Bradbury, Ray - SSC 11 (5 page)

 
          
 
"You don't like what?" Terwilliger
almost yelled.

 
          
 
"His expression. Needs more fire, more .
. . goombah. More mazash!"

 
          
 
"Mazash?"

 
          
 
"The old bimbo! Bug the eyes more. Flex
the nostrils. Shine the teeth. Fork the tongue sharper. You can do it! Uh, the
monster ain't mine, huh?"

 
          
 
"Mine." Terwilliger arose.

 
          
 
His belt buckle was now on a line with Joe
Clarence's eyes. The producer stared at the bright buckle almost hypnotically
for a moment.

 
          
 
"God damn the goddam lawyers!"

 
          
 
He broke for the door.

           
 
“Work!"

 
          
 
The monster hit the door a split second after
it slammed shut.

 
          
 
Terwilliger kept his hand poised in the air
from his overhand throw. Then his shoulders sagged. He went to pick up his
beauty. He twisted off its head, skinned the latex flesh off the skull, placed
the skull on a pedestal and, painstakingly, with clay, began to reshape the
prehistoric face.

 
          
 
"A little goombah," he muttered.
"A touch of mazash.”

 
          
 
They ran the first film test on the animated
monster a week later.

 
          
 
When it was over, Clarence sat in darkness and
nodded imperceptibly.

 
          
 
"Better. But . . . more horrorific,
bloodcurdling. Let's scare the hell out of Aunt Jane. Back to the drawing
board!"

 
          
 
"I'm a week behind schedule now,"
Terwilliger protested. "You keep coming in, change this, change that, you
say, so I change it, one day the tail's all wrong, next day it's the
claws—"

 
          
 
"You'll find a way to make me
happy," said Clarence. "Get in there and fight the old aesthetic
fight!"

 
          
 
At the end of the month they ran the second
test.

 
          
 
"A near miss! Close!" said Clarence.
"The face is just almost right. Try again, Terwilliger!"

 
          
 
Terwilliger went back. He animated the
dinosaur's mouth so that it said obscene things which only a lip reader might
catch, while the rest of the audience thought the beast was only shrieking.
Then he got the clay and worked until 3 A.M. on the awful face.

 
          
 
"That's it!" cried Clarence in the
projection room the next week. "Perfect! Now that's what I call a
monster!"

 
          
 
He leaned toward the old man, his lawyer, Mr.
Glass, and Maury Poole, his production assistant.

 
          
 
"You like my creature?" He beamed.

 
          
 
Terwilliger, slumped in the back row, his
skeleton as long as the monsters he built, could feel the old lawyer shrug.

 
          
 
"You seen one monster, you seen 'em
all."

 
          
 
"Sure, sure, but this one's
special!" shouted Clarence happily. "Even I got to admit
Terwilliger's a genius!"

 
          
 
They all turned back to watch the beast on the
screen, in a titanic waltz, throw its razor tail wide in a vicious, harvesting
that cut grass and clipped flowers. The beast paused now to gaze pensively off
into mists, gnawing a red bone.

 
          
 
"That monster," said Mr. Glass at
last, squinting. "He sure looks familiar."

 
          
 
"Familiar?" Terwilliger stirred,
alert.

 
          
 
"It's got such a look," drawled Mr.
Glass iin the. dark, “I couldn't forget, from someplace."

 
          
 
"Natural Museum exhibits?"

 
          
 
"No, no."

 
          
 
"Maybe," laughed Clarence, “you read
a book once. Grass?”

 
          
 
"Funny . . ." Glass, unperturbed,
cocked his head, closed one eye. "Like detectives, I don't forget a face.
But, that Tyrannosaurus Rex—where before did I meet him?"

 
          
 
"Who cares?" Clarence sprinted.
"He's great. And all because I booted Terwilliger's behind to make him do
it right. Come on, Maury!"

 
          
 
When the door shut, Mr. Glass turned to gaze
steadily at Terwilliger. Not taking his eyes away, he called softly to the
projectionist. "Walt? Walter? Could you favor us with that beast
again?"

 
          
 
"Sure thing."

 
          
 
Terwilliger shifted uncomfortably, aware of
some bleak force gathering in blackness, in the sharp light that shot forth
once more to ricochet terror off the screen.

 
          
 
"Yeah. Sure," mused Mr. Glass.
"I almost remember. I almost know him. But.. . who?"

 
          
 
The brute, as if answering, turned and for a
disdainful moment stared across one hundred thousand million years at two small
men hidden in a small dark room. The tyrant machine named itself in thunder.

 
          
 
Mr. Glass quickened forward, as if to cup his
ear.

 
          
 
Darkness swallowed all.

 
          
 
With the film half finished, in the tenth
week, Clarence summoned thirty of the office staff, technicians and a few
friends to see a rough cut of the picture.

 
          
 
The film had been running fifteen minutes when
a gasp ran through the small audience.

 
          
 
Clarence glanced swiftly about.

 
          
 
Mr. Glass, next to him, stiffened.

 
          
 
Terwilliger, scenting danger, lingered near
the exit, not knowing why; his nervousness was compulsive and intuitive. Hand
on the door, he watched.

 
          
 
Another gasp ran through the crowd.

 
          
 
Someone laughed quietly. A woman secretary
giggled. Then there was instantaneous silence.

 
          
 
For Joe Clarence had jumped to his feet.

 
          
 
His tiny figure sliced across the light on the
screen. For a moment, two images gesticulated in the dark: Tyrannosaurus,
ripping the leg from a Pteranodon, and Clarence, yelling, jumping forward as if
to grapple with these fantastic wrestlers.

 
          
 
"Stop! Freeze it right there I"

 
          
 
The film stopped. The image held.

 
          
 
"What's wrong?" asked Mr. Glass.

 
          
 
"Wrong?" Clarence crept up on the image.
He thrust his baby hand to the screen, stabbed the tyrant jaw, the lizard eye,
the fangs, the brow, then turned blindly to the projector light so that
reptilian flesh was printed on his furious cheeks. "What goes? What is
this?"

 
          
 
"Only a monster, Chief."

 
          
 
"Monster, hell!" Clarence pounded
the screen with his tiny fist. "That's me!"

 
          
 
Half the people leaned forward, half the
people fell back, two people jumped up, one of them Mr. Glass, who fumbled for
his other spectacles, flexed his eyes and moaned, "So that’s where I saw
him before!”

 
          
 
"That's where you what?"

 
          
 
Mr. Glass shook his head, eyes shut.
"That face, I knew it was familiar."

 
          
 
A wind blew in the room.

 
          
 
Everyone turned. The door stood open.

 
          
 
Terwilliger was gone.

 
          
 
They found Terwilliger in his animation studio
cleaning out his desk, dumping everything into a large cardboard box, the
Tyrannosaurus machine-toy model under his arm. He looked up as the mob swirled
in, Clarence at the head.

 
          
 
"What did I do to deserve this!" he
cried.

 
          
 
"I'm sorry, Mr. Clarence."

 
          
 
“You're sorry?! Didn't I pay you well?"

 
          
 
"No, as a matter of fact."

 
          
 
"I took you to lunches—“

 
          
 
"Once. I picked up the tab."

           
 
“I gave you dinner at home, you swam in my
pool, and now this! You’re firedl"

 
          
 
"You can't fire me, Mr. Clarence. I've
worked the last week free and overtime, you forgot my check—"

 
          
 
"You're fired anyway, oh, you're really
fired! You're blackballed in Hollywood. Mr. Glass!" He whirled to find the
old man. "Sue him!"

 
          
 
"There is nothing," said
Terwilliger, not looking up any more, just looking down, packing, keeping in
motion, "nothing you can sue me for. Money? You never paid enough to save
on. A house? Could never afford that. A wife? I've worked for people like you
all my life. So wives are out. I'm an unencumbered man. There's nothing you can
do to me. If you attach my dinosaurs, I'll just go hole up in a small town
somewhere, get me a can of latex rubber, some clay from the river, some old
steel pipe, and make new monsters. I'll buy stock film raw and cheap. I've got
an old beat-up stop-motion camera. Take that away, and I'll build one with my
own hands. I can do anything. And that's why you'll never hurt me again."

 
          
 
"You're fired!" cried Clarence.
"Look at me. Don't look away. You're fired! You're fired!"

 
          
 
"Mr. Clarence," said Mr. Glass,
quietly, edging forward. "Let me talk to him just a moment."

 
          
 
"So talk to him!" said Clarence.
"What's the use? He just stands there with that monster under his arm and
the goddam thing looks like me, so get out of the way!"

 
          
 
Clarence stormed out the door. The others
followed.

 
          
 
Mr. Glass shut the door, walked over to the
window and looked out at the absolutely clear twilight sky.

 
          
 
"I wish it would rain," he said.
"That's one thing about California I can't forgive. It never really lets
go and cries. Right now, what wouldn't I give for a little something from that
sky? A bolt of lightning, even."

 
          
 
He stood silent, and Terwilliger slowed in his
packing. Mr. Glass sagged down into a chair and doodled on a pad with a pencil,
talking sadly, half aloud, to himself.

 
          
 
"Six reels of film shot, pretty good
reels, half the film done, three hundred thousand dollars down the drain, hail
and farewell. Out the window all the jobs. Who feeds the starving mouths of
boys and girls? Who will face the stockholders? Who chucks the Bank of America
under the chin? Anyone for Russian roulette?"