Chaingang

He selected his dinner with the confidence of a gourmet, his mind taking each item through chopper, blender, pressure cooker, jar lifter, funnel, ladle, food mill, water-bath canner, strainer or colander, into those beautiful capped and dome-lid jars.

Back upstairs, still nude, he cooked everything in a huge metal pot, black beans and beef stew, brussels sprouts, corned beef and cabbage—all simmered together, filling the kitchen with smells so rich, he almost fainted. He found a container of whipped cream in the freezer and ate a jar of baked apples with topping as he waited for dinner to cook.

Folding his tarp into a huge napkin and hotplate, he ate directly from the big cooking pot, ladling great slurps of food into his maw and swallowing it down without seeming to chew it. Devouring it—inhaling it—absorbing the food directly into his life-support system.

Afterward, belching expansively, he searched for beer or whiskey. Found cooking wine and tried some but spit it out. It was bitter. Baby mouse wine. Finally he located and prepared a rich cup of coffee, making it with three heaping spoons of Maxwell House and a preposterous amount of sugar.

After double-checking his security, he turned two of the smaller lamps on in the house, ones that would not change the dark exterior appearance of the home, and he flipped through a couple of magazines, yawned, went into the downstairs bathroom and defecated. Tried the old woman's bed. Didn't care for it. Went in and plopped down on the retarded daughter's bed and was sound asleep within thirty seconds, snoring like a pair of chainsaws.

In his untroubled slumber a three-headed dog named Cerberus came and stood guard, watching over him while he slept. Man's best friend at the Gates of Hell.

The sturdy old home had been built back in a time when carpenters were artisans who took great pride in their craftsmanship, and in what they did for a living, rather than simply working to earn a living. The home was relatively soundproof, so he did not hear the light patting of raindrops on the roof over the second floor. But as the curtain of heavy rain drew nearer, the beast came awake just as thunder crashed in the field beside the farmhouse.

Pleased he was not sleeping out in the thunderstorm, he immediately fell back into deep sleep, waking up two hours later, at early dawn with the rain still falling. There was no way he was going to leave this warm house. He went back to sleep again, and slept until midmorning.

It was a gray, rainy day, and he was enormously pleased to remain where he was for the time being. He spent the day lolling about nude, giving the house and its contents a thorough investigation. From time to time he would go down into the basement to bring up more mason jars of canned food, and fix himself snacks. By afternoon the kitchen was filled with empty jars everywhere one looked, and he busied himself for a time washing out the jars and packing them away in cartons he'd found in the basement. When he left, he would rearrange the shelved goods so that things would not appear to have been tampered with.

He spent a few minutes gazing out the windows at the wet, heavy sky and the muddy fields. There was no traffic whatsoever. His huge belly full, his body rested, he turned on the television set with the sound off, and became tumescent while watching a young actress on one of the soap operas. He started to masturbate, but it seemed like too much trouble and he stopped, realizing that he was going to have to have a woman very soon.

After a while he turned the sound up on an obviously rigged game show, thinking what enjoyment it would give him to rip the host's heart from his fatuous body. The monkeys jumped up and down and squealed with excitement, and he shook his huge head in amazement.

He was not a fan of movies or television, but on occasion he would watch TV, invariably transfixed by the spectacle of the monkey people and the small, strange window through which so many of them experienced the world.

Was this really what they did each night in those cozy, snug homes in the suburbs? He was perpetually fascinated by the monkeys ... by their life-styles and Weed Eaters and miniature golf courses and county fairs. They were as remote a species to him as he was to the normal man, and he could drive through their clusters of tract homes at night and be vastly entertained just trying to imagine what their tax-paying, lawn-tending lives were like behind those ornate front doors.

He had no frame of reference for “family.” No sense of common bond. No remembered childhood pleasures of the hearth and home. To his mind these gibbering, monkeylike fools were as alien as visiting other-worlders. He'd sometimes drive stolen vehicles through the suburbs of whatever city he was in, captivated by the warmth of the lights in those darkened homes.

Often he would see a family watching the box, perhaps visible through their open curtains, and the sight never failed to mesmerize him.