"Please Help Me" by Richard Christian Matheson (first published in Robert Bloch's Psychos, edited by Robert Bloch for the Horror Writers Association [and completed by Martin H. Greenberg, following Bloch's death], 1997; reprinted in the author's Dystopia: Collected Stories, 2000)
Richard Christian Matheson (b. 1953) is the author of over 100 short stories, the Stoker-nominated novel Created By, and numerous teleplays and filmscripts. Most of his fiction consist of short-short stories of psychological horror and magic realism, effectively delivering short, sharp shocks.
"Please Help Me," as with a number of his short tales, is written in partial sentences, providing an immediacy that amplifies the story's horror. The story begins:
"So hot.
"Smells. Exhaust.
"Memorize the road. Curves, dips. Ruts. Draw a map in your mind. A way to trace everything for the cops. Take them wherever the hell I'm going.
"Five left turns since the Shop 'N Go.
"Three rights. Over metal grating. A bridge? The tires buzzed for nine seconds. Maybe the bridge that links Canoga Park with Chatsworth. that narrow one. Remember? Used to fish off it with Dad."
The beauty of this approach is is that there is as much unsaid as there is said.
We learn that the narrator is bound, gagged, and blindfolded in the trunk of a car, kidnapped because he witness a grocery store robbery. The three robbers shot the store owner. We don't know why they did not shoot the narrator, who is a married man with a wife and daughter. He has seen the robbers' faces and can identify them. They are young; one of them is a girl. He hears metal clanking in the trunk as they speed along. A jack? A gun? They stop. Take him out of the trunk. The girl kicks him sharply in the groin, twice. She enjoys it. The others laugh. There is a scratching sound, digging. He is thrown into a hole in the ground, a grave. He feels the dirt as it lands on him...
And that's the story...a vignette with the effect of a punch in the gut. The story is less than four pages long, yet it says more than stories ten times the length.
Not a pleasant story and certainly not everyone's cup of tea, but a vivid exercise in the power of economy of words.
The author is the son of writer and screenwriter Richard Matheson (I Am Legend, The Shrinking Man. Hell House, What Dreams May Come, The Memoirs of Wild Bill Hickok, Kolchak: The Night Stalker). He is also the older brother of screenwriter Chris Matheson (the Bill and Ted franchise, Mom & Dad Save the World, A Goofy Movie), as well as writer Ali Marie Matheson. Talent runs deep in that family.
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