The Incredible Shrinking Man Page #3

She weighs 840 pounds!

When she sits down,

she shakes and quivers

like a bowl ofjelly

on a cold and frosty morning!

See Flamo! Flamo, the Fire-eater!

Here is one of the greatest attractions

you'll ever see in your born days!

You will remember these sights

for the rest of your natural life!

Time for the big show.

I would like you to meet a few

of the exhibits here on the platform.

First we have Tiny Tina!

Here she is. 36-and-a-half inches

of feminine pulchritude.

You'll see freaks and curiosities

assembled from every part of the globe!

The most unusual aberrations

assembled under this tent!

Contrived by a tricky Mother Nature!

Here they are in all their glory!

This exhibit is not only entertaining,

it's educating...

Hello.

- Mind if I sit down?

- No. Please do.

- Don't be late, Clarice.

- I won't.

- Hi.

- Hi.

- Pass me the sugar, huh?

- Oh, sure.

I haven't seen you here before.

You with the carnival?

Oh, no, I... No.

- Just visiting then, huh?

- Yeah.

- I'm Clarice Bruce.

- My name's Scott Carey.

Hi, Scott.

Scott Carey?

I'm sorry,

maybe you don't want any company.

No, don't go.

I want you to stay. Talk to me.

- All right.

- How do you live with it, Miss Bruce?

- What do you do?

- I was born a midget.

It's the way I grew up. And now it's

happened to you and that's different.

Different? That's another

way of saying alone, isn't it?

Oh, but you're not alone now.

Still, it must be hard

to forget the way things were.

Yeah,

I'd like to burn it out of my mind.

Maybe the best way to begin

is to start thinking about the future.

- A future? In a worid of giants?

- I've lived with them all my life.

Oh, Scott, for people like you and me

the worid can be a wonderful place.

The sky is as blue as it is for the

giants. The friends are as warm.

- I wish I could believe that.

- You've got to believe that.

- Don't you?

- Yeah.

Give me time, Clarice. I'll learn.

- Oh! I'll be late for my show!

- Oh, look, can I see you again?

- Mmm. If you like.

- I would.

You know, Scott?

You're taller than I am.

May I?

Thank you.

That night I got a grip on life again.

I went back to work on my book.

It absorbed me completely.

I was telling the worid

of my experience.

And with the telling, it became easier.

- I think it's just fine, Scott.

- Do you really think so?

I'm not much of a writer.

Just tryin' to tell what it's like.

You don't know what it's meant to me,

meeting you.

- Someone who understands.

- But you're so much better now.

Thanks to you.

Aw, not to me. Yourself.

You just stopped running, that's all.

All I know is I can wake up in the

morning and want to live again.

Actually want to live.

It's a funny thing. Sometimes I begin

to think it's the worid that's changed.

- I'm the normal one

- That sounds like a good thing.

Everybody out of step but you and me.

Come on, I'll buy you a drink.

We can talk about another chapter.

What is it, Scott?

Two weeks ago I was taller than you.

You said so yourself.

- Yes, I remember, but...

- Well can't you see?

- I'm shorter now.

- Oh, Scott.

It's starting again. It's starting.

It's starting again!

Scott? Scott?

- Scott? Are you in there?

- Do you have to make such a racket?

- I told you what happens in there!

- I'm sorry, Scott. I try to be careful.

- Are you going out?

- Yes, for a little while.

- Where?

- Just to the corner. To the store.

- You'll come right back?

- Well of course I will.

Why don't you try to get some rest?

Dr Silver wants to see you tomorrow.

All right, go ahead.

Be sure the doors are locked!

Every day it was worse.

Every day a little smaller.

And every day I became more tyrannical,

more monstrous

in my domination of Louise.

Heaven knows how

she lived through those weeks.

Only I had the power to release her.

If I could find the courage

to end my wretched existence.

But each day I thought,

"perhaps tomorrow".

Tomorrow the doctors will save me.

Scott!

No. No. No.

Oh, Scott. Scott.

...drew deafening applause

when he announced that if elected

he will do everything in his power

to reduce taxes.

From Los ngeles today, a tragic story.

The passing of Robert Scott Carey.

The report of the death of the so-called

Shrinking Man comes from his brother.

Carey's death was the result of an

attack by a common house cat,

a former pet in the Carey home.

He was the victim of the most fantastic

ailment in the annals of medicine.

Thus ends the life of a man

whose courage and will to survive

lasted until the the very end.

A man whose fantastic story

was known to virtually every man,

woman and child in the civilised worid.

- Mr Carey?

- Yes?

- You may go up. She wants to see you.

- Is she all right?

The doctor gave her a heavy sedative

but it's hardly working at all.

- I see.

- I'll get that prescription filled.

- I'll be back in a minute.

- Fine.

My return to consciousness

was a plunge into a new level of pain.

I realised I had fallen into a box.

Its walls enclosed me

like some gigantic pit.

I had to escape out of the box.

Somehow I had to reach Louise,

to survive.

The stairs stretched above me

as far as I could see.

Cliff rising upon cliff.

I knew I could never scale them.

Louise!

Louise! The cellar! Look in the cellar!

Louise! Please look for me! Louise!

Eventually Louise would

come to the cellar.

Until then, I had to keep myself alive

with whatever resources I could discover

in my basement universe. And in myself.

The cellar floor stretched before me

like some vast primeval plain.

Empty of life. Littered with the relics

of a vanished race.

No desert island castaway

ever faced so bleak a prospect.

I had discovered a water supply,

and even a dwelling place.

Now, the search for food.

I knew my ill-fitting clothes

were unsuited

to the exertions that lay before me.

- You can't stay here, Louise. Not now.

- I... I don't know, Charlie.

- I don't know what I wanna do.

- Lou, let me help you.

You can stay with us,

but get out of here.

If I could just be sure.

Charlie, maybe he's hurt someplace.

- Maybe he's lost.

- We've looked everywhere. He's dead.

I'm his own brother. I wouldn't

say a thing like that if I wasn't sure.

- You saw the cat.

- All right, all right.

Charlie, have you thought

how horrible it must have been?

I just keep thinking that he needed me

and I wasn't there.

- I wasn't there.

- Louise.

You've got to get it out of your mind.

I'll never get it out of my mind.

I'll talk to the real estate people.

I never doubted that

sometime Louise would come.

I couldn't allow myself to doubt.

I had only to exist.

To search out enough food to sustain me.

I was driven by hunger.

And also by the horrible thought

that without nourishment,

the shrinking process was quickening.

I was weak and faint.

Yet I knew, in order to exist,

I must eat.

The food was still

a long climb ahead of me.

But now, stretching endlessly before me,

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes