Lizard World by Terry Richard Bazes Read Free Book Online

feelin’ bad,” he told the other militia guys afterward, “there ain’t nothin like nailin’ one a them suckers. Unless you’re figurin’ on eatin’ veggies for the rest of your life, some critter’s gonna have to die and, hell, why not get some fun out of it?” That was a turnin’ point in Lemuel Lee’s life. That was a turnin’ point because he’d learned to discipline his anger. That was the real reason he’d joined up with the militia and got his official tattoo -- and started to slick his hair back and wear a bolo tie. Yep, now Lemuel Lee was feelin’ a whole lot more positive about his future.            Now, whenever he was feelin’ bad, Lemuel Lee just kept nice and quiet: “Guess Bambi’s gonna have to pay for that one,” he’d tell himself.
           Lemuel Lee had written his autobiographical horror novel, Creep , for a correspondence school writing course which he’d seen advertised in the back pages of Modern Plumbing Magazine , one of the many interesting and informative magazines on the table in the beauty salon where he used to have a job sweepin’ hair. Of course he wasn’t really interested in becomin’ a beautician, like he’d told ’em, although he was certain that he could do a goddamn good job of it if he tried. Oh, it was true that he had wanted, briefly, to become a beautician, but that was before a certain celebrity whose name will not be mentioned had hung up on him after Lemuel Lee had taken the trouble of gettin’ her home phone number and offerin’ her a haircut, perm and facial free a charge. Lemuel Lee understood very well that genius was often mocked or ignored, but the point was that you just couldn’t let people get away with treatin’ you wrong. He had driven four days and three sleepless nights all the way to Hollywood to put a snake in that celebrity’s mailbox and Lemuel Lee had been gratified to see that this itty bit of mischief had made it to the six o’clock news. But anyway, by the time he’d begun sweepin’ up in the Mirror-Mirror hair salon, he’d given up the idea of becomin’ a beautician and was on to better things.
           Lemuel Lee had heard a lot about inspiration, but when it really comes to you, well, that’s somethin’ else again. The first time it had happened was when he was sittin’ on the john at the Magnolia diner: he’d just taken out his pen and started to scribble stuff on the wall, stuff that other folks could read and enjoy when they was sittin’ there like him. It had given him a real feelin’ of accomplishment to do that and for a week or so after that he kept hangin’ around the john, just to see if folks was appreciatin’ his work. Then one day, ten miles away in a gas station in Beauregard, he’d found that someone had stolen his rhyme and written it right next to the toilet. It didn’t make him sore none, just kinda proud to know that his poetry was gettin’ famous. That was when he found the correspondence-school writing course and decided to get serious about his art. Hell, he hadn’t really even made anything up, just told a couple of lies the way he always did. But the lies, at least most a them, wasn’t in the book but in the letter he’d sent to the school tellin’ them all about himself.
           But in the book mostly he had told the truth, except that he’d stretched it just a bit to make it a little more interesting. For example, he’d told the truth about puttin’ the snake in that celebrity’s mailbox -- except it wasn’t true she’d died from it. All that stuff about kidnappin’ Darlene Frummer, the cashier at Woolworths with the big jugs, wasn’t true neither but just what he’d planned to do if he hadn’t been caught peepin’ in her window. It was true that Billy Angel, his hero, had done a lot a stuff he himself wouldn’t have dared to do. Nonetheless, Billy wasn’t make-believe neither, but a real-live dead guy whose name he’d found on an old stone