Fury on Sunday by Richard Matheson Read Free Book Online

flopping, rug-thumping indications of utter devotion, of adolescent, stomach-turning love. That was Stan too.
    God, can’t I stop thinking about him!
her mind screamed. Oh, give me the empty, useless solace of a man’s body here and now and let me forget the torture of mind.
    In a minute she got up and went slowly into the living room. She felt her way among the glasses and plates strewn on the floor, feeling an occasional wet patch where some unstable reveler had dropped or spilled or kicked over his glass of whiskey and soda, or gin and soda, or vodka and soda or anything and soda. Ploppo, into the carpet. After the parties they’d had here, it was a wonder there was any carpet left at all.
    She turned on the small lamp on the table beside the couch. She blinked and closed her eyes for a moment, then sank down on the couch and looked around the room.
    She saw the end result of social tornado. Here in this penthouse, decorated by whosis of Fifth Avenue, furnished by what’s-his-name and draped by the best non-entities in town—here, in this upholstered sewer, gaiety had reigned. People mixed drinks and company, told lewd jokes, crept searching fingers over the other men’s wives and other wives’ husbands. Flung the mud of their minds against the walls. Stolen into darkened bedrooms for quick sensation. Let the gyroscopes of their minds be swallowed under tides of liquor. Stumbled and laughed and threw up and screamed vile laughter and let the mask fall for an instant from the face of the beast. Showed the fangs and the hatreds and the endless lusts.
    Jane reached over and picked up somebody’s drink. I hope it was a man’s drink, she thought and placed the glass to her lips.
Cheap kiss
, she thought, kissing a glass. As the warmish, watery liquor trickled down her throat the ultimate thought came—
the party is over
.
    Oh God, come and take me, someone!
    She wanted to scream it out in the silence of the apartment. She wanted to rip the flimsy gown off her body and give the sweetmeats of her flesh to any and all comers. Step up, line forms on the right. Jane Sheldon, wife of Stan Sheldon, has the pleasure of announcing her availability to all and sundry. Come one, come all.
    She slumped down on the couch, shivering without control. Her hungry eyes ran down over her lean body, over the two hard points of her breasts, the flat stomach, the long perfectly shaped legs. She ran one hand over her stomach and it made her shudder. She finished the drink and sat staring into the empty glass, watching the tiny amber bubble on the bottom slide back and forth as she tilted the glass from side to side; slipping and gliding like a fat pig on a frozen lake.
    Kill me, someone.
    The thought crept into her mind, looked around, saw no resistance and took over.
    ***
    He had lain there and watched her rise. He had seen her standing in the living room in her nightgown, the dark outline of her body showing against the lamp’s glow.
    Now he lay there in the dark bedroom staring at her as she sat slumped on the couch. He watched her run a hand over her smooth stomach and something twisted in his guts. It had been so long, so horribly long. She never let him touch her anymore. They were married, but she never let him touch her.
    She hardly even let him see her. Once in a while, maybe, if she thought he was still asleep in the morning, she would let the nightgown drop rustling off her satiny body and, while she hooked and pulled and fastened and zipped, through half-closed lids he would drink in the sight of her breasts arching out from her chest, the flat smoothness of her stomach and buttocks, the curve of her legs. His own wife made him feel like a Peeping Tom, like some sub-species of voyeur.
    His throat moved. Why didn’t he go in there and just demand his rights? Why didn’t he take her in his arms and conquer her resistance? The situation struck him in all its insulting absurdity.
    Anyone else could have her but he couldn’t.
    He