Peculiar Tales Read Online Free

she said again, “it’s been rotten tough.”
    “I’ve had to take whatever I can get,” I told her, “and sometimes I’ve had to do things I ain’t been so proud of.”
    “We all gotta do that sometime, mister, just to stay alive.”
    “Yeah, you gotta do some pretty awful things sometime. Things you ain’t so proud of. Things you don’t ever want your kid to know you had to do to keep ‘em alive.”
    I heard a clock chiming somewhere. I figured it for a church. It must be midnight, I guessed. Time was running out. When I turned back, the girl was leaning over the railing, looking down at the invisible water. Her hair hung around her face like yellow icicles. I couldn’t see her expression, but I didn’t really have to.
    “Life’s only worth living, mister, if you got something to live for.”
    “Yeah.”
    “When you stopped me I was going to die to spite someone. It’s all I got, spite. I ain’t got nothing else. So I guess I got more to die for than live for. You should just keep on walking, mister, and forget you ever saw me. You got enough problems of your own.”
    “Yeah, I do.”
    I pulled out the gun they’d given me and shot her behind her right ear. I knew she was going to be dead soon anyway but I didn’t want to lose my fifty bucks.

INTERVIEW WITH THE MAD SCIENTIST
    T hat’s sure something you got there,” I told the carny who was lounging in front of a tent festooned with banners proclaiming “See the Monster!” and “Man-Made Freak!” and “Frankenstein Lives!” and which were illuminated by pretty nifty paintings of something that looked like a cross between Boris Karloff and the lead in a high school driver’s ed film. It was just before noon on Thursday and the carnival grounds were practically deserted. I had just covered the arrival of a litter of new dalmatian puppies at Fire Station #3, which was across the street from the open lot where Gluberg’s Grand World-Wide Wonder Fun Fest had set up a couple of days before. The puppy story was set for the Saturday ‘Round ‘Bout Town section so, it being such a swell day, I was in no particular hurry to get back to the paper. I wandered over to see what I could see and maybe promote myself a free hot dog for lunch.
    I was disappointed. Not only was the hot dog stand closed, the whole carnival was like a ghost town—which just made the whole place creepier, and I’d always found carnivals creepy in the first place. They look their best at night and filled with people. In the daytime, deserted but for a couple dozen tough-looking carnies loitering around not doing much of anything in particular except glaring at me from under hooded, half-hostile, half-indifferent eyes, the carnival look tawdry and threadbare and inexpressibly sad. I was beginning to be sorry I came in.
    I naturally gravitated to the midway and its row of assorted freak shows since that sort of thing has always fascinated me. Armadillo Boy, Rubber Girl, The Human Paper Clip, Lobster Man, The Girl with Two-and-a-Half Heads, Two-Ton Tallulah, Blister Boy, Cellophane Man—they were all there. I strolled past their tents, scanning the gaudy banners as though I were going through the pages of my high school yearbook, gazing fondly at the faces of old friends because you know you’ve done pretty well and they’re just twenty-dollar-a-week shoe store clerks. The Man-Made Freak stopped me, though. That was a new one. God only knew what was behind the banner, since I knew perfectly well there was no particular compunction on the part of a freak show to deliver what its banners promise. The Cobra Woman, after all, was more likely to be some poor eczema sufferer than a creature discovered at the headwaters of the Amazon. I was no greenhorn.
    Another reason I stopped was because of the man sitting on the edge of the platform. All the other freak shows appeared to be deserted, so seeing someone at all caught my attention. At least, I thought, here was someone to talk to.