"It's a GOOD Life" (1953)

Technically, the title of Jerome Bixby's remarkable story is "It's a Good Life," but I can't italicize blog headers so caps will have to do for this otherwise flawless tale of excruciating despair. It was published first as science fiction and is still claimed as such (and now as the "weird" as well) but really it's more accurate to call it horror. For one thing, it's often quite scary, even now, and it's also at pains to be creepy and ooky. I like the way Bixby keeps associating purple with Anthony, the monster 3-year-old with "a bright, wet, purple gaze." I like how there's no hope for anything rational with him for years, until Anthony is older and understands more. In the time of this story, he is merely an infant's id, with strange deadly powers. He is telepathic and able to change reality at will. In fact, the small Ohio town where it takes place (don't the best ones always take place in small Ohio towns?) no longer appears to be connected to planet Earth. Or perhaps Anthony destroyed planet Earth and the town is all that's left. It exists now next to "nothingness." Anthony the tot is not so much evil—though he might be evil—but more an infant struggling with his development and prone to infantile rages. But he also has these powers. He's shown doing things like playing with a rat in the basement and then growing bored and making the rat eat itself alive. He can just do things like that. He likes music but he doesn't like singing, instantly destroying anyone he hears doing so. The townsfolk have to learn by trial and error what Anthony likes and doesn't like. There's a graveyard in the corner of the cornfield where the results are buried. Anthony sends lots of things and people directly there. He's a lot like any 3-year-old, which is the profound hook to this story. When does a human start to become civilized? Age 3 is still pretty early. Anthony is already a loner, operating a kind of nature preserve, where he communes with the swamp creatures and makes life better for them. Basically Anthony has all the powers of the Old Testament God, which is also what is so terrifying about the story—its insidious familiarity. How do you make this God happy anyway? He is a jealous God, doesn't He say so Himself? But I digress. I read this story when I was a kid and it was one of a handful that got under my skin and kept me up late at night a lot and made me sweat from helplessness remembering them in the daylight. I see now why—it's just really well done, bleak, unrelenting, disturbing, shocking, ever-deepening. It was even my favorite episode when it became part of the Twilight Zone movie in the '80s—and the 1961 TV original with Billy Mumy and Cloris Leachman is not bad either. The Simpsons did a treatment of it too. But anyway, that's the situation—the dwindling population of humans is intent on placating Anthony until he comes to reason, which could be 20 years or never. He can read their minds so they have to keep their thoughts pure, which isn't easy as you can imagine. They mumble a lot. It seems to help. They keep everything upbeat. The story is desolate, strange and disorienting. Anyone acquainted with a 3-year-old is sure to get the horror of this little masterpiece right away.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents Stories for Late at Night, ed. Robert Arthur (out of print)
The Weird, ed. Ann and Jeff VanderMeer
Read story online.