Mind Webs - The Funny Farm - Robert Bloch

0:30We already know you ! Miou Weth When ya e唯 Welcome to half hour of miou where Short stories from the world and quite a little bit.

1:58This is Michael Hansen. The Mind Web Story this time comes from the book edited by Kirby McColley, titled, Night Kill, published by Avon. This is Robert Block, The Funny Farm. In order to comprehend Joseph Sattelay's obsession with a comic, one would have to be old enough to remember the 20s. More than that it would be necessary to remember the decade as Sattelay himself did, in such a subjective week or all as impossible even for a psychiatrist. Now this isn't to say that a psychiatrist wouldn't have helped, and these were as a matter of moral or less common knowledge around Redford, but Joe Sattelay was a real weirdo, and inevitably his place of residence was dubbed The Funny Farm, because of the comics, naturally the thousands upon thousands of comics, Sattelay collected. It was generally conceited that Sattelay would pay a ridiculously high price

3:00for any opens of multi-colored paper to pay for the addicts, little Jimmie, salesman Sam or Polly and her pals. Obviously he must be some kind of a nut, spending all his money on such foolishness would like, so people who said that Sattelay's generally paused here because they didn't know what it was like. Only Sattelay knew that. It was like buying a ticket to the past, and that of course was exactly what Sattelay was doing. He was time-traveling, returning via the medium of comics to the very best, most comfortable portion of that past, which for him was the 20s. Not the roaring 20s mind you. The 20s didn't roar if Sattelay or for anyone else's when his childhood during that dim and dusty decade. Actually it was a very quiet time, except for the Fourth of July. There were less crowds, less classic, even the movies were silent.

4:00And if one family actually owned or the super-Hatrodine radio, it was heard through the medium of earphones. The roaring would have hurt your Sattelay's ears for your head, not for that, even the earphones were in trouble. As a result, Sattelay was frequently asking from school, and almost always away from the other children in the playground, and like in last year's a silence to the loners, a great witness. Perhaps that's why the comics became so important to him. He'd actually learned to read from the funny papers, and his most pleasant memories centered around those long, lonely afternoons and the addicts for the collection of Sunday comic scenes that he started to see in the 1980s and 2007. The funny papers were actually funny in those days. There were happy hooligans with a tin can on his head, tinless, andy-gump, and wich Uncle Ben from Australia. Binding Google in the faithful spot plug,

5:01full, mismatched, comfortable, loose, and too loose, cross-eyed eggy, and an Napoleon-hats-like, you might and dumpy, but wich stood yet, into the mall. Followed him pacefully throughout the weeks, and reveled with them when they cut loose, and full-page colored on Sundays. When jigs took off his shoes, and sneaked out on mayhem, or if a bit norgy of corned beef and cabbages of any moors, he took total long at his heels. When moan mollum's escorted Lord's flesh bottom to the pool hall, he went with them. When crazy cats, who've warded across the lunar-like landscape of never-neverland, he was there. But bats flew, go test, papered, and saw-size, animal-supposed, balloon-in-case, lightbulb, sigma-biarajin, of ideas and empty heads. Here was a world of fancy, with a language and logic all its own, a world of escape and encampment. And somehow, because Josadaly was likely cut off

6:02on the actual world beyond the Wayne Street, through frost-flugged attic windows, somehow the funny pages served him as a guide to reality. His effort there was the continent of Hanson-Fritz, where a taxi-jummit drove to the Cannibal King, who wore a top hat in the monocle. And the herring brothers pursued barrettical careers to the point of idiocy. The later, he became the realm of chardon, of the cantor and numa, and god-bought-god, a golden line. His ideas of higher education derived from herald-teens, his notion of the business world, from when he went along till he was a toilet. Even in the early 30s, his impression of life in the big city was based on the export of Dick Tracy, or the sister-to-the-label Mary and Dick C. Dugan. A psychiatrist might make a case where steadily his lifelong bachelorhood from the attitudes implanted by a faithful reading of Mr. and Mrs. Tucci Pescaper,

7:02and the tragic comedies enacted by George Bungal. A psychiatrist might make quite a case indeed, wanting out a concentration on brightly colored creatures in the darkened attic, and serve to induce a form of auto-ethnosis. And preoccupation with the idealized childhood of a specific, or even an hour-cinded, may make the reality pale by comparison. And certainly, as a psychiatrist, might sense a peril in two great and identification with the dream world of Little Nemo, Buck Rogers, Flagstroding, Winter Valley, and Mandrake the Magician, and at the very end of the cycle, Superman. Not that Joe steadily emerged from comic reading at the end of the 30s as a Superman character himself with anything he was highly the evil of a clock tent. He became a bookkeeper, then an accountant, but was still particularly after the death of his friends,

8:02more of a loner than ever. And his collection grew all through his years in the city, he lived in a boarding house without New York City and New Zealand's companionship for the major group. But he still retained a family home outside Redford, and it was here that he dispatched the comics he acquired through bookstore browsing and mail order acquisitions. It was here following his retirement in the late 60s that he settled down to what, you know, could be described as a second childhood. Pre-matured's amnesty might be as like Jack would got notice. As for Saturday himself, he knew only that he felt safe and comfortable away from a world where everything had changed and even the comic strips weren't funny anymore. He didn't like that world. He didn't even like his own image in the mirror that reminded him too much of Casper and Milktoast. But he did like sitting in the attic where last-line walls, houses, and humanities,

9:05and reading once again the adventures of Little Walk and Annie and Joe Paluchin, a caring and api-man. Once a week, he went into Redford for groceries and more importantly, he went to the bank to hide with store in the barbush house. People in town who had a somewhat vague impression of him and his impression of them was equally remote. Somehow, he graduated senior with Graw and to a realm of his own, where all problems were neatly compartmentalized in panels fixed that world of bright colors, science-based and messages, the world of easy laughter and innocent adventure which comforted him by satirizing the high-scary realities of the world in his outside-us window. He could laugh at that reality with the little king or even a man. Sometimes he laughed out loud and went on occasion he did turn on his small screen television set for the news. He found himself watching the war footage

10:05in that window in Wimpy's Ancient Dictimus. But he went him white. Go suddenly, often green the box comics now, and it first took Wethers just considered him to encounter AB Cababola, Daddy Warbuck and the familiar surroundings that was on home. But after a time he became accustomed to it. And in fancy, he could picture the dark halls of the Wembley-Nold House people and the colorful companions as useful imagining it. Again, a psychiatrist might have a field day with a man whose erotic clansies revolved around the earliest intonation of Dixie Dugan. But then what would a psychiatrist know about the childhood and the mind of an elderly, brain, and central? The mind is merely an instrument of perception and if it chooses to proceed the dream more vividly in the reality, it will be the same.

11:06This is an error. Satelly loved his comic-ship companion and he came to feel that they loved him. They lived together quite intently and if Satelly wasn't the only one, he preferred the image for that of Tathapur Nokso, the quiet, inter-crustful man in the mirror and the empty daily routine that has both the comics collection and the audio with treated into his age with the main inserts of Lungo last year. So what went on in Tathapur's house was really of no concern to the psychiatrist at all. The only person who was concerned with Lenny Morgan and Lenny Morgan was no psychiatrist. He was only a thief. But again, good one, Morgan told him again. If he hadn't been so gritty, it wouldn't be hot. He wouldn't have come to the back of the boombox at the same time. Paul Timber makes a good hiding place when Morgan figures with a drag.

12:06He was just about ready to take his chances and cut back to town when he heard about his shows that had leoned his comic collection. The first item of value of it a good-to-be field is information. And the information that Morgan obtained through listening to a tense conversation and the barbershop sounded valuable enough. He absorbed it in the way a computer absorbs data. An old man living alone in a big house on a back-world three miles outside of town. No friends, well-friced for money the friends at all fully are collection. My thousandth of comic. Out there. Comic. That was the opposite word. Study research and motion, signaling all systems go. Because Morgan's computer like mine already had data stored away on Comic.

13:08It was his business to know about hobbies and hobbies. I take you every stamp collection or better still don't take you. There what the owner laid out for it over the years. Tense is either the dealer will only offer one tenth of the catalog value except for his new inside. And if the collection contains wearities, and there's a plethora around it, the big off-weighed is going to pour the buy. This is a risky, slimy color, Wemblant in our unit, you know, it's once we're in front. And the big stamp motorist knows who owns this scary, valuable material. It spots Morgan into his ring here every time. Their butters, particularly gold and silver. But a good haul's bulky, heavy, hard to handle. You need to send them out of manpower it would take the robber mint. So coins are out. Morgan never cuts coins. Stating sculpture and paper. Again, these items are too heavy. Too awkward to load.

14:08The developers start to wait till you dump them. You will the way is good. But for that you need a plant. The plant will still be blind. Morgan didn't approve of anyone stealing from a fellow professional, particularly, that fellow professional, was himself. But comic, now you're with it. You've seen the list in the ad and collected magazines at first you couldn't believe it. Little kids, 10 and 12 years old, playing 150 bucks with a old Batman or Wonder Woman comic, the soul for a dime, where first came up here a year ago. It was a big business. But the merchandise was small. Portable either the handle. And the either the suppose there was no way of placing a no question that. You could even title it by mail if you liked. One man could feel a station wagon with a load worth of fortune. Morgan had a station wagon. So there were no problems. But just to make sure he checked everything out.

15:10And the other thing is that the trucker, he checked everything out. It took him another week, cooped up and the crummy little motel over the red jacket of Japs here, and then the exact location of the world in this for the fall, hunting season. What are you sucking out? Even in the fly joint hanging around a barbecued house, you know, if you've been in the tavern, always keeping your ears open, you found out what he needed to know. Joe saturday, didn't hunt. Probably not even a good man would have done a good man would have done a sense of words and even a own one. And he wouldn't have any hunting dogs either. Or any dogs at all, because it was important for obvious reasons. Another bit of good news turned up along the way. Old Saturday was death. He was hearing a word. He wasn't much good either. When he came to town on his basis, I got groceries for the week he had trouble hearing the question. Morgan got that word from a convocation and he used a drop down in the storage shelf. But he didn't stop there.

16:10He waited until his death and the one in front of himself across his street to waste. He's doing that along about five or five. It's a beautiful old clinic. I don't know if you're there, but he's in space. He's going to be there. He's going to climb down. He was hearing me at all right. When he headed into the store, Morgan knew he spotted the clown. Morgan noticed he had trouble lugging his groceries bag when he came out. And then he was pretty feeble. And that was the two of you, there'd be no trouble handling him. When Centrelay drove on to town, Morgan clailed and in his face, Morgan said the good distance behind. But he followed him like to the good side road where the premise turned off and in the woods. Morgan didn't go after him and said he drove on, checking the location of the nurse, maybe he's in the suffering that the next one house was almost a mile away. Just passed it with the Johnson, the main island. But it's perfect. And it was even more perfect by the time he had a Friday night world around. Morgan checked out of the motel at noon, tips the woman who did the cleaning,

17:11makes her a mostly in a motel class knew that he had anxious to get back to the loose before dying. And then he cut off for the main highway, crew, 30 miles to a fly, but I'm not called pretty. And took a room at the motel. And at the time they run it half an hour, and they had to send a movie coffee for dinner, at no point eating a heavy meal. And then the next day, we were going to work in Wittigland at 10 o'clock. Nobody noticed him pull out of the motel parking place and he's better old back to the highway and plenty of time to get the steadily to place by 11 o'clock. And with exactly a never-modct when he turned the station wagon onto the good road. The night was dark and with the feel of rain and the air, which could be another grace from Morgan. And the day of rain would walk out the tire track. And since the old fella wouldn't be affected in the broken town again until next day, that day didn't six days clear. Maybe no one would get around the

18:12mission for another four or five days after that. And by then the local flies wouldn't even remember Morgan. There's always hunters coming in who kept track. So the kind of crew could more going to always bring the box. Up in the old house, the old Saturday was dreaming too. A flaky of a big bed is planted occupied in the old town. The bed he sometimes crawled into on Sunday mornings, little Joey, like we nothing to warm, comfy, cozy place between mom and papa and mama laughing. Oh Joey, not again. Please, please, papa promised he'd raise them to me. And papa kept him in the cab with dreaming of these which could have played for you. And he said, you're right, which one you want first? Herb rest, your hairy papa. And the bright pages of the funny papers done for him across the bed. Crispy, quinkly, smart, and the very rattling, rattling, something was rattling

19:12and rattling. Now, he awakened in darkness and he wasn't going to go here anymore. He was still. It was half a century later, and he couldn't give clearly, and he couldn't see at all. But there was something that really fumbled on the night stand for his hair and hair. Then he threw back the covers and swung his feet to the floor. He fitted them into his flickers. He stood up, moving towards the lightest in the door. Before he reached it, the beam of a flashlight appeared across his eyes and a voice buzzed in his ears. All right, don't move. That early, good move. He stood stuck still to tell him that the very man holding the flashlight. Who wants to eat? Why does he towering so? He didn't ask the question aloud. And if he had Morgan wooden of an accident, because Morgan was a tank. It was all going according to plan. And there were no hitches anywhere along the line. No dogs, no trouble forcing the door down.

20:12There is no trouble finding this way here to the bedroom. He could have held no trouble with his old fuss in the night-gown. And night-gown for Christ. Who weighs them nowadays? Maybe that's what was bucking in. This wasn't nowadays. This house, the damn twin of the city downstairs, like something out of a city, is a robot catalog for 1920s. The drapes and the rods all moldy and everything smelling away it did musty and old. And God, he could tomb. Morgan wanted no part of this place. And as soon as he could split the bedding, so was time to pop the question. Where are they? You'll just blink at them and get the head and head. Morgan gave him a swipe across the side of his forehead with heavy flashlights. He repeated, where are they? And this time he got complete a country. Where are they?

21:13What? That comic. I want to see the comic. Satelly's mouth stopped open and for a moment he looked like a little kid. There's no way lift's wobbling when he's getting ready to ball. But then Morgan lifted the flashlight again and old satellite got the message. Upstairs, there upstairs, in the attic. Let's go. What do you? Morgan, part of him in the ribs with the flashlights and satellite cut off fast. He turned and tuffled out of the bedroom and down the hall. Morgan was like behind him standing the flash beam over the floor board in the back city and it's there when the flash creeps out of the under his feet. And an answering echo came from above, but it didn't matter. There was no one else to do. They were alone in the house. Alone in the Bayesian being the room with his feet and his flat of roof alone in the darkness.

22:13The beam of the flashlights and satellite cut off the walls. Morgan saw the racks. Roll upon roll of racks. The kind of thing he remembered seeing in the public library when he was a kid. Newsom saw old newspapers or something. He brought it setterly forward. He turned the flashlights towards the nearest rack for a pocket loop. Then he took his head. These were old newspapers. A whole damned attic with newspaper seats. Roll on roll of them. Covered with cellophane and the cellophane covered with dust. They're laying down and his rubbed his fingers across specifically feet and the color of the foot. Tuna ev'iro folks are fountains of Fox, one of those Sunday funny papers. Morgan's family flashlights. Dumb Dora, Pudy Dink, Foxy Grandfrah. They were all funny papers.

23:13He grabbed setterly's arm. All right. Where are you hiding in the comic? Settily, just did at the rack. These are the comics. Morgan twisted his arm. Not that no place was. I mean, the comics book. Books? I don't have any books. Morgan released his grip and he was staring at the lower back, flimming in the center. It was the truth. And he knew it. Settily, it's too frightened to lie. There were no books. There were no books because in the days when the old man was a kid, he used newspapers but where the old comics, and that's what he collected, was the old newspapers. Not worth a dime even though God damn junk was a book. There was nothing.

24:13Something was building inside Morgan. Something that had the birth. We start blinding with the paper from a frame. Sweating the cellophane covering and causing it to the floor, he tore another fruit. He crumpled it. Please, please, don't! But Morgan wasn't listening. Nobody listened. Nobody understood. He was wrong. He was wrong. He had his companions, his friends, for fifty years. He deserved and protected them for their lifetime. The straw in his collection was like destroying his life. The straw in his life. Settily felt the target inside of his head as the end-of-the- man just the quarter of his hearing aid. He saw the liver in ways in the face before he saw the B.V.N. drives gripping into the cord, the whip it around his neck, and then he felt the agonizing pressure against the throat.

25:13And that, fortunately, was all. But it wasn't all for Morgan, only the wave died when he was listening. Now he stood over the body of the darkness. The body crumpled on the floor, like one of those old, youth-paper-feet of the body. The attic was drasty, and then I'd win the whip-point through the paper in the rack. The whip-point wasn't we, or of course, because there was no one here but himself. The we, or the whip-point would come later when the body was discovered. Morgan knew how to prevent that. The newspaper, where the answer is the bold newspaper and the math. We moved to the rack and started to clear the cellophane covered the seat's creed of both hands. The paper rattled,

26:13and the wind rose all around him, making a rustling sound, a rustling sound, a whipped cream with a murmur of many voices. Clasp, whittle voices, angry voices, voices sounding saddles, saddles, saddles, sudden moves, rolls, and moves. Saddles, do moves. And when Morgan turned in saw them, he was not aligned. But saddles have no substance they do not creed. And now, there was a creaking of floorboards from the rack and the far corner. Morgan started to glance in that rack and as he did, he heard the attic door as lambs shot. And he did kind of poor moment until he realized it must be the work of the wind. He dropped the watered newspaper to eat clenched in his

27:13fist and spread them across the floor, whispered world and saddles footage of Morgan that's north, and we think were a match. The light fled up and then Morgan could ignore the many longer the saddles streaming forth from the rack, the saddles surrounded them in birds, in the northern world, and steps back quickly as he saw the silhouette of the tall man on the top hat, the tall man, Jerry McKean, that bore a furious resemblance to a magician's wand, he saw the outlines of the ball headed figure of the tiny tin tuftsperts that topped the thorny head. The go-tast-polyle of a must-dust man with a receiving tin, along his giant little stories, and then from the moving mass and wrestling and the little story of a small terraced-top girl with eyes widened in the fair, eyes that had no people, to open to mouth, and whisper, in for a dry,

28:13paper-thin whisper, something growled, something crumped, something spraying, Morgan's green once, and then the shadow was upon him, and then the shadow was once in whisper that he died, then there was only silence in the attic. A silence lasting for ten days, until the state police broke him in foul and satirized body with a quarter of a gerry-nade still twisted around his neck. The verdict of death-to-by-slangulation was easy to arrive at. Morgan's corpse presented a more difficult problem. He was rolled into the pile of old thomad's crypt, long, forgotten images of men break from the gitions, happy-looking, and a dump, Prince of Adrien, through the orphan Annie. But there was no crew as to how he met his death.

29:14All they could think of was that a timber wolf had bitten out his throat, but then they lacked a better leave. I might be making you. The wildest man in the world has ever ever been a better man. The wildest man in the world has ever been a better man. The wildest man in the world has ever been a better man. You heard the story of the funny farm by Robert Block. It appears in night-till stories of dispense in the horror, a question edited by Kirby McColley, and published by Avaan Bork. I am Michael Anson. Technical operation for

30:15this project by Litz Grote. Mind Wednesday is a production of W.A. Radio in Madison, a service of Miyamotorium, Louisiana.