shadowed by his legless shadow
Shratt, driven by a thing
(you know about that Thing, don't you?)
in an electric tank:
(AMPS-AMPS-AMPS-AMPS-)
demented paranoia
from 'BEYOND THE GRAVE! !'
but the tragedy
was Shratt -oh,
I could weep for Shratt.
For The Birds
Stephen King
From
' Bred Any Good Rooks Lately? '
Okay, this is a science fiction joke.
It seems like in 1995 or so the pollution in the atmosphere of
London has started to kill off all the rooks. And the city
government is very concerned because the rooks roosting on the
cornices and the odd little crannies of the public buildings are a big
attraction. The Yanks with their Kodaks, if you get it. So they say,
' What are we going to do? '
They get a lot of brochures from places with climates similar to
London's so they can raise the rooks until the pollution problem is
finally licked. One place with a similar climate, but low pollution
count, turns to be Bangor, Maine. So they put an ad in the paper
soliciting bird fanciers and talk to a bunch of guys in the trade.
Finally, they engage this one guy at the rate of $50,000 a year to
raise rooks. They send an ornithologist over on the concord with
two cases of rook eggs packed in these shatterproof cases - they
keep the shipping compartment constantly heated and all that stuff.
So this guy has a new business - North American Rook Farms, Inc.
He goes to work right off incubating new rooks so London will not
become a rookless city. The only thing is, the London City Council
is really impatient, and every day they send him a telegram that
says: ' Bred Any Good Rooks lately? '
THE
HARDCASE
SPEAKS
STEPHEN KING
From
Contraband #2
In fields and christless allies the psalter is handed
greedily around with purple bottles of cheap port
punctuated by the sodium lightness glare of freights
rising past hobo cinder gantries and pitless bramble
hollows:
Dukane, Grand Rapids, Cedar Forks, Harlow, Dover-
Foxcroft,
names from the back platform of the A-train
so don't gimme that shit don't gimme that crap
