FOOD by Ray Nelson

Added: 2026-05-13

[00:00:05][music] [music] [music] [music] >> Food by Ray Nelson.

[00:00:42]The author of the fast-paced short story which inspired the 1988 movie They Live gives us this no less crazy story which was published in the February 1965 issue of Gamma magazine.

[00:00:57]Read by Darrell T. Smith II from my channel Quasar Spectra.

[00:01:04]Food "They're crawling!"

[00:01:09]screamed the crewman writhing in his bunk, trying desperately to escape the straitjacket that held him prisoner.

[00:01:16]"They're crawling under my skin!"

[00:01:19]Ben saw one of them move in the vein in the crewman's neck.

[00:01:24]They had grown. They thrived on Earthman's blood. One little sting like a mosquito bite, and a few weeks later a man's bloodstream was full of the little monsters. Thousands of them drinking blood and growing.

[00:01:38]The crewman looked at Ben for a moment, not screaming.

[00:01:42]"Kill me."

[00:01:43]he said. "For God's sake, kill me."

[00:01:47]Ben went up front to the control room and came back with his laser pistol in his hand. It would only take one clean blast.

[00:01:55]"But then I'll be alone."

[00:01:58]thought Ben, licking his lips.

[00:02:00]The crewman was screaming again. No longer words, just howls and screeches and ghastly gargling sounds. His agony had passed the point where it was really human and become to the onlooker an almost funny mock agony. The silly suffering of a clown who sits on a tack or gets hit in the face with a pie.

[00:02:22]"Goodbye, old man."

[00:02:24]whispered Ben, and shot him through the head. The laser beam left a scorched hole that smoked a little. The cooked flesh didn't bleed.

[00:02:33]Now that the crewman was dead, the little bastards would start to eat their way out. Ben had seen it happen before.

[00:02:39]The flesh all covered with moving pimples. The tiny heads breaking through. The creatures drying off their wings and taking flight. Ben closed the door and sealed it.

[00:02:51]Now that the screaming had stopped, it was awfully quiet in the ship. Ben looked out a porthole. It was dark except for the blue phosphorescent glow of the cannibal roses.

[00:03:02]"Earth-type planet."

[00:03:05]he said bitterly. "They call this an Earth-type planet."

[00:03:10]There was no longer any question of repairing the ship. Even if he could make it seaworthy again, Ben knew one man could never fly it alone, let alone guide it all the long empty way home.

[00:03:23]Idly he tossed the laser pistol from one hand to the other, thinking, "Might as well use it on myself and get it over with."

[00:03:31]But even now, when there was no hope at all, when death waited calmly a few weeks, a few days, perhaps a few hours away, he could not bring himself to take his own life.

[00:03:44]"If they want to kill me, they'll have to do the job themselves."

[00:03:48]he thought. "I won't do it for them."

[00:03:52]A firebird swept by, sparkling like a 4th of July rocket.

[00:03:57]The radio went on sending its recorded cry for help. Gravitic waves traveled faster than light, but it would still be over a year before the message would reach Earth.

[00:04:08]It was a waste of time.

[00:04:09]Ben knew it was, but he let it go on broadcasting anyway. Tomorrow morning he would send in another report, then see if he couldn't figure out some halfway decent way to spend the last days of his life.

[00:04:23]He went to bed and slept soundly in spite of occasional mild earthquakes. He was used to them.

[00:04:30]Daylight woke him.

[00:04:32]He made his report half asleep, then fixed breakfast for himself. The decks had tipped a little during the night, probably because of the earthquakes, but Ben refused to think about that or anything else until after he finished his breakfast.

[00:04:46]An apple from the ship's hydroponic gardens and some coffee was all he could get down.

[00:04:52]His stomach had stopped functioning properly a long time ago.

[00:04:57]He took a long time over his coffee, and when he was finally finished, he went to the porthole and looked out.

[00:05:03]The two suns, one small and brilliant, the other large and dull red, cast strange conflicting shadows on the field of cannibal roses that wrestled there, locked in a slow-motion fight to the death, tugging at each other, twisting each other, strangling each other, clawing each other with their thorns, trying with their great fan-like leaves to cut each other off from the sunlight.

[00:05:30]Now and then one of the weaker flowers was pulled up by the roots, writhing frantically, and torn apart by its neighbors. The blossoms of the roses were dull pinkish white like albino flesh laced with a delicate pattern of red veins.

[00:05:46]In the red-violet sky above floated the living balloons, huge skin bags of gas that drifted in the breeze with octopus-like tentacles dangling down to clutch whatever they could.

[00:06:00]"All these months I've been here."

[00:06:03]thought Ben. "And what do I know about this planet? Nothing. I've seen those balloons every day, yet I know no more about them now than I did the first time I laid eyes on one."

[00:06:16]The deck shifted again. The ship was developing a serious list to starboard.

[00:06:22]"I'd better have a look." thought Ben.

[00:06:25]He wore his full space armor when he went out, including the airtight helmet with a supply of compressed air from the ship.

[00:06:33]That he had always done this, in spite of the fact that the air of the planet was breathable, was one of the reasons he was still alive. The other reason was luck, because many men had died in spite of all the precautions they could possibly take.

[00:06:49]There were things on this planet that could secrete fluids that ate through even the theoretically impregnable space armor, and other things that somehow managed to get inside a suit without leaving a mark. Even the whole of the ship itself was being gradually eaten away by an invisible something, probably some kind of microorganism.

[00:07:10]Outside the illusion of silence was shattered. Outside he could hear the flowers singing, a choir of endless air-raid siren wails that wandered up and down the scale as aimlessly as the moans of dying men.

[00:07:25]He could hear the sudden whistling hiss of escaping gas from the living balloons above and the sinister bass drum thumps of an unidentified something under the ground.

[00:07:36]One of the things that was so unnerving about it all was that the majority of noises that Ben heard were still, after all this time, completely unexplained.

[00:07:46]That clank sound, like a hammer on an anvil.

[00:07:50]He recognized that.

[00:07:52]It was made by a little beetle-like creature less than a half inch long.

[00:07:56]Strange that such a small animal could make such a loud noise.

[00:08:01]He had only once smelled this field of deadly singing roses, but he would never forget that smell.

[00:08:07]It was a funeral smell, like rotting flowers and corpses.

[00:08:12]He walked through the knee-high cannibal flowers to the rear of the ship, and even as he did so, the ship moved again, its rear end sinking.

[00:08:21]Then he stopped abruptly, reaching for his laser pistol. There was a claw reaching up out of the ground and clutching the tail fins of the ship. And there was a digging going on under the stern, dirt and flowers being tossed up out of a hole that grew larger by the second. Ben fired his laser pistol at the claw, and it disappeared abruptly into the earth, but the digging went on without letup.

[00:08:47]The nose of the ship began slowly rising as the tail started sinking. Ben noticed that the earth under his feet was moving toward the hole, and that his feet were sinking in it as if it were quicksand.

[00:08:59]Not a moment too soon, he turned and ran, not stopping until he was a good quarter mile away.

[00:09:05]There he stood, panting feverishly, as the ship slowly sank into the ground and the struggling flowers closed up the hole.

[00:09:15]There was a forest or jungle or something several miles to the north, and he set out in that direction. It was a rather arbitrary choice, since no matter what direction he went in, there was nowhere really to go.

[00:09:28]In the forest were animals which might prove edible, though up until now everything on this planet had turned out to be poisonous.

[00:09:36]When his supply of compressed air ran out, he switched to filtered air from the atmosphere. He knew all too well that there were viruses of some sort on this planet that the filter wouldn't stop, but he had no choice.

[00:09:50]It was odd, but he was not frightened.

[00:09:54]Not even unhappy.

[00:09:56]The certainty of death was almost reassuring.

[00:09:59]Before, when there had been some slim chance of escape, he had been frightened and miserable, but now death was something he could count on, could depend on, a trusted friend who would not be late to an appointment.

[00:10:13]He even grinned and whistled to himself as he walked along, then actually burst into song. We're off to see the wizard, the wonderful wizard of Oz.

[00:10:24]Days were long on this planet, more than three Earth days long at this time of year.

[00:10:30]Half-jokingly, Ben set up as his goal that he would survive until both suns set.

[00:10:36]They would unquestionably get him after dark, but with luck and caution, he might very well last until then.

[00:10:43]Small, insect-like creatures attacked him at intervals, but could not penetrate his armor.

[00:10:49]Harpoon plants with poison stingers struck at him now and then, but the armor stopped them, too.

[00:10:55]He could hear things moving in the tangled mass of flowers and plants around his feet, but very rarely did he see anything.

[00:11:03]Once he saw a little furry animal which watched him for a moment, then darted out of sight, and once a flock of birds rose up ahead of him with cries so like those of a human baby that Ben shuddered.

[00:11:17]After a while, he came to the edge of a small sand pit.

[00:11:21]He was about to cross it when he saw the sand move. It rose and fell regularly as if there was something under it breathing. Ben aimed his laser pistol at the moving mound and fired. The Earth screamed and heaved violently, then lay still, and the sand in the mound darkened with a damp green stain.

[00:11:42]Ben was so intent on the slowly spreading stain that he did not see the balloon creature drifting swiftly and silently toward him until it was too late.

[00:11:52]A tentacle snapped around him like a bullwhip, jerking him off his feet and up into the air, knocking the laser pistol out of his hand. The balloon expanded and began to rise rapidly while Ben dangled, kicking and struggling at the end of the tentacle.

[00:12:08]Far below, the double shadow of the balloon creature swept over the fields and low hills, growing steadily more distant. Ben managed to get his knife out and hacked at the tentacle a little, but it was as hard as steel cable.

[00:12:24]Besides, he thought, glancing down, it's a long drop.

[00:12:30]The cable was barbed, but fortunately the barbs were not strong enough to penetrate Ben's armor. Like a lazy pendulum, he swung back and forth, back and forth, as the ground below seemed, with increasing altitude, to pass by slower and slower.

[00:12:48]Great view up here, he muttered irrelevantly.

[00:12:52]He could see the place where the spaceship had been, and also lakes and rivers and forests and distant snow-capped mountains. If it had not been for the odd lightning, it would have looked very much like some stretch of open country on Earth.

[00:13:07]The infernal din of the singing flowers and the noises of unidentifiable creatures died away until there was nothing to break the silence but an occasional hiss of escaping gas and the rustle of the tentacles as they danced snake dances in the air.

[00:13:24]Ben studied the bulbous monster that held him captive. There wasn't much else he could do.

[00:13:30]The gas bag was ribbed with muscle, and to go down, the creature seemed to contract that muscle, compressing the gas inside or let some of the gas out through a jet in its downward side. To go up, the creature relaxed its muscles and allowed the gas bag to expand with the lighter-than-air gas that seemed to be manufactured inside it somewhere.

[00:13:53]At the moment, the balloon seemed to be seeking an altitude where the winds were traveling in the direction it wished to go. There were jet streams in the upper atmosphere, and by making use of them, the balloon creature could probably move quite rapidly from one part of the planet to another.

[00:14:10]Off to the west, Ben heard a strange banshee cry, and when he looked in that direction, he saw some sort of huge bird gliding toward him. It had a wingspan of more than a hundred feet, but its body seemed incongruously small, and it moved its wings very little.

[00:14:28]As it grew closer, the balloon creature raised its tentacles high, except for the one that held Ben, apparently protecting its gas bag. The bird continued to approach, only quickening its pace a little. It flapped its awkward wings a few times to gain altitude, then dove at the balloon.

[00:14:47]It had a unicorn horn in the center of its forehead, and it was only too frighteningly clear to Ben what that horn was for.

[00:14:55]The balloon creature was too quick, however, and the bird's guttural shriek of triumph was strangled in its throat by a barbed tentacle.

[00:15:03]Screaming and thrashing its vast wings, the bird dangled under the balloon, now and then striking Ben and sending him spinning in wild, dizzy arcs.

[00:15:14]Suddenly, the balloon creature raised Ben high above its gas bag and held him there a moment.

[00:15:19]The damn thing is going to use me as a weapon, he muttered as he plunged down toward the great bird with rapidly increasing velocity.

[00:15:28]The impact knocked him out and broke the crystal in his faceplate, leaving his face unprotected.

[00:15:35]He dreamed then, but the nightmares that came in his sleep were mild compared to those that awaited him when he awoke.

[00:15:43]In fact, he could not clearly tell where dream and reality were separated. At one moment, he was dreaming that something soft and suffocating was covering his face. At the next, he opened his eyes and saw that it was true.

[00:15:57]By the gentle rocking motion he felt, he knew he was still being carried by the balloon creature, but now he was no longer swinging beneath it like a fish on a line.

[00:16:07]He was inside it.

[00:16:10]He tried to move, but found that he was bound in a sort of cocoon so tightly that he couldn't move even his fingers.

[00:16:18]His nose and mouth were blocked with something soft and sticky like cotton candy, and in the dim, ruddy light that filtered in through the thin walls of the creature's body, he could see the cotton stuff flowing into his armor with a gentle, pulsing motion.

[00:16:33]There were other creatures there, too, hanging in cocoons on the stomach wall.

[00:16:39]Ben called it a stomach for lack of a better word, and when one of them gave a little whimpering cry, Ben knew that they were still alive.

[00:16:49]The cotton candy flowed into them at the top of the cocoon, white, and flowed out again at the bottom, red, with little bits of flesh and half-digested internal organs mixed in.

[00:17:02]They're being eaten alive, thought Ben.

[00:17:06]And so am I.

[00:17:08]He then became aware that his heart was no longer beating, his lungs no longer breathing, yet he was alive and conscious.

[00:17:17]The blood that pulsed through his body was moved by another heart. The oxygen that sustained life in his tissues came from other lungs, the heart and lungs of the balloon creature.

[00:17:29]All through his body, he could feel things moving in little thrills and tingles and occasional sharp pains as hair-thin barbed tentacles carefully detached his liver, his bladder, his veins and arteries, dragging them slowly up inside his body and out through his mouth. He could even clearly feel the flesh and muscle around his bones being loosened, and the bones themselves being gently, ever so gently, removed.

[00:18:01]His sense of smell was drowned in the intolerable smell of hydrogen, but all he could hear was the occasional hiss of escaping gas and the stifled moans and groans of the other creatures.

[00:18:14]Ben would have given anything to have been able to faint, or at least go mad, but the creature controlled the secretions in Ben's blood and would not permit him the luxury of anesthesia, not even when the tentacles began probing into the gray matter of his brain.

[00:18:31]Hallucinations came then, more real than reality. Sudden flickering visions of endless sky and the ground far below, the feel of warm updrafts and the wetness of rain.

[00:18:44]It was as if Ben were looking at the universe through the eyes of the balloon creature, as if he were the creature.

[00:18:51]He felt himself drifting downward, hungrily reaching out with his tentacles for plants and animals, seizing them, rising with them into the sky.

[00:19:01]He felt himself drawing his prey into his stomach, exploring the bodies of his prey while keeping them still alive.

[00:19:09]He felt himself digesting everything, everything but the central nervous system. This he saved to devour in another way.

[00:19:18]This, the mind, the spinal column, the central nerve clusters, he connected by slender nerve fibers to his own brain so that he could read his victims' minds, swallowing their memories and habits and personality traits, making them all part of his own vast, unthinkably ancient mind.

[00:19:40]Then, Ben seemed to be a part of that mind, to be the heir of the experience of a billion lifetimes in a billion different bodies. Now, he was a small, insect-like now a bird, now a kind of snake, a fish, a singing cannibal rose, a huge burrowing creature. Thick and fast came the cloud of memories, the sea of souls, until it almost seemed to Ben that he was all life, past and present on the planet.

[00:20:13]All the myriad lives blended again into one, and Ben Singer drifted through the lower stratosphere. His tendrils limp and hanging, calmly digesting what he had learned.

[00:20:25]"Soon it will be time to bud again."

[00:20:28]thought Ben, dreaming of the tiny balloon creatures that would slowly form in the walls of his huge gas bag stomach. Each one an exact duplicate of his father-mother, each one bearing all the parent's memories and mind intact.

[00:20:44]He was not going to die after all, not then or ever.

[00:20:50]Dimly, he was aware that there was another spaceship landing on his planet.

[00:20:54]A part of his consciousness recognized it as one from Earth.

[00:20:59]Hungrily, he moved toward it and the food it contained.

[00:21:10]>> [music] >> You've been listening to pre-1990s speculative fiction readings with a highlight on science fiction by Darrell [music] T. Smith II.

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[00:21:31]Thank you so much for your time and your imagination.