A Chemical Affair

Gray Matter, alcoholism, depression and isolation

Good morning readers.

If you’re new here, welcome to The Barrens, Kindling’s first ever book club. Right now, we’re reading through all things Stephen King, working our way through his first short story collection, Night Shift. Today’s post covers Gray Matter, but if you want to join in, grab a copy and read Battleground for next week!

Today we hit a lot of tough topics: alcoholism, isolation, depression. But if you read the story, you know on its surface it’s about a blob monster, one of those old time conjurings that doesn’t make an appearance in the modern fear centers of our brain (at least not mine). Chalk it up to a follow-on to the nuclear fears that permeated the 1950’s up, or a knowledge that the chemicals we were making could have unintended consequences. King’s story takes a slightly different approach.

Our story begins at a bar one night in Bangor, Maine. A snowstorm has essentially shut the town down, and the regulars gather at a local bar, the Nite-Owl, known mostly for serving college kids beer and wine. The quiet night is broken up when a young kid comes running in scared out of his mind.

The men recognize him as Richie Grenadine’s son, a local man who was injured at the saw mill he worked at, and was awarded a lifetime of worker’s compensation as a result. He was always a drinker, but after losing his job, Richie became a recluse, only leaving to buy the beer he drinks every night. And lately, even that’s stopped.

Anyway, he got awful fat. He hadn’t been in lately, although once in a while I’d seen his boy come in for Richie’s nightly case. Nice enough boy. Henry sold him the beer, for he knew it was only the boy doing as his father said

Henry, the owner of the bar, takes the boy in to the back to let him talk. The men drink and listen as Henry tries to soothe the boy, and the boy cries in the back. When they come back out, Henry tells the men that the boy is headed upstairs to eat something, and he thinks they should bring Richie’s case to him. The men box up some beer and head out into the cold night.

Billy spoke up, fairly busting: “What’s up? Has Richie been workin’ the kid over?”

“No,” Henry said. “I’d just as soon not say anything just yet. It’d sound crazy. I will show you somethin’ though. The money Timmy had to pay for the beer with.”

He pulls the bills out of his pocket by the corner, each one covered with a gray slime. The men have to walk. Richie lives on a road that will be too slick to drive on in the storm. As they make their way, Henry tells the men the story that Timmy sobbed to him in the back, his gun tucked close in his coat pocket.

It all started with a bad beer.

Timmy is ready for bed one night after finishing his homework when he hears his dad complain about his beer.

“Christ Jesus, that ain’t right.”

And Timmy says, “What’s that, Pop?”

“That beer,” Richie says. “God, that’s the worst taste I ever had in my mouth.”

Most people would wonder why in the name of God he drank it if it tasted so bad, but then, most people have never seen Richie Grenadine go to his beer.

Richie Grenadine is the town drunk. He can outdrink anyone and drink it faster, and that, the men conclude, is the reason he pounded the awful beer. When Timmy smelled the can, it smelled like something dead, and there were gray dribbles around the top.

Over the next few days, Richie becomes light sensitive, refusing to allow Timmy a lamp to do his homework, even in his own room. He doesn’t eat anymore, only drinks warm beer. He stops watching the TV, just sits in the corner of the dark living room in silence and leaves money for his son to buy him cases of beer each night.

One day, after Timmy gets home from school he turns on a light over the sink, and sees his dad wrapped up in a blanket.

“Look,” Richie says, and one hand creeps out from under the blanket. Only it ain’t a hand at all. Something gray, is all the kid could tell Henry. Didn’t look like a hand at all. Just a gray lump.

In fear, Timmy tells his dad he’s going to call the doctor, but Richie begins to tremble, threatening that if he calls anyone, he’ll touch him, and Timmy will turn out just like him. Richie pulls the blanket away from his face, and Timmy sees that his dad is covered in a kind of gray jelly, his features fading, all mashed together.

“Like he was a fungus,” I said.

“Yes,” Henry said. “Sorta like that.”

“You keep that pistol handy,” Bertie said.

Just as the men reach Richie’s flat, Henry tells them what sent the kid running into the bar that night. School got out early when the storm came in, so Timmy headed straight home. He realized as he snuc to the door that he didn’t know what his dad did all day. He hadn’t seen him move from that chair in weeks, not to sleep or go to the bathroom. He peeked through a hole in the door, and saw a gray blob, nothing like a man, slithering on the floor. He watched as the thing reached a snake arm out and pried a board off of the wall. Inside was a dead cat, swollen stiff, covered in maggots.

“And then his dad ate it.”

I tried to swallow and something tasted greasy in my throat.

“That’s when Timmy closed the peephole.” Henry finished softly. “And ran.”

The men reach the third floor where Richie lives. They can smell something putrid emanating from the apartment. On the floor beneath their feet are slimy gray puddles. Henry raises his gun and knocks on the door, telling Richie they brought beer for him. Richie tells them to remove the ring tabs and push the case through. He can’t do it on his own anymore.

“In a minute,” Henry said. “What kind of shape you in, Richie?”

“Never mind that,” the voice said, and it was horribly eager. “Just push in the beer and go!”

“It ain’t just dead cats anymore, is it?” Henry said, and he sounded sad.

In the last few weeks, three people have gone missing, all of them after dark. Two young girls, and a Salvation Army regular, gone without a trace. Richie threatens to come out and get the beer, and Henry readies his gun. The door bulges, slamming open, and Henry opens fire as the two men run, but not before they see the gelatinous blob that has consumed Richie. Down the center, they see a line, and realize the creature is dividing. They run back to the bar and wait to see who will come knocking on the door, Henry or the monster.

The monsters without form.

What does it mean that these creatures, amorphous, formless things that lacked any notable feature or identity, became so popular in horror movies and stories during the 1950’s? The Blob first hit screens in 1958, and it was a hit, especially among teenagers. Monsters always tell us something about the society they emerge from, so this story led me to the question: why a blob?

But on thinking, it makes a lot of sense. A monster that can’t quite be understood, that consumes and overtakes without ever having a face. A force more than a creature. The vampire has his wooden stakes, the werewolf his silver bullets, but a blob? An amorphous mutagen?

What humans feared then, and still fear, though the shape has changed, is technology. There was a general unease with the speed with which humanity was developing. Technology creating weapons of mass destruction, chemicals being manipulated in labs to kill bugs, weeds, people. The blob represented an unstoppable force, something that we couldn’t see or understand, but was certainly on the horizon if guardrails weren’t put in place.

Gray Matter takes that lofty fear, and brings it from the macro to the micro: Richie’s home.

King’s story doesn’t focus on societal breakdown due to nuclear fallout, or an alien monster that takes over the world. He zooms in to one lonely kid who takes care of his disabled, alcoholic father. Timmy is left to fend for himself even before his dad turns into a gelatinous carnivore. He does his homework, puts himself to bed, takes himself to school.

The men in the bar feel sorry for him, and the owner Henry, obviously knows the kid’s life isn’t great. He’s in there nearly every night to buy beer for his dad. What happens to a man who has no purpose anymore? Richie sits in front of the TV and drinks, barely going out except for his cases of beer, seeing less and less of his old bar mates. Friendless, wifeless, and confined mostly to his apartment, he turns into something else, all because of a bad beer. His addiction takes him down. Turns him into a monster who ends up killing people to feed.

It’s a monster that countless children have had to live with. The drunk, depressed father. The addiction is one that countless people have struggled with. The amorphous monster that we can’t quite put our finger on. It’s form, deceiving in the dark, but a clear and present danger.

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And now to you dear reader.

What did you make of the story? Very short, a little quick, but punchy and with a good ending in my opinion.

What do you make of the blob monsters from the 50’s? Do they scare you? Too cheesy? Fears from another time? Or is there some deep human fear involving slime that I’m just lacking…