This is one of the strangest versions of "Snow White and the Seven Dwarves" we've read. Manic and moving and slightly twisted, it's the perfect introduction to Don Webb's oddly unclassifiable fiction.

THREE DWARVES AND 2000 MANIACS.

by Don Webb.

For Bill.

I've heard it said that many people study psychiatry on the "physician, heal thyself" plan. Well, it was certainly true for me. I was neurotic in high school, psychotic in college, and saw my first padded cell during a Jung seminar in graduate school. During my postgrad research-when they let me around sharp objects again-I discovered Spencerzine, which as any well-informed reader knows, cures even the most violent forms of aberration. My wonder drug is emptying most of the mental hospitals on this planet and filling up my pockets rather well. My name is Alfred Byron Spencer, and I am known as the Prince of Psychotherapy.

When People named me the most eligible bachelor in America, something new came into my life-women. Now, I've always liked women. A lot. I liked women in high school, although I was too shy to talk to them. I liked women in college, although I believed them to be controlled by a hive-mind on Uranus. I liked women in graduate school, although I had a hard time distinguishing them from Brussels sprouts. But I did not like the women who were in love with my newfound millions. I did not like the women who were merely grateful that I had freed their minds from a thousand and one horrors. I did not like the women who were in love with the flashing cameras that followed us during our dates.

I was a very lonely guy.

So I began calling up old friends. It was a real rush trying to track them down. Oh, I know there are services that will find anyone in America for $50, but I had more fun doing it myself.

Here's a sample conversation: "Hello."

"Hello. Is this Ed Graham?"

"Yeah. Who's this?"

"Remember on the first day of the first grade when we discovered we had more Elmer's Glue than anybody-so we decided we had better stick together?"

There's a long pause, and I'm afraid I've found the wrong guy or Ed thinks I'm a nut.

"Al? Al Spencer?"

Whew.

We talk for a long while. How he is. How I am. Eventually Susan Pelham's name comes up. We'd both had a crush on her in high school. She was a year behind us.

"You remember Susan's mom died," said Ed. "And, you remember Bertha Jackdawe?"

"Only in my nightmares," I said.

Bertha was not what could be called a looker. She made up for physical ugliness by being twice as ugly spiritually. She had once set a math teacher on fire.

"Well, when Bertha's mother buried her fourth husband, she sent a note to Susan's father saying 'Let's get married-on one condition-Bertha becomes your heir, and Susan becomes our maid.'"

"You're kidding."

"So Susan's dad says he can't decide. He tells Susan to hang up an old boot with a hole in it on the wall of the garage. She's to fill it with water. If the boot holds water, he'd marry Bertha's mom. Well, the water made the leather shrink, and the hole closed up, and the boot held water. So he married Bertha's mom."

Now I hear a lot of things like that because I deal with crazy people every day. There are a lot stranger things in the suburbs than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio.

"So," I asked, "what happened?"

"Well, they all move in together. It was a pretty bad trip-some kind of scene where Susan was their slave in everything. Susan starts wearing this French maid's outfit and looking wonderful. I used to see her at the 7-Eleven picking up things for them. Bertha's around town in a fur coat. About then I moved away. I guess if it's still going on, Susan's dead of starvation or abuse by now."

We talked a little longer, and after the phone call I decided to seek after Susan. What's the use of riches or power if you can't free the occasional poor soul?

I have a couple of busy days at the Institute. A very small percentage of the world's crazies don't respond to the standard Spencerzine therapy. They need careful balancing of the secretions of ductless glands, electrolyte balance, and, above all, movie therapy. Gore films work well. The violence excites the patients, and after a while it causes the Spencerzine to kick in. So I live in the Institute, which stands like a Rhine castle atop Mt. Gainsborough here high above the town of Pleasant Valley. Myself, my small staff, and my 2000 maniacs.

After a month of trying to track down Susan on my own, I went to professionals. I was afraid I'd get hold of Bertha or her mother. I had never met Bertha's mom, but I imagined her to be as evilly formed in body and soul as her repulsive daughter.

My spies did discover that Mr. Pelham had died, Bertha had inherited the household, and that very recently Susan had been seen fleeing the house late at night.

There were rumors that something hideous had happened in the house. All the windows had been painted over-and strange smells polluted misty mornings.

There were also rumors of saints and angels in the city, of strange monetary bequests, and of monsters and toad armies . . .

Clearly my old hometown needed vast amounts of Spencerzine. So I left my castle with a small entourage, a truck full of the drug, and instructions to call me if there was any emergency.

The mayor and the chief of police were overjoyed to see me. The mayor was a gracious woman, dark and tall; her name was Beth Tillman. The chief was a short, fat, and nervous man named Louis Chang.

"You can't imagine how bad it is, sir," said Chang. "Last night a small cache of antique Spanish gold was found in a Goodwill drop-off bin, and four teenagers claimed to have seen a creature with the body of a bear and the face of a squid foraging the trash cans at Memorial Park. There's a wide-scale attack of madness, here. Can you just dump your drug in the water-like LSD in reverse?"

I told him that might be feasible; I'd need to talk with the waterworks, run some blood work on a significant cross section of the population, and check to see if madness really was stalking the town.

"But," I said, "I don't get the gold. I mean, we're talking real gold here, right?"

"The gold's real," the mayor said. "We've had it assayed, tested, numismatically typed. Gold doubloons. A popular theory is that the squid-monster has brought them up from some sunken Spanish galleon. This notion appeals to fans of a horror writer called H. P. Lovecraft and has also spawned-if you'll excuse the pun-a local industry: selling I Squidman bumper stickers."

"Well if the gold's real, why do you think people are crazy?"

"Look," the mayor said, "we've got a cargo cult worshiping a squid god in mid-America. That's crazy."

They set me up at the best hotel in town, where two days later I met the most beautiful woman in the world.

The moon silvered the swimming pool, and the hum of the air conditioners had almost lulled me to sleep when she appeared. She walked to the pool-her black hair starkly beautiful against her naked body. She plunged into the pool with a graceful arc. It was Susan Pelham.

So beautiful was she as she swam through the hotel's pool that I was afraid to move-even to breathe loudly lest the vision prove to be a dream and my actions end it. Perhaps my drug was wearing off. If so, then a madness that could bring such beauty was not a madness to be feared.

For three nights she came and swam at three in the morning, and on the third night I was waiting by the pool when she emerged wearing only the glistening second skin of chlorine-scented water.

"Susan?"

So fearful was the look she gave me that I thought she would dart away, like a frightened doe.

"Susan, it's me, Al Spencer. I've come to rescue you."

"Al? The geek?" she said sweetly, and when she opened her mouth to speak a gold coin fell onto the concrete.

Minutes later, wearing my bathrobe, she sat in my room telling her story. When she would open her mouth to begin a new sentence, another coin would fall.

"At first," she said, "I didn't mind being the maid. In fact, I kind of liked it-the whole Cinderella bit-dressing up, humiliation. I was always sort of bent that way. Dad didn't seem to mind 'cause it turned on my stepmom so much that she and Dad were always at it. I didn't really think they had cut me out of the will in favor of Bertha. I thought it was all a game.

"Then Dad died. And they chained me up and wouldn't let me go to the funeral, but they let me go to the reading of the will. Sure enough, Bertha got everything. I should have bolted from the lawyer's office right then, but I was too stunned.

"When I got home I told my stepmom that I was leaving, and she laughed cruelly and said, 'Go ahead." I realized that all I had were two shabby French maid outfits, no diploma, no driver's license. Other than a possible career of talk-show appearances, I had nothing. So I continued to play.

"My stepmom got a lot rougher after that, bruising me black-and-blue pretty often. The games got more complicated, and I think they were giving me drugs because I remember some mighty strange doings on my stepmom's part.

"One day in bleak December she gave me this little paper dress to put on, and a crust of bread to eat, and told me to go pick some strawberries. I know she wanted me to freeze to death in the snow. I decided I would go to the police, and at worst I'd wind up in some kind of institution.

"But somehow I wasn't in our neighborhood. My stepmother had done one of those weird things she could do-like when she made that boot hold water so dad had had to marry her. I was wandering through a cold and blustery forest where the snow was at least a foot deep. Eventually I saw this little house shaped like a gray toadstool.

"I knocked on the tiny door and three filthy little men popped out. They asked what I wanted, and I said as politely as I could that I was looking for strawberries. They told me to come in, and I thanked them profusely. Inside everything was dark and dirty and cold.

"The three little men asked what I had brought them to eat. I gave them the crust of bread that my stepmother had given me. Then they told me to take this ratty old broom they had and sweep their porch.

"I began sweeping away the snow and I found big, fresh, juicy strawberries there. I put as many as I could in the pockets of my paper dress.

"Then the three little men came outside. They inspected my work, and told me how glad they were to meet someone as hardworking and polite as I. Then they had a conference in their own language.

"They said they wished to reward me.

"The first one said, 'Every time she speaks, a gold coin will fall out of her mouth.'

"The second one said, 'Every day she will grow prettier and prettier.'

"The third one said, 'She will marry a prince."

"I started to tell them that the biggest reward they could give me was to let me stay with them. But when I opened my mouth to speak, a gold coin dropped out. That scared me so much I started to run. I ran and ran through the snow, and, before I knew it, I was back at my stepmother's home. So I went in, said 'Here's your strawberries,' and fainted.

"When I came to, they had one of the coins, and they had me tied up. I told them about my experiences. They made me talk and talk so they would have more coins.

"Finally Bertha said that if a simpleton like me could get such benisons, a real pro like her could rake it in. She asked me how to get to the three dwarves" cottage.

"Her mother told her not to go, but you remember how Bertha is-remember how she got into that all-boys club in high school?-anyway she talked her mom into Opening the Way to the dwarves' world. She put on her big fur coat and her mom made her some cakes and cookies to eat and she set out.

"I don't know what happened to her, but I got the feeling it wasn't pleasant. My stepmother put Bertha up in her bedroom and began caring for her night and day. She was so wrapped up in Bertha's welfare that I was able to escape.

"Thanks to the gold coins I could afford a room here, but I don't know what to do next."

Susan went back to her room and slept. In the afternoon we talked some more. I told her the story of my life since high school. It seemed kind of uneventful, after her tale. Finally I asked what I had come to ask her. Would she come back with me and be my wife?

Yes, she said, yes, yes, I will, yes.

They were showing Blood Feast when I got back to the Institute. Everything seemed normal and happy. The only changes had been cosmetic ones, like getting a new head day nurse. It used to depress me to find that the Institute ran as well without me as with me, but now I was in love, and my life revolved around Susan.

We celebrated our marriage by showing a double bill of Scum of the Earth and Color Me Blood Red and giving the patients a double dose of Spencerzine.

We loved each other, and every day Susan grew more fair (and those gold doubloons really began to pile up, too).

I didn't attend well to business, I was-for the first time-truly alive. Love is a kind of madness that tears away as much as it builds up, and Venus in her diaphanous green robes is a strange and harsh mistress. I noted only the occasional film title as the days passed into weeks and the weeks into months: Moonshine Mountain, Monster a-Go-Go, Something Weird, A Taste for Blood, The Gruesome Twosome.

Some of our patients were cured, others took their places.

Susan told me she was with child.

I had never thought of kids before, just as I had never thought that anyone would find me lovable. The second knowledge had so transformed me that I found the first to be the most magical news in the world.

I hired the best doctors and had a wing built onto the Institute with a large garden and a small lake.

I would give my child all the love I could as well as the treasures of the world-which were still accumulating at a good rate.

My son arrived. I ordered banners flown at the Institute ramparts, and I endowed a college in his name.

But my year of love had had its costs. I had neglected my patients. Some-even with massive doses of Spencerzine and all the gore movies they would watch-were not improving at all. Business questions had piled up as well. Where should I invest my money? The counting room wanted to know what to do with the pile of gold doubloons-and there was the continuing annoyance of the American Psychiatric Association's lawsuits against me for loss of livelihood.

So I turned my attention to business-putting in long and hard hours. Eventually I heard the message every husband dreads most, that my beautiful wife was ill.

I rushed to our bedroom, but the Institute's very efficient medical staff had whisked her away.

She was photosensitive, they told me, she was in quarantine.

I stood outside her darkened room-wanting more than anything to run to her to crush her to me to know that she was well to let her know how much I loved her.

I decided to enter the room, but the head day nurse almost tackled me.

"You can't go in," she said. "We think it's contagious."

My wife moaned. Something fell out of the bed. Something small, brown, and slimy. It hopped toward the door. A toad.

"As you can see," the nurse said, "it's very serious."

She turned to the toad and brought her white nurse's shoe down on the disgusting creature. An overpowering smell of corruption rose up, and I had to duck down the corridor to avoid vomiting.

Every day I would come and talk for a few minutes to the nurse. I gave her messages for Susan. I sent flowers. I prayed. I cried.

I even canceled the patients' movies. In my shameful state I wanted everyone to suffer.

Dead leaden days passed.