Dream World May 1957 by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Urban Fantasy, Pulp
Published: 1957-05-15T04:00:00+00:00

“ident…esident…Mr. President!”

It was a loud, frightened voice, and it came closer. I sat up. My head throbbed. I. had a bump on my head. I seemed to be sitting—was sitting—on the floor alongside a bed. I rubbed my head. It hurt.

Someone knocked at the door. I stood up a little groggily. I was wearing a nightshirt. But I didn’t own a nightshirt.

I went to the door and opened it. A man stood there. He seemed relieved when he saw me. He was a tall, broad-shouldered young fellow, good-looking and official-looking. He was some kind of cop, I decided.

“You started yelling, Mr. President,” he told me. “Then there was a loud noise.”

I rubbed my head again. It still hurt. “Fell out of bed,” I said. It wasn’t my voice, but it was a voice I’d heard before. On radio, on TV, in the movie newsreels. It was the voice of the President of the United States.

“Well, good night,” I said.

“Good night, sir,” he said.

The door closed. I locked it, and sprinted back to bed, and jumped in, and pulled the covers over me.

In the morning I looked at myself in the mirror.

Not myself. Himself.

I was—it was—the President, sure enough.

I looked around the room. High-ceilinged, ornate, the paneled door about two miles off across a carpet with enough nap to hide in. I looked at the door. I studied it. All at once I didn’t want to open it. Call it stage fright, if you want. Me Scott Feller. That Miss Mellican. Me, Scott Feller, now President of the United States. The mirror told me. The mirror didn’t lie. It was a face I knew very well, but not my face. A face made familiar by the election posters and the newspapers and the newsreels. Mr. President…

I was scared. I sat up in bed, trembling. All my cocksure ideas were back there somewhere in Scott Feller’s body, whatever had happened to Scott Feller’s body. I looked at the door again. I couldn’t go through that door, 1 told myself. How could I? I didn’t know the first thing about the President’s job. I’‘d botch everything. I’d leave the country in a worse pickle than it had been in since the last administration.

Stage fright…

Miss Mellican, I thought. She got me into this. She can get me out of it.

There was a telephone on the night table. I picked it up. “Yes, sir, Mr. President,” a voice purred in my ear.

I asked for a telephone directory. I looked at the door. I stipulated that it be left outside the door. There is something quite impersonal about an operator’s voice. You can tell her anything. Ten minutes later the telephone directory arrived with a thump. Footsteps padded off. I went to the door, opened it enough to pull the directory inside, and did so. I shut the door, and locked it, and returned to bed with the directory.

I’d get that Miss Mellican on the phone, I told myself. There was nothing to worry about,

Only Miss Mellican wasn’t listed in the directory.

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