Hunger and Thirst by Richard Matheson Read Free Book Online Page A

worse part of it was that the inner portion of his brain, ever frank and brutal, told Erick that if he were the drunk living a life as brutalized he would take the money too and forget about the poor slob of a man lying helpless on his bed. But that would only be if I were like him, he fought back as if impelled to. He couldn’t make it come off. And it made him shiver and suddenly become afraid of the world to think that even in his own mental state he would do the same thing, leaving behind the paralyzed man and fleeing with the money.
    He closed his eyes and tried to think of something else. Because the sight of his own naked morals proved the ugliest view he could ever remember.
    No, you can’t tell the drunk, he told himself, he isn’t an honest man, not to be trusted.
    And, in perverted homilies, he lost the uncomfortable sense of self that had stolen unwished upon him a moment before.
    He blew out a heavy, impatient breath.
    It was becoming maddening to lie there immobile and helpless and hear the radio, hear the announcer talking loud as life, hear the drunk coughing and spitting and shuffling about his room. And to hear doors slamming everywhere in the house as if to torture him and to hear feet on the stairs and know that there were people all around him. And the only one who was awake and close enough was not to be trusted even in such a moment of desperation.
    It seemed unnatural to be fussy at such a moment. But he had to be. He had gone to terrible forced lengths to get that money and he couldn’t lose it now. There was time to think, he could find a better way. Maybe he could contact the old woman. There must be many ways. It seemed impossible that in a world rich with variegated circumstances he should be faced with only one alternative.
    But he couldn’t spend too much time thinking.
    Time was passing. He was hungry. And what happened when he really got hungry? And thirsty? He was thirsty now. His stomach felt like a vacuum and his mouth and throat were clinging dry. He licked his lips. How long can a man go without water? he wondered to himself. Food, he knew, you could get along without for quite a while. After a long while it wasn’t even a necessity.
    But what about water?
    He’d never thought about it much. He recalled reading or hearing that the body was over 90% water. The thought was appalling. We’re practically walking lakes, he thought. One never thought of himself as being so much fluid.
    He had lived in the city and there was always water. He drank it without thought. He absorbed it from all foods and all liquids. He constantly refueled the huge reservoir in his body without a single thought as to what he was doing. Now he was faced with depletion.
    How long could a man go without water? He thought.
    It was a thought that never occurred to one who lived in a city where artificial veins brought him all the supply he needed. In abundance the consciousness of need disappeared entirely. No, not entirely. But it was held in abeyance in that strange cluttered storehouse where all fixations and doubts and hungers resided in dusty, tranquil silence waiting for the bidding of necessity.
    He seemed to recall having read about some Mexican Indian who had lasted ten days without water. Of course that had been in a desert. But the Mexican had been able to move. He had drunk his own urine over and over until evaporation had used it all up. He had just managed to reach an outpost. Otherwise he would have died. To die without water must be a terrible way to…
    He stopped breathing.
    Two hands had clamped him sandwich like between them and were suddenly crushing the breath from him. His lips trembled and, speechless, horror-stricken, he stared at the ceiling.
    Die?
    The word was a knife in him. He remembered that from the war.
    No! He fought the idea. It was ridiculous to think of dying. He was only 24 years old, at a peak of physical life. There was too much to be done, too much writing to be finished.