THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN (1957; d:
Jack Arnold, written by Richard Matheson)
What, how...oh. Just when I thought it might all have been a nightmare...the laundry. That's it, I'm lying in our dirty laundry. Butch must've snuck back into the house at some point, and I came about as close as a man can to becoming cat chow. And evidently I was knocked cold when I took a long fall into the basement. If it hadn't been for this pile of clothes...that's twice today that I've cheated death. Well, I suppose the cat's the least of my problems now, down here.
I guess it all started that day out on
the boat, on our vacation. Things had gone wonderfully that week,
just about all you could ask for from a relaxing getaway with the
wife. We had the ocean, we had each other—and we were still very
much in love. It had all been so perfect, thinking back now. But
then one afternoon as we sunbathed, everything changed.
Just as Louise had gone below deck to fetch me a beer, a strange, heavy mist crept in...
There was something in that mist, some
kind of pernicious, possibly irradiated dust that clung to my skin
after it was gone. It had passed over by the time Louise surfaced,
but six months later, when my pants stopped fitting and I'd gone to see a doctor, we'd both remembered that afternoon.
It's a bewildering thing, the moment you
find out you're getting smaller. You don't really believe it,
because it isn't something you can believe.
But after awhile, well, you settle into the
certainty that, despite everything you know,
despite the history of the human experience until now, something is
making you slowly disappear. And that's about the size of it,
really—I'm disappearing, much like in a magic act, only this takes
a little longer and there'll be no fanfare when it's finished,
because who will know?
Sometimes
I can't help but think, well, that perhaps there's a bit of karma to
this, that maybe in some way I'm being punished for my abominable
behavior to Louise. I didn't mean for things to happen this way, but
once I started to shrink, every lousy fear and undermining emotion I
ever had in my life began to creep to the surface.
 |
| "Did you tell them who you're married to—the incredible Scott Carey, the shrinking freak!" |
I think just about every man hides away
a weak, corrupted, wretched little piece of his heart that pulls in
all the wrong directions, bent on sullying and corroding his thoughts
with notions of insecurity and doubt. It's the stuff that leads
kings to tyranny—and drives women away from their husbands. I
suppose I hadn't counted on it piling on to my already grim
predicament.
When the newsmen began sniffing around,
and it became obvious that if I didn't sell my story they'd report
it anyway, I became an instant celebrity. And that is when a tense
situation in the Carey household suddenly became much worse.
And now, well...here I am. And down
here there's no food, no Louise, and precious little time remaining. It seems that, without nourishment, the shrinking process speeds up
considerably. And poor Louise, my darling—she's stood by me through it
all, and now of course she'll be thinking the worst, and blaming herself for Butch getting
back in.
Down here, in the gathering gloom at
the foot of these stairs, it's easy for a man to realize the full
measure of his life. Through all the trials and tribulation, all the mental hurdles and lost hope of these past few months, I seem to have forgotten the sense of what I'd had, of
just how far Scott Carey had come in this world. And maybe I'd never
fully understood what it all means. If I ever get out of here,
Louise, we'll make it right again. If not in this life, then...baby,
we'll make it right.
