False Memory

Mortar and pestle. No good. The mortar was about the size of a baseball, carved out of a chunk of solid granite. You could brain someone with it. Step up behind him and swing it down hard, in a savage arc, cave in his skull.

The mortar had to go, right away, now, before Dusty came home or before some unwary neighbor rang the doorbell.

The pestle seemed harmless, but the two items composed a set, so she took both to the trash can. The granite mortar was cold in her cupped hand. Even after she threw it away, the memory of its coolness and satisfying heft tantalized her, and she knew that she had been right to dispose of it.

As she was pulling open another drawer, the telephone rang. She answered it hopefully: “Dusty?”

“It’s me,” Susan Jagger said.

“Oh.” Her heart withered with disappointment. She tried not to let her distress color her voice. “Hey, what’s up?”

“Are you all right, Martie?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“You sound funny.”

“I’m okay.”

“You sound out of breath.”

“I was just doing some heavy lifting.”

“Something is wrong.”

“Nothing is wrong. Don’t grind me, Sooz. I’ve got a mother for that. What’s up?”

Martie wanted to get off the phone. She had so much to do. So many kitchen drawers and cupboards had not yet been searched. And dangerous items, potential weapons, were in other rooms, as well. Instruments of death were scattered throughout the house, and she needed to find them all, dispose of every last one.

“This is a little embarrassing,” Susan said.

“What is?”

“I’m not paranoid, Martie.”

“I know you’re not.”

“He does come here sometimes, you know, sometimes at night when I’m sleeping.”

“Eric.”

“It must be him. All right, I know, he doesn’t have a key, and the doors and windows are all locked, there’s no way in, but it’s got to be him.”

Martie opened one of the drawers near the telephone. Among other things, it contained the pair of scissors that she had not been able to touch earlier, when she had wanted to cut the strapping tape.

Susan said, “You asked me how I know when he’s been here, were things out of order, the smell of his cologne on the air, anything like that.”

The handles of the scissors were coated in black rubber to provide a sure grip.

“But it’s a lot worse than cologne, Martie, it’s creepy…and embarrassing.”

The steel blades were as polished as mirrors on the outside, with a dull brushed finish on the inner cutting surfaces.

“Martie?”

“Yeah, I heard.” She was pressing the phone so tightly to her head that her ear hurt. “So tell me the creepy thing.”

“How I know he’s been here, he leaves his…his stuff.”

One of the blades was straight and sharp. The other had teeth. Both were wickedly pointed.

Martie struggled to keep track of the conversation, because her mind’s eye was suddenly filled with bright flashing images of the scissors in motion, slashing and stabbing, gouging and tearing. “His stuff?”

“You know.”

“No.”

“His stuff.”

“What stuff?”

Engraved in one blade, just above the screwhead pivot, was the word Klick, which was probably the name of the manufacturer, although it resonated in a strange way with Martie, as if it were a magical word with secret power, mysterious and full of grave meaning.

Susan said, “His stuff, his…spunk.”

For a moment, Martie couldn’t make sense of the word spunk, simply couldn’t connect with it, couldn’t process it, as though it were a nonsense word invented by someone talking in tongues. Her mind was so preoccupied with the sight of the scissors lying in the drawer that she couldn’t concentrate on Susan.

“Martie?”

“Spunk,” Martie said, closing her eyes, striving to push all thoughts of the scissors out of her mind, trying to focus on the conversation with Susan.

“Semen,” Susan clarified.

“His stuff.”

“Yes.”

“That’s how you know he’s been there?”

“It’s impossible but it happens.”

“Semen.”

“Yes.”

Klick.

The sound of snipping scissors: klick-klick. But Martie wasn’t touching the scissors. Although her eyes were closed, she knew the shears were still in the drawer, because there was nowhere else they possibly could be. Klick-klick.

“I’m scared, Martie.”

Me too. Dear God, me too.

Martie’s left hand was clenched around the phone, and her right hand hung at her side, empty. The scissors couldn’t operate under their own power, and yet: klick-klick.

“I’m scared,” Susan repeated.

If Martie hadn’t been shaken by fear and struggling determinedly to conceal her anxiety from Susan, if she’d been able to concentrate better, perhaps she wouldn’t have found Susan’s claim to be bizarre. In her current condition, however, each turn of the conversation led her deeper into confusion. “You said he…leaves it? Where?”

“Well…in me, you know.”

To prove to herself that her right hand was empty, that the scissors weren’t in it, Martie brought it to her chest, pressed it over her pounding heart. Klick-klick.

“In you,” Martie said. She was aware that Susan was making truly astonishing statements with shocking implications and terrible potential consequences, but she wasn’t able to bring her mind to bear exclusively on her friend, not with that infernal klick-klick, klick-klick, klick-klick.

“I sleep in panties and a T-shirt,” Susan said.

“Me too,” Martie said inanely.

“Sometimes I wake up, and in my panties there’s this…this warm stickiness, you know.”

Klick-klick. The sound must be imaginary. Martie wanted to open her eyes just to confirm that the scissors were, indeed, in the drawer, but she would be entirely lost if she looked at them again, so she kept her eyes shut.

Susan said, “But I don’t understand how. It’s nuts, you know? I mean …how?”

“You wake up?”

“And I have to change underwear.”

“You’re sure that’s what it is? The stuff.”

“It’s disgusting. I feel dirty, used. Sometimes I have to shower, I just have