The Mammoth Book of Seriously Comic Fantasy, page 34
It was all of her.
As far as she could see, and even in the mirror she couldn’t see all of her – she had turned into a gorilla.
It was certainly better than turning into a giant cockroach. But that was all she could think of in its favour.
The pounding on the door had been going on for a long time. Of course it was impossible to let anyone see her – and what good luck that her father had gotten one of the irregularly occurring jobs which kept the household going, and was away helping build sets on location somewhere. She’d better speak through the door. But someone was speaking through the door to her!
“I know you’re in there, hairy!” the voice was shouting. Hairy! Then . . . then they already knew! How –? Who –?
She peered through a gap in her bedroom curtain, being careful not to move it, but in vain! Though she scuttled away in terror, whoever was outside began tapping, rapping on the bedroom window. Suddenly she remembered whom she’d seen. Not “hairy”! The man was shouting for “Harry”, her father!
Dorothy’s mother, smelling of whisky and perfume, had vanished from their lives some years ago – but she had left debts. Lots of debts. Dad had borrowed to pay the debts, then he borrowed to pay the money he had borrowed.
The whole thing had spiralled and doubled and tripled, and then fallen into the hands of the Greater Los Angeles Punitive Collection Agency. In fact, as she tiptoed into the living room she saw that another of the familiar cards had been slipped under the door. Bang! Bang! Bang! “I know you’re in there, Harry! Better open up and let me talk, Harry! We can’t wait forever, Harry!”
On the card was printed the name of Hubbard E. Glutt, District Agent. Mr Glutt wasn’t an entire stranger. He wore a once-white shirt and a once-grey suit, both with ingrown ketchup stains, and he had extremely hairy nostrils. It could not be said, even with the best of intentions, that he was a very nice man. His breath smelled, too.
“Go away, please go away,” Dorothy said through the door. She was thankful to note that her voice was unchanged. She wasn’t thankful for much else. “My dad’s not in –”
“I don’t care who’s not in,” yelped Mr Glutt. “Ya gunna pay sompthing?”
“But I have no money!”
Mr Glutt made a noise between a grunt and a snarl. “Same old story: ‘My dad’s not in and I have no money.’ Huh? Still not in? Well, I gotta sudgestion.” Here his voice sank and grew even nastier. “Lemme in, and I’ll tell ya how we can, mmm, take mebbe twenny dollas affa the bill, liddle gurl, huh, huh, huh . . .”
Dorothy could stand it no longer. She jerked the door open and pulled Mr Glutt inside. The scream had not even reached his throat when Dorothy’s new-formed fangs sank into it.
As though in a blur, she dragged the suddenly inert body into the breakfast nook. And feasted on it.
Moments passed.
The blur vanished. Oh God, what had she done? Killed and partially eaten someone, was what. But how? Gorillas don’t eat people, gorillas eat bananas . . . don’t they?
Therefore she wasn’t even a gorilla. She was some sort of monster – like a werewolf? A were-gorilla? Trembling with shock and horror and fear, she stared at her image in the big front hall mirror . . . and gave a squeal of terrified loathing. The hair that covered her was now darker and coarser, and her facial features had coarsened, too. Her fingernails had become talons, although fragments of the Pearly Peach nail polish still remained. And examining her mouth as the squeal died away, she saw that it was full of yellow fangs. She began to sob.
How could something like this have happened to her? That’s what girls always asked when they found themselves unwantedly pregnant – as if they didn’t know how! But this was worse than pregnancy, a million times worse . . . and besides, pregnancy had a well-known cause, and she really couldn’t imagine what had caused this.
Then a sudden thought came, echoing like a clap of thunder, illuminated as by a flash of lighting: that . . . that weird glandular-extract medicine which she had taken only yesterday! To make her figure fuller. Well, fuller it certainly was! But oh, at what a price! There was nothing to do but call the doctor and have him come over, and give her something to undo its effects. Only – only – would he make house calls? Well, she’d just have to see.
Only alas, she could not see. The most searching examination of the LA phone books, all several of them, failed to show any listing for a Doctor Van Leeuwenhoek . . . however spelled. Nor could she remember a phone in his small apartment. She was afraid to go out as she was now, at least by day. At night? Maybe. If anybody found out about what she’d done to Mr Glutt they’d have her jailed . . . or even killed . . . or put in a mental home. She’d have to conceal the body, run away and hide in the woods of Griffith Park, high in the Hollywood Hills, where she would roam and kill like a wild beast . . . until she was finally discovered and slain with a silver bullet.
At this thought she gave another tearful squeal.
Weeping, Dorothy cleaned the blood off the Spanish-style tiles in the entry hall and kitchen with her O-Cello sponge mop, and methodically put the remains of the collection agent in a large plastic bag, which she placed in the refrigerator to eat later. Oh, how lucky that her father wouldn’t be home for another week! She had until then to decide what to do. Well, at least she had enough food.
Although, between weeping and listening to Jack Benny, the Whistler, and Stella Dallas on the radio, and watching Uncle Milton Berle and Kukla, Fran, and Ollie cavort on their prized new television set, she grew hungry again – she realized that she had no appetite at all for the rest of Mr Hubbard E. Glutt. Evidently she had partially devoured him out of mere rage and shock. Listlessly, Dorothy ate some lasagne instead.
And so passed the remainder of the week inside the pseudo-Spanish house in the Hollywood Foothills. A few times Angela or Luanne or other friends, and twice religious representatives of two different exclusive Truths, came to the door (besides phone calls) – Dorothy said (over the phone and through the door) that she had a highly contagious flu. She gave the same excuse to the newsboy, the Avon Lady, and the highly confused Welcome Wagon Woman.
As the week’s end approached with no thoughts except flight into the hills, etc., her mood became almost frantic. Then one glorious morning she woke to find the hair vanished, her body lighter, and her teeth and nails returned to normal. She hastened to replace the Pearly Peach Polish.
But . . . wasn’t there something else she had to do? The answer came at the week’s absolute end, with her body again distressingly short and thin – but human. Clicking her tongue reproachfully at her forgetfulness, she dressed quickly and toted Mr Hubbard E. Glutt’s very chilled remains in their plastic sack, and deposited them fairly late at night in a public trash bin.
Dad Harry returned on schedule, sunburned and exhausted, and demanding fried chicken and beer. Then he went to bed, and Dorothy, again in her padded bra, tight sweater, bouffant skirt, and (very) high heels, went back to school. She felt relieved, she felt worried. A visit to the place where Doctor Funny Name lived disclosed empty windows and a FOR RENT sign: Would the horrible condition recur? Oh, how she hoped not! Better to remain thin and skimpy all the days of her life – and never get into the movies at all!
Luanne and Angela were happy to see her again. They chattered away about the trifling things which had happened at Hollywood High during her absence, and now and again Dorothy squealed with interest which was only sometimes simulated. Would it happen again?
Early one night, about a month later, feeling vaguely ill at ease, she went for a stroll. The malaise increased; she thought a trip to a ladies’ room would help, but the one in the park was now closed. There was nothing to do but go behind a bush; and it was there, as she adjusted her dress, that she felt her hands again come in contact with – a shaggy pelt. She let out a squeal of anguish. And fainted.
It was a lucky thing that her Dad was once again away, this time on his monthly week-long visit to his girlfriend in the unfashionable section of Malibu, the girlfriend’s mother then making her monthly visit to her other daughter in Chula Vista.
Now it was impossible for Dorothy to fit into her clothes, so she made a bundle and dropped them into a debris receptacle as she passed it by. How to get home? Slinking was the only way, but as she sought out the most dimly lit streets, she only seemed to get further from home rather than nearer. And, oh! Was she suddenly hungry! She fought and fought against the desire for immediate food, but her stomach growled menacingly. Well, she knew how wasteful the average American family was. So of a sudden she lifted up the lid of a garbage can near a private home, with intent to delve into its contents.
No sooner had she lifted off the lid and bent over to examine what was inside, than there appeared suddenly, out of the chiaroscuro, the figure of a well-nourished early-middle-aged man with a small moustache. He had a large brown-paper bag in his hands which looked like garbage for disposal; astonishment was simultaneous. Dorothy squealed and dropped the lid with a clatter. The man said, “Gevalt!” and dropped the brown-paper bag, then recovered it almost immediately. Dorothy would have fled, but there was a high fence behind her. In theory she could have turned upon him with tooth and fang and claw, but unlike Mr Glutt, this man offered no gross importunity. And beneath the astonishment he seemed to have rather a kindly face.
“For a moment you had me fooled,” said he. “A better-looking gorilla suit I never seen. What, you’re embarrassed. Someone should see you rifling the garbage can, you should have what to eat?”
He shook his head from side to side, uttered a heavy sigh which seemed not devoid of sympathy.
“I’m not wearing a gorilla suit!” exclaimed Dorothy.
This time the shake of the head was sceptical. “Listen,” said the man. “That LA has one weird what you might call ecology, this I know: possums, coyotes, escaped pythons, the weird pets some people keep because from human beings they don’t find empathy: okay. But gorillas? No. Also, gorillas don’t talk. They make clicking noises is what, with an occasional guttural growl, or a squeal. Say. That was some squeal you gave just now. Give it again.”
Dorothy, partly because of relief at finding the man neither hostile nor terrified, partly because of pride that anything she could do should meet with approbation, obliged.
“Not bad. Not. Bad. At. All. I like it. I like it. Listen, why don’t we do this? Come into the house, we’ll have a little something to eat. I’m batching it right now; you like deli stuffed cabbage? Warming up now on the stove. Miffanwy ran away on me; luck with women I have yet to find, but hope I haven’t given up yet, springs eternal in the human breast.” Gently he urged Dorothy forward towards the house.
“Sandra hocked me a tchainik by day and by night, Shelley would gritchet me in kishkas until I could spit blood, I took up with Miffanwy. We’ll eat a little something, we’ll talk a little business – no commitments on either side. What we’ll eat is anyway better than what’s in the garbage can, although gourmet cooking isn’t my line – listen, you wanna know something about shiksas? They never hock you a tchainik, they never gritchet you in kishkas, they don’t kvetch in public places till you could drop dead from the shame; no. All they do is cheat. Watch out for the step.”
Dorothy had seen better kitchens and she had seen worse. However, kitchen decor wasn’t uppermost in her mind; what was uppermost was friendly human contact; also food. The man of the house (“Alfy is the name”) filled her plate with stuffed-cabbage rolls and plied her with tangerines, asked if she preferred milk or cream soda and set out some Danish, pointed to a bowl of cut-up raw vegetables and pointed out that it kept away the dread scurvy, offered her a choice of seeded rye, pumpernickel, and egg-bread.
“Where there is no food, there is no religion. Where there is no religion, there is no food. So my first father-in-law used to say. What a gonnif. Eat, my shaggy friend. Eat, eat.”
After quite some time, during which they both ate heartily and, truth to tell, noisily, Alfy gave grateful eructation. Gave a sudden exclamation. “Almost missed the news on the video! Finally I broke down and bought one. Many a movie big shot it will wipe out of business, they say, but me it wouldn’t wipe out. Pardon my back,” he said, as he turned to watch the small screen.
Dorothy gladly did so, for quite apart from her contentment in the immediate situation, she was also pleased to watch what many still called “video”, which was not yet to be found in every room of every house, rather like an ashtray.
Neither black and white screen nor sound adjusted immediately, and Alfy adjusted the rabbit-ear antennas; at length a voice was heard to say: “. . . meanwhile, search continues for the so-called Monster of the Hollywood Hills.”
“I’ll give them yet a Monster of the Hollywood Hills,” growled Alfy. “What are they trying to do with my property values? Communists! Holdupnikkes! Shut up, Alfy,” he advised himself.
Two men, besides the television news personality, sat before a background of greatly enlarged photographs and plaster casts.
“Well, Dr William Wumple of the University of Southern Los Angeles Department of Primate Sciences, and Superintendent Oscar Opdegroof of the Country Police Bureau of Forensic Zoology, won’t you tell us what your opinion is about all this?”
Professor Wumple said, “These photographs and plaster casts are of the foot-and-knuckle-prints of the increasingly rare Sumatran mountain gorilla of Sumatra, and –”
“I grant you, Professor Wumple,” said Superintendent Opdegroof, “that there is certainly a resemblance. But the increasingly rare Sumatran mountain gorilla, a native of Sumatra in Indonesia, is vegetarian in its habitat. There is, as you know, no record of an increasingly rare Sumatran mountain gorilla, which inhabits the East Indies or Sumatra, ever having killed and eaten part of credit bureau representative and concealed his bones in a plastic bag. The diet of this otherwise harmless creature is mostly the stalk of the wild celery plant which grows profusely on every wild mountain slope of the archipelago of Sumatra.”
“Depraved appetite,” said Professor Wumple, “may be found in any species. I refresh your memory with the fact that pachyderms are also herbivorous, and yet there is the classical case of the elephant named Bubi which fatally trampled and ate a young woman named Anna O. in the Zurich Zoo, who had heedlessly fed him leftover kümmelbrot from the table of her employer, a dealer in low-priced watch cases named Schultz.”
The television news personality opened his mouth, but it and the rest of him dwindled and vanished as Alfy switched off the set. “Look, so now to business. Um, what did you say your name was, unwilling though I am to force you out of your chosen anonymity? Dorothy? A girl in a gorilla suit, this I never encountered before,” he said, surprised; but rallied quickly. “My mother, she should rest in peace, told me that in her own younger days, if a woman so much as smoked a cigarette in the public street, she might as well have gone to Atlantic City with a travelling salesman. But now we live in an enlightened era. Lemme hear you squeal.”
“Squeal?” asked Dorothy, somewhat lethargic from food and rest.
Alfy nodded. “Yeah, squeal. Use your imagination. Say you’re strolling through your native jungle and you see, like, reclining under a tree and fast asleep because she’s lost from her expedition – what then, a bewdyful young woman. You never seen nothing like this in your life before! So naturally, you give a squeal of astonishment. Lemme hear.”
Dorothy, with only the slightest of thoughtful pauses, gave a squeal. Of, she hoped, astonishment.
“Bewdyful,” said Alfy.
Dorothy gave him a doubtful look. “No,” he said. “I mean it, I swear it. By my second mother-in-law’s grave, she should soon be inside of it. Hypocrisy is alien to my nature, even though I never finished high school, but was cast out in the midst of the teeming thoroughfares, what I mean jungles, which are the streets of our large cities. But of this I needn’t bore you, Dotty. – Now use your imagination again. You and this lovely young woman are going along a jungle trail in search of the mysterious Lost Temple of Gold. Her boyfriend, the head of the expedition, gets knocked on the head by a falling coconut, and as he sinks to the ground, simultaneously you – and you alone – become aware that an unfriendly tribe of rotten natives are slinking through the underbrush to attack: lemme hear you convey this information to your lovely human new-found lady friend with a series of intelligent squeals.”
Dorothy did her best to oblige, and in the unpremeditated fervour of her performance, began to use gestures. Alfy was immensely pleased. “We’ll dub it, we’ll dub it!” he cried.
She was so excited that she found herself jumping up and down and scratching her pelt.
Alfy, watching her benignly, became concerned. “Even through your gorilla suit you’re sweating,” he said. “Let me get you some ice cubes for your cold drink.” Running water over the old-fashioned all-metal tray, he turned and asked, “Why not take off your costume, you’ll be more comfortable, Dotty?”
Even as she opened her mouth to repeat that she wore no costume, Dorothy observed a strange woman come running across the dimly lit dining room adjoining the kitchen; and as she ran, thus she screamed:
“I’ll give you ‘take off your costume,’ I’ll give you Dotty, I’ll give you Shelley, I’ll give you Miffanwy –”
“Sandra, if you hock me a tchainik, I’ll –”
Dorothy reacted to Sandra with as little instinctive affection as she had to Hubbard E. Glutt; raising herself on her toes, extending her arms high and her hands out, her talons clawing and her fangs showing, she began to utter squeals of pure rage.
Sandra never for a moment showed the slightest sign of believing that she was confronted by someone in a gorilla suit; Sandra turned and fled, giving shriek after shriek of terror, horror and fright.
Dorothy pursued her down the street, sometimes erect, sometimes bounding along on all fours; till the lights of an oncoming car caused her to shinny up the nearest deciduous tree, whence she dropped upon a housetop, thence to another tree, and thence to another housetop. Until eventually she realized that she was absolutely lost.
