Richard Matheson
Tre millimetri al giorno

"With a shiver, he looked back at the floor. He had never resigned himself to the spider, not even in moments when he felt completely down. The horror and repulsion were too deeply rooted in him. Better not to think about it. Better not to think that by now the spider was as tall as him, and the body three times bigger, and the long black legs as thick as his legs".
_{(excerpt from Matheson's novel)}

Scott Carey is a being of tiny proportions, abandoned and forgotten by all. Not long ago he was an ordinary individual, he had an affectionate wife, a daughter, a lovely home, a cat, and a job. The cause of his current condition was provoked by contact with an insecticide altered by radiation. The effect of the chemicals absorbed by his organism negatively affected the pituitary gland that presides over body development. From that moment, his physique suffered a reduction in height of three millimeters per day.

The protagonist will be condemned to sink into a progressive and unstoppable nightmare of his existence. Millimeter by millimeter...Monstrous fears and primordial instincts arise within him in a world becoming ever more gigantic and unknown. What had always been a normal and quiet basement will transform into a horrifying theater. Thus will begin a terrible odyssey of a microscopic man, battling against daily hunger and the presence of a ghastly black spider. The spider is not just an enemy; it is a symbol of deep-seated terror with which Scott cannot coexist.

The story is structured by a temporal alternation of psychological narratives during the dramatic shrinking in the familiar environment, and that of exploration in the immense basement. The wife will initially try to help him by protecting him from the cat, now a threat, even building him a small dollhouse. But Scott has no solutions or alternatives: his is a one-way street. The tragedy for the protagonist will not only concern the continuous physical change, but especially his psychological state regarding his family and the entire world surrounding him.

Engaging from the very first lines, the writing is sharp, unstoppable, and extremely effective. The existential upheaval definitively highlights the instability of the character in an inexorable parabola towards his destiny. Matheson is without a doubt among the most prestigious writers of horror and paranoid plots. With masterful literary technique, he instills such profound anxiety into the traumatic story that the protagonist becomes credible like few others. Not only that: the excruciating vicissitudes of the character will bring him inner enrichment.

"Yes, he had a brain. And therefore he had to use it. After all, wasn't this his world now? He could determine its values and meanings. Didn't he have to establish a logic of life in the basement, he who lived in that basement?" _{(excerpt from Matheson's work)}

The author, through slow and systematic construction, manages to keep the reader enthralled from beginning to end. The book's success (Original title "The Shrinking Man", 1956) will be such that director Jack Arnold will make the film "The Incredible Shrinking Man".

"Every creative individual, depending on the degree of familiarity they have reached with their own feelings, reveals themselves in their work. Everything comes out on the written page. Any psychologist could analyze my works and obtain a good psychogram of my personal development over the years..."

Matheson is convinced of this. Not surprisingly, his stories reflect, in certain aspects, the economic difficulties that characterized his life at that time. Even the basement in which he worked served as an inspiration for this shocking novel. In this sense, a positive message could be seen for all those who, finding themselves in extreme difficulty, do not have the courage or strength to continue living. In my opinion, the work highlights the capacity for survival and adaptability of humans to unpredictable, seemingly insurmountable situations.

For Scott, another day has passed, just as his height has decreased by another three millimeters. Ever smaller, smaller, smaller, tiny, more tiny, until... A story filled with tension in which fears that we all might have are hidden.

Infinite greetings ©.