
He closed his eyes suddenly and clenched his fists. It came on him again. The sickness that prevailed with more violence every time he contracted it. The sickness of despair, of lost ambition. It ruined everything. It cast a vapour of bitterness over all his comings and goings. It jaded appetite, ruined sleep, destroyed affection.
"Perhaps if we'd had children," he muttered and knew before he said it that it wasn't the answer.
Children. How happy they would be watching their wretched father sinking deeper into his pit of introspective fever each day.
All right, tortured his mind, let's have the facts. He gritted his teeth and tried to make his mind a blank. But, like a dull-eyed idiot, his mind repeated the words that he muttered often in his sleep through restless, tossing nights.
I'm forty years old. I teach English at Fort College. Once I had hoped to be a writer. I thought this would be a fine place to write. I would teach class part of the day and write with the rest of my time. I met Sally at school and married her. I thought everything would be just fine. I thought success was inevitable. Eighteen years ago.
Eighteen years.
How, he thought, did you mark the passing of almost two decades? The time seemed a shapeless lump of failing efforts, of nights spent in anguish; of the secret, the answer, the revelation always being withheld from him. Dangled overhead like cheese swinging in a maddening arc over the head of a berserk rat.
And resentment creeping. Days spent watching Sally buy food and clothing and pay rent with his meagre salary. Watching her buy new curtains or new chair covers and feeling a stab of pain every time because he was that much farther removed from the point where he could devote his time to writing. Every penny she spent he felt like a blow at his aspirations.
He forced himself to think that way. He forced himself to believe that it was only the time he needed to do good writing.
But once a furious student had yelled at him, "You're just a third-rate talent hiding behind a desk!"
He remembered that. Oh, God, how he remembered that moment. Remembered the cold sickness that had convulsed him when those words hit his brain. Recalled the trembling and the shaky unreason of his voice.
He had failed the student for the semester despite good marks. There had been a great to-do about it. The student's father had come to the school. They had all gone before Dr. Ramsay, the head of the English
The woman appears, alarm etching transient scars on her forehead. Her husband is beyond himself. Her husband is shooting poison through his arteries. Her husband is releasing another cloud of animal temper. It is mist that clings. It hangs over the furniture, drips from the walls.
It is alive.
So through the days and nights. His anger falling like frenzied axe blows in his house, on everything he owns. Sprays of teeth-grinding hysteria clouding his windows and falling to his floors. Oceans of wild, uncontrolled hate flooding through every room of his house; filling each iota of space with a shifting, throbbing life.
He lay on his back and stared at the sun-mottled ceiling.
The last day, he told himself. The phrase had been creeping in and out of his brain since he'd awakened.
In the bathroom he could hear the water running. He could hear the medicine cabinet being opened and then closed again. He could hear the sound of her slippers shuffling on the tile floor.
Sally, he thought, don't leave me.
"I'll take it easy if you stay," he promised the air in a whisper.
But he knew he couldn't take it easy. That was too hard. It was easier to fly off the handle, easier to scream and rant and attack.
He turned on his side and stared out into the hall at the bathroom door. He could see the line of light under the door. Sally is in there, he thought. Sally, my wife, whom I married many years ago when I was young and full of hope.
He closed his eyes suddenly and clenched his fists. It came on him again. The sickness that prevailed with more violence every time he contracted it. The sickness of despair, of lost ambition. It ruined everything. It cast a vapour of bitterness over all his comings and goings. It jaded appetite, ruined sleep, destroyed affection.
"Perhaps if we'd had children," he muttered and knew before he said it that it wasn't the answer.
Children. How happy they would be watching their wretched father sinking deeper into his pit of introspective fever each day.
All right, tortured his mind, let's have the facts. He gritted his teeth and tried to make his mind a blank. But, like a dull-eyed idiot, his mind repeated the words that he muttered often in his sleep through restless, tossing nights.
I'm forty years old. I teach English at Fort College. Once I had hoped to be a writer. I thought this would be a fine place to write. I would teach class part of the day and write with the rest of my time. I met Sally at school and married her. I thought everything would be just fine. I thought success was inevitable. Eighteen years ago.
Eighteen years.
How, he thought, did you mark the passing of almost two decades? The time seemed a shapeless lump of failing efforts, of nights spent in anguish; of the secret, the answer, the revelation always being withheld from him. Dangled overhead like cheese swinging in a maddening arc over the head of a berserk rat.
And resentment creeping. Days spent watching Sally buy food and clothing and pay rent with his meagre salary. Watching her buy new curtains or new chair covers and feeling a stab of pain every time because he was that much farther removed from the point where he could devote his time to writing. Every penny she spent he felt like a blow at his aspirations.
He forced himself to think that way. He forced himself to believe that it was only the time he needed to do good writing.
But once a furious student had yelled at him, "You're just a third-rate talent hiding behind a desk!"
He remembered that. Oh, God, how he remembered that moment. Remembered the cold sickness that had convulsed him when those words hit his brain. Recalled the trembling and the shaky unreason of his voice.
He had failed the student for the semester despite good marks. There had been a great to-do about it. The student's father had come to the school. They had all gone before Dr. Ramsay, the head of the English