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as he reached into it to take his pajamas from a hook, he was
startled by a loud bang. Whirling, he saw his father
charging through the doorway. Eric's face was red, and his
hands were clenched. Whatever had gone on in the kitchen,
it had not pacified him.
"Get your clothes on!" he howled. "Don't you have no
decency!"
81
PHILIP JOSE FARMER
The unfaimess of the insult after all, his father had
burst in without asking permission squeezed the anger in
Jim down to a tiny hot ball. A little more heat, a little more
pressure, and it would go up, out, and away. But it would
take Eric Grimson with it.
"From now on, things're gonna be different!" his father
yelled. "You'll either shape up or ship out, that's for sure!
First thing . . . !"
He looked wildly around, then reached into his back
pocket and brought out a jackknife. He opened the blade
and began slashing at the posters of the rock groups and
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stars. Before Jim could yell in protest, he saw the Hot Water
Eskimos being cut into strips. Then Eric attacked the poster
of Keith Moon.
"All this shit's gotta go!" Eric screamed.
The red-hot ball exploded in white flame.
Shrieking, Jim jumped at his father, clamped a hand on
his left shoulder, spun him around, and struck him in the
nose. Eric Grimson staggered back against the poster, blood
running from his nostrils. Jim hit him in the shoulder with
his fist though he had meant to strike his chin. Eric dropped
the knife and closed with his son. Face to face, wrapped in
each other's arms, grunting, wheezing, they swayed back
and forth.
"I'll kill you!" Eric screeched.
Jim screamed and tore himself loose. He leaped back. He
was panting, his heart beating so hard that it seemed to him
that it would tear itself apart. Then, piercing the drumming
of blood in his ears, came the clicking of a lock. So loud
was the sound, the lock had to be huge. The key turning in
it also had to be gigantic. A groaning followed the clicking.
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It sounded like a very heavy door with rusty hinges being
opened.
The floor dropped, the walls tilted, and books tumbled
82
RED ORC'S RAGE
out from the shelves. Jim and his father fell on the floor.
They got up quickly, looking at each other with wide eyes.
Plaster dust fell on them along with chunks. Jim saw them
bounce off his father. The white dust covered Eric's head
and shoulders and powdered the two streams of blood
trickling down from his nose.
Eva Grimson screamed in the kitchen.
"Oh, my god!" Eric howled. "This is it!"
The house lurched again.
"Get out! Get out!" Eric shouted. He whirled and ran out
of the room. He had to lean to one side to compensate for
the slope of the floor. Even so, his shoulder struck the side
of the doorway.
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Jim began to laugh, and he kept on laughing. The house
was going to fall deep into the earth. Maybe his parents
would get out in time, maybe not. Whatever happened, it
would come from fate, from the Noms. Justice and fairness
had nothing to do with it. And he would stay here and go
down with the ship. Let the earth gulp him down. It was
better so, and it was also laughable.
Jim did not remember anything after that. He was told
that his parents did get out of the house and scrambled
across the front porch, which had been torn away from the
main structure, and across the gapful yard and onto the
sidewalk. But they then had to go across the street because
the cement they were standing on was shoved even more
upwards and made larger fissures. The house lurched and
sank another foot. The neighbors on both sides of the
Crimsons' house ran screaming from their leaning houses.
The whole neighborhood came alive, lights going on,
people coming out on the front porches and crying out
questions, children being bundled up and put in cars for a
quick getaway.
83
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PHILIP JOSE FARMER
RED ORC'S RAGE
Sirens wailed in the distance as the police cars and the
fire engines raced toward Complanter Street.
Eva Grimson began crying out that someone should go
into the house and rescue her son. No one volunteered. Eric
insisted, over and over, that Jim was just delayed because
he was putting on his clothes. Eva said that Jim must be
hurt, and he was probably trapped.
Just as the squad cars and fire engines and ambulances
pulled up, Eva ran toward the house. Eric and two neigh-
bors grabbed her and held her while she screamed and
struck at them and begged them to let her go.
"You're a coward!" she said to Eric. "If you were a real
man, you'd go after Jim!"
The lights had gone out in the house; the power lines had
been torn from the house. Suddenly, two small lights
appeared in the doorway. They were candles, one in each of
Jim's hands, and they shed illumination on his wild face and
naked body. He could not be seen below the knees,
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however. The house leaned so much that he had to stand on
a floor which dropped steeply away from the bottom of the
twisted doorway.
Jim shouted something unintelligible to the people across
the street. He jumped up and down, waving the candles,
which he had picked up from the floor in the room his
mother used as a shrine.
Seeing these, Eva began struggling even harder. She
shrieked, "The candles! The candles! They'll set the house
on fire! He'll bum, bum, oh, my God, he'll bum to death!"
The cops and the firelighters had by then cleared away
most of the crowd so that the engines could be moved closer
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