KID STUFF
By WINSTON MARKS
Practice makes perfect in some
cases—but not in this eerie instance!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Infinity Science Fiction, November 1955.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Why me? Why, out of 300 billion people on earth, why did they have to pick on me?
And if it had to happen, why couldn't it have happened before I met Betty and fell in love with her? You see, Betty and I were to be married tomorrow. We were to have been married. Tomorrow.
Tomorrow, indeed! What a ghastly thought that is! How can I explain to Betty—to anyone! I can't face her, and what could I say on the telephone? "Sorry, Betty, I can't marry you. I'm no longer—quite human."
Quit joking, Kelley! This is for real. You're sober and awake and it did happen. Marrying Betty is out of the question even if she'd have you the way you are. You're not that two-faced!
Quit standing in front of the mirror, naked and shaking, looking for scars, counting your fingers and toes. You've taken a hundred inventories, and it always comes out wrong. And it always will, unless ... unless they come back. But that's hopeless. They'd never find me again. Not out of all the people on earth. Besides, they didn't seem to give a damn. No more than a kid gives a damn what happens to a lump of modelling clay when he gets bored squeezing it into this shape and that.