I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream

by Harlan Ellison

Style, like taste, is resistant to lucid definition; however, both, as living things should be, are subject to constant change.

Inwardly: alone. Here. Living. under the land, under the sea, in the belly of AM, whom we created because our time was badly spent and we must have known unconsciously that he could do it better. At least the four of them are safe at last. AM will be all the madder for that. It makes me a little happier. And yet … AM has won, simply … he has taken his revenge … I have no mouth. And I must scream.

“Father … ” Person murmured in a tongue as sweet as brook water, tones like butterflies’ wings.

For a screaming instant of absolute terror he lay there flat on his back, the other side of the bed creased only by a small furrow made by his spastic arm as it had flung itself away from him; the other side of the bed that she had inhabited, now untenanted, save for the wispy end-tips of the dream, streaking away as his arm had done.