Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 71 — page 37: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

AUTHENTIC SCIENCE FICTION Her dress was torn, she was dirty, and she was quite mad. She looked at Winter wildly. “What did you do with Souness ?”’ he asked quietly. She giggled. ““You’ll never guess.” She thought, and remembered something. ““Souness? George? He’s dead,”’ she told Winter. Sud- denly she pitched on the floor. It wasn’t the black moss—at any rate, not prin- cipally the black moss. She Jay and looked at him. Then she began to scream. She writhed in an effort to get up, and couldn’t do it. If she had been sane she could have done it in a dozen different ways. She seemed to be trying to flip herself to her feet with her stomach. Unhurriedly, Winter reached for his gun. He looked along it. “Yes, please,” she said suddenly, eagerly, breaking off her screaming. But he knew that didn’t relieve him of any responsibility. She still looked like Pam. He fired once. He was 36 sorry about the noise. The others would hear it and would never know what it meant. Those who were most curious would be afraid to — leave their couches, and Mary and Bob, who would know there was still plenty of time, would neither move nor teil the others it was safe. Esther was dead. He won- dered whether to move her, decided not to. She was pretty again. The bullet had sped through her hair, and a last jerk had cast a golden cloud over the wound, ‘so that it was invisible from where he sat. There was a lot still to think about, and he didn’t mind doing it while gazing at a girl who looked like Pam. He thought. He had time to get everything in order. That seemed important. But pre- sently he was lighting his last cigarette, He knew that from the time it took to light it. He was sorry about that. But his throat was getting thick anyway—and not be- cause of the black moss. Good-bye Tom, he said. Goodbye, you murderer, you genius... you...» conmiclsooks.com