Pity Him Afterwards

“They’ll never know, they’ll never suspect. I can’t be held, I can’t be questioned. I’m too clever now, I’ll never have to do anything again like the old man and the old woman. My powers are too strong now, they’re stronger and stronger. Nothing can hold me now, nothing can stop me. I can be free now, I can stay away from Doctor Chax. I can be safe now from the cruelty, I can keep away from all that. I won’t ever be caught again, because I’m too strong now. Those who are hateful and vicious will never have the chance to turn on me, because now I will recognize them. And if I have to kill them, if they force me to kill them the way that girl forced me, I can be clever. I didn’t know anything before, that’s why they caught me. I didn’t try to hide or be subtle, I did what had to be done right out in the open. I didn’t understand the world then, I didn’t understand the way they all band together, the way the evil protect each other. I did what had to be done right out in the open, and the rest of the evil ones took revenge on me, they locked me away and they tried to force their wills on me with the shock treatments, and now that can’t happen any more. If I’m forced to it again, if it has to be done, now I know how, now I can keep them from ever finding out it was me. I can be all over the world, I can go anywhere and do anything and they’ll never even suspect me. I can get a mask if I want, I can go out at night to do what has to be done. They can’t ever find me and they can’t ever stop me and they can’t ever get even with me again. I’m too strong for them now, I’m too clever for them now.”

None of it came out in articulated words. He thought the words, and his lips moved, and he made small sounds in his throat, but it was all mumbling, too low to be heard outside the room.

He prowled for ten minutes or more, touching the walls and the furniture, smiling in the darkness, telling himself the same things over and over again, and recounting for himself the part he had played in tonight’s conversation, and telling himself he hadn’t been suspected, and so never would be suspected. He spent ten minutes roaming and muttering, and then the room was just too small to be lived in any more, he could no longer ignore how close together the walls were.

He got dressed again. His movements were unsure, because of the darkness and his excitement, and also because he was still feeling the effects of the beer he had drunk. It had been more than four years since he had had alcohol, and that was probably another reason why the being had been able to take over so readily. Not that he was drunk; but his high spirits were heightened even more by the exhilaration of alcohol.

He didn’t turn the room light on at all. When he was dressed, he crept from his room and locked the door after himself. A twenty-five-watt bulb in a wall socket gave the hallway wan lighting. The madman crept downstairs, not wanting to be noticed. It would seem strange to anyone else, that he should want to go out again, past two o’clock in the morning, but he did have to go. He had to walk outside for a while, with nothing but the sky over him. He had to be able to run if he wanted, and to laugh aloud.

The front door was locked. He left it unlocked behind him when he went out, because he didn’t have a key. He moved silently down off the porch and across the gravel to the road. Then he turned right, away from the Black Lake Lounge, in the direction of town.

As he walked along, the feeling of delight grew and grew in him. Freedom was wonderful! He waved his arms all around, stretching them out away from his body as far as they would go, and his fingertips touched only air. Nothing hemmed him in, nothing. He jumped up into the air, he trotted a few steps, he capered, he danced across the road. Sheltered by the night, defended by his cleverness, protected by his strength, he had won his freedom and he had earned his freedom and now he was enjoying his freedom.

No walls! No heavy-handed dour-faced “nurses”! No locks and bars! No questions! No “treatments”! No orders, no rules, no restraints.

Freedom!

He laughed aloud, he shouted. He capered down the road, dancing and leaping, filled to overflowing with wild joy, shaking himself like any long-caged creature newly released.

He raised his head and shouted out a song of his own invention: