Nightmare at 20,000 Feet: Horror Stories by Richard Matheson Page B

crashes to a halt.
      He types faster. Three keys stick together. He clenches his teeth and whines in helpless fury. He smacks the type arms. They will not come apart. He forces them to separate with bent, shaking fingers. They fall away. He sees that his fingers are smudged with ink. He curses out loud, trying to outrage the very air for revenge on the stupid machine.
      Now he hits the keys brutally, fingers falling like the stiff claws of a derrick. Another mistake, he erases savagely. He types still faster. Four keys stick together.
      He screams.

      He slams his fist on the machine. He clutches at the paper and rips it from the machine in jagged pieces. He welds the fragments in his fist and hurls the crumpled ball across the room. He beats the carriage over and slams the cover down on the machine.
      He jumps up and glares down.
      "You fool!" he shouts with a bitter, revolted voice. "You stupid, idiotic, asinine fool!"
      Scorn drips from his voice. He keeps talking, he drives himself into a craze.
      "You're no damn good. You're no damn good at all. I'm going to break you in pieces. I'm going to crack you into splinters, melt you, kill you! You stupid, moronic, lousy goddamn machine!"
      He quivers as he yells. And he wonders, deep in the self-isolated recesses of his mind whether he is killing himself with anger, whether he is destroying his system with fury.
      He turns and stalks away. He is too outraged to notice the cover of the machine slip down and hear the slight whirring of metal such as he might hear if the keys trembled in their slots.
      He is shaving. The razor will not cut. Or the razor is too sharp and cuts too much.
      Both times a muffled curse billows through his lips. He hurls the razor on the floor and kicks it against the wall.
      He is cleaning his teeth. He draws the fine silk floss between his teeth. It shreds off. A fuzzy bit remains in the gap. He tries to press another piece down to get that bit out. He cannot force the white thread down. It snaps in his fingers.
      He screams. He screams at the man in the mirror and draws back his hand, throws the floss away violently. It hits the wall.

      It hangs there and waves in the rush of angry breeze from the man.
      He has torn another piece of floss from the container. He is giving the dental floss another chance. He is holding back his fury. If the floss knows what is good for it, it will plunge down between the teeth and draw out the shredded bit immediately.
      It does. The man is mollified. The systematic juices leave off bubbling, the fires sink, the coals are scattered.
      But the anger is still there, apart. Energy is never lost; a primal law.
      He is eating.
      His wife places a steak before him. He picks up the knife and fork and slices. The meat is tough, the blade is dull.
      A spot of red puffs up in the flesh of his cheeks. His eyes narrow. He draws the knife through the meat. The blade will not sever the browned flesh.
      His eyes widen. Withheld tempest tightens and shakes him. He saws at the meat as though to give it one last opportunity to yield.
      The meat will not yield.
      He howls. "God 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