Avon Fantasy Reader No. 13 — page 13: what you’re looking at

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

He laid his hand on the door and drew it outward. The television room was in darkness. as he had anticipated, and his wife was clearly visible from the doorway. Clearly visible, and leaning on the shoulder of another’ man! As his gaze swept the room he felt his flesh go suddenly cold. It was an optical illusion, of course—a mad, cruel hallucination caused by the astravasin in his blood-stream. | : | Yet his wife was actually whispering in the darkness as she stroked the dark, curly hair of the other man. Her head rested on his right shoulder, and he was crushing her hand in his long, virile fingers. : “My dear, my darling,” she whispered. “You understand me.” “It is glorious here in the darkness,” said her companion. Somehow the grave, mechanical tones of the speaker’s voice seemed vaguely unnatural. V67 had no clear notion at first as to the cause of this, He simply stood trembling in the doorway, resisting the evidence of his senses, and telling himself over and over that it was the astravasin, the astravasin. The drug soothed at first, but later it heightened and distorted the perceptions * of sense. What he saw was surely nothing more than a visual illusion, the figments of a drug-fevered brain. The attempt at evasion was tragically short-lived. Slowly, insidiously, the truth crept upon him, and he was shaken to the core of his being by the sickening realization that his wife had succumbed to the flatteries of that newest of fads and abominations—the sirupy-voiced male Mechanical Com- panion! 3 The horror of it was morethan he could sanely endure. With an oath he slammed the door shut, and strode fiercely into the room. His wife turned about, and screamed. Without uttering a word V67 lifted the Companion into the air and brought him down with violence on the tempered steel floor of the television room. There ensued a crash. Something tinkled in the mannikin’s chest, and a _ small revolving wheel emerged from a twisted sleeve, and rolled diagonally across the floor. With a curse V67 picked the: detestable creature up, and hurled him across the room. Never in his life had he experienced such primi- tive, unregenerate wrath. The Companion collided with the opposite wall and sank limply to the floor. As his head contacted the hard steel the record in his breast said: “Your husband does not esteem you as I do. I see you enwreathed in roses, bedewed in mists of glory. Your lips are like a lotus-flower, and the touch of your hand is a healing benison, When you are beside me the moon’s splendor is enhanced tenfold, and all the stars of heaven sing for me.” V6/ turned slowly about. His wife was shrinking white-faced against the base of the television screen. : ~So you console yourself with a gigolo in my absence!” he cried, his lips livid with wrath. “A gig—gig-——” stammered his wife, in a frightened whisper. V67 cursed his wife’s lack of erudition. “The new male Companions are exactly like the abominable gigolos of the ancient world,” he muttered fhercely,. “A more despicable type of parasite never existed.” al COMnnicloool<S.Gomnal