Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Vol. 101, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 610 & 611, March 1993

He set three of them to drive me to the edge of the frame. The other he put on a rope. As I prepared to haul myself up to the next level, he sprung his trap.

“Now!” he screamed.

The lad on the rope swung. I saw him. coming but there was nowhere to go. He hit me like an iron pendulum and I flew off the frame and went crashing to the ground. The others dropped on me. I thought my back was broken.

They sorted themselves out soon enough. “Let’s see the bastard,” the leader said. “Get his freaking mask off.”

They tore King Kong’s face off mine and threw it into the bushes.

“Christ!” they said. “Bloody hell! Look at that.”

The little children, who up till then had only been crying, started to scream.

I can hardly bear to remember what happened, next. I suppose it reminds me too painfully of the past. You see, after the accident, after my face healed, my mother decided that it would be best for me to have plastic surgery to put things right. So I went back into hospital where they broke my cheekbones again and tried to rearrange my eye socket. But something went wrong. It does sometimes. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. Maybe I rejected my own tissue.

My mother had begun hopefully but after the failure it became harder and harder for the doctors to comfort her. In the end, she took my little sister and went north to Scotland and I never saw her again. It was a relief in a way. Because as she became unable to stand the sight of my face, I became unable to stand the sight of hers. Well, not her face, exactly, more the expression on it. I don’t have to look at myself, but I do have to look at the people who are looking at me. I know I am a fright, and when people look at me they become ugly too.

The last line in the movie King Kong is: “ ’Twas beauty killed the beast.” Well, in my experience, it’s the other way round. When even the prettiest people look at me they become horrible, so the beast kills beauty.

The little kiddies screamed.

The lad with the clear blue eyes said, “God! No wonder it wears a monkey suit.

“Come on,” he said. “Let’s get out of here before I throw up.”

I got up. I couldn’t find my mask. I took off my gauntlets. I hit him on the side of his handsome head, and when he was down I dropped on his throat with all my weight.

You know, sometimes you find a piece of backbone in a tin of salmon, and when you get it between your teeth it breaks with a soft crunching sound. It was as easy as that.

I shouldn’t have done it. I was bigger than him. He was only a kid really — not a child anymore but not grown-up either. But at the time it seemed to me he had taken away everything that was mine. All I had was an illusion anyway — the illusion of being a monster. You can’t kill someone for that. It just isn’t enough.

The funny thing is how nice everyone was about it — even the police. “I understand,” everyone kept saying. They look at my face and they say, “I understand,” as if my face tells them everything, as if a disfigured face clearly explains an ugly action. Even the doctors, who are educated men and should know better, think it was years of taunts and rejection that drove me to murder. My solicitor tells me he’s sure the court will accept a plea of self-defence. “They’ll understand,” he says confidently.

What if I tell the court I just lost my temper? Suppose I tell them, as I’m telling you, that my face doesn’t represent me any more than yours does you? My face is an accident, but I am responsible for my actions. A sad life and an ugly face do not make me any less responsible for losing my temper, do they?

Perhaps they really think I’m King Kong, that I’m not quite human. Just as they feel sorry for King Kong, because although he’s a monster he seems to feel human emotions, so they feel sorry for me. If they really thought I was human they’d deal with me the same way they dealt with that man who murdered his girlfriend last month because she threw a plate of baked beans in his face. They don’t tell him they understand.

But look on the bright side. Fantasyland has a new regulation now and teenagers are not allowed in unless accompanied by a little child. Apart from that, Cherry says it’s business as usual. She says it’s not the same without me though, and she doesn’t think the man who took over my job will last the summer.

“He complains like anything on sunny days,” she told me last time she visited. “He’s got eczema and the itching drives him crazy.”

Cherry should know. Life can be hell for a hot dog, too, on a sunny day. You don’t have to be King Kong to suffer.

Carlotta Green by Alan K. Young

Detectiverse