Try to lie still, Rick ,put down your arms and sit here and relax, please, Rick. The best father a kid could have, thought Rick's sons. Rick would have liked to know, but he suspected everybody, himself more than ever. I must give up food, thought Rick, food and everything else. There's nowhere I can walk where I don't see those 90 sidewalks so I can ramble on.
Dear me, Rick's wife was in a frazzle over him. God help us, Rick is not to be seen. In the corner, honey. Oh, there you are; let me call the children. Rick did instead, and his head grew big and his arms withered into things looking like peanuts. Open your eyes, Rick told his family and they saw his withered arms too clearly. Scream! Scream! shouted Rick. Oh, Rick. No! No, you must scream! Rick slashed at the engulfing wood-frame, but he was bound tight to a chair as helpless as his knife upstairs in his underwear was helpless! Ut-oh? Closing in on Rick his kids played with their minute toys and Rick stomped to make them scream, but no, they played more to Rick. Rick was under the dining-room table and he stood up fast and jumped and he was standing on it, flexing his huge muscles and the reflected light all went to one place: Rick's mouth which had swallowed the life and every coincidence from his home which he'd built himself. He cut the grass with scissors he tore it up by its roots he broke his fingers on the concrete sidewalk and then he used his teeth. The blood of Rick's family painted Rick's timbers and of their bones he made a shack. Taking a last look at the colors and the pitches and the locations of his shrinking black Rick sniffed and fell to the carpet with a crash that brought down crazy every thing in the house and then the house. No, Rick! You must live for yourself, please! See the sky is lit with blue light. But for Rick the sun grew and grew and he couldn't look up much anymore. From his eyes and his mouth flowed his blood, a relief, flowed his blood; in his ears, a big stain.