lifted at one end.
Barbara, lurching to get away from Darren, slipped.
And fell forward, her knees driving down into Joyce’s belly.
Joyce’s head jumped forward, chin poking into her throat, face rolling against her chest. Between her breasts, her head was upside down, ponytail toward Barbara, the stump of her snapped neck straight up, catching spray.
Darren roared with rage.
Barbara snatched up the head by its ponytail.
As Darren leaned forward and reached for her, she whipped Joyce’s head against the side of his face. It caved in his cheekbone and bounced off, its glass eyes flying out and shattering against the front of the tub. Darren’s eyes rolled upward. He slumped. She swung the head around and around by its ponytail, and struck him again. This time, Darren’s left eye popped from its socket and dangled by a cord. The third blow mashed it. The fourth sent teeth flying from his mouth.
‘Joyce is durable, all right, you bastard!’
She kept on bashing his head until Joyce’s broken skull parted company with her scalp. This happened while Barbara was winding up for another strike. Her weapon suddenly went nearly weightless. She cringed as airborne head bones crashed against the shower door. Some bounced off and rained down on her shoulder and back.
She threw down the sodden mop of hair.
Then she tore off Joyce’s right arm and used it on Darren until it broke apart. She had to pause and catch her breath before ripping the left arm from its socket.
She smashed it down on the collapsed rag of Darren’s face.
The arm didn’t last long.
It wasn’t easy breaking off Joyce’s legs. But she managed. They proved to be well worth the effort.
A Good, Secret Place
The new kid came up the street from the house where Eddie and Sharon used to live. We’d seen him once before, the day he moved in. Even from a distance, we’d wanted nothing much to do with him. For starters, he couldn’t have been older than about twelve. For finishers, you could tell he was a dork.
So there we were, Jim and I, playing catch in my front yard on one of those really fine summer nights just at dusk. The neighborhood was so quiet about the only sound was the hardball smacking into our mitts. And this new kid came strolling up the street.
It was pretty obvious what he had in mind. He was wearing a mitt.
Not just any mitt - a first baseman’s glove. Have you ever noticed that the real dopey kids of this world
Anyway, he didn’t come onto the lawn. He stayed at the edge of the street, off past Jim’s side, and watched us. We pretended he wasn’t there. Easy enough for Jim, since he didn’t have to look at the kid. He kept his face toward me as we fired the ball back and forth. Once in a while, he rolled his eyes toward the sky.
Other than being too young for us and wearing that stupid first baseman’s glove, the kid was dumpy. He looked like he hadn’t washed his hair for a month, and greasy strands hung down his forehead. He had a face like a pig. Fat, with little pink eyes. And a red nose that was runny, so he kept sniffing and every so often he’d stick his tongue up to lick the snot off his lip. We wore a red shirt with yellow flowers on it. It hung unbuttoned at the bottom. His belly bulged out through the gap like gray pudding. Lower down, you could see his boxers. Like he’d hitched them up, but forgotten to hitch up his pants. They were white with blue stripes. His pants, which looked about ready to drop, were plaid Bermuda shorts. They had huge, swollen pockets, and reached down to his knees. Below his fat calves, he wore black socks. He wore sandals on his feet.
I’m not joking. That’s actually what the kid looked like.
He was a real prize.
I tried to keep my eyes off him, but it wasn’t easy, the way he just stood there off to the side of Jim, watching us throw. I wished he would go away. And I felt like a jerk for ignoring him. He didn’t say anything. He just stood there, sniffing and licking his snot, and sort of smiling.
Pretty soon, he started to sock his fist into his mitt.
I really couldn’t take that. It’s no fun at all, being left out of stuff.
So I called, ‘Heads up, kid,’ and threw him the ball. I didn’t burn it in, nothing like that. I tossed it high and easy and right to him. He lit up for a second, then looked alarmed as the ball got closer. Ducking and turning his face away, he reached up with his huge scoop of a glove and didn’t even come close. The ball flew past him and went sailing off down the street. About the time it bounced on the pavement, he checked his mitt. He frowned, like he was really surprised to find it empty. Then he said, ‘Sorry.’
That was the first word I ever heard him say. Sorry.
Then he went chasing after the ball.
‘Good going, Ricky babes,’ Jim said.
‘What do you want? What was I supposed to do, ignore him?’
‘Now we’ll probably be stuck with the little creep.’
‘It’s getting dark, anyway. Maybe we’d better call it a night pretty soon.’
‘Yeah, I’m all for that.’
But we had to wait for the ball. The kid took a while trying to find it. Finally, he dug it out of the flower bed in front of the Watson house and came loping up the street. Still a ways off, he gave it a throw.
‘God!’ Jim muttered. ‘What is he, a girl?’
It was my ball, my fault, so I had to chase it down. I wasn’t eager to pick it up, considering it had been in the kid’s hand and was probably sticky. So I snatched it off the grass with my mitt. By the time I got back with it, the kid was stepping over the curb, walking toward Jim.
‘Getting pretty dark,’ I said. ‘I guess we’d better call it quits for now.’
‘Do we
I didn’t like the sound of that ‘we.’
‘Yeah, we’d lose the ball.’
‘Well, all right.’ He sniffed and backhanded some goo off his upper lip. ‘I’m George Johnson. We just moved in.’ He swung a pudgy arm out behind him. ‘Over there.’
‘I’m Rick. This is Jim.’
Luckily, he didn’t try to shake hands with us.
‘You guys sure are good.’
‘It just takes practice,’ I said, figuring he meant we were good with the ball.
‘You want a Twinkie?’ He shoved a hand down into a bulging front pocket of his shorts and pulled out a cellophane pack. The twin, cream-filled yellow cakes inside looked pretty smashed.
‘Thanks anyhow,’ I said. ‘I just had dinner.’
‘Please,’ George said. ‘They’re good.’
‘What the hell,’ Jim said. He stuck his mitt under his arm, took the package from George, said ‘Thanks,’ and ripped it open. He scooted one of the mooshed Twinkies off the cardboard backing and held it toward me.
‘There’s only two of ’em,’ I said. ‘You eat it, George.’
‘Oh, I got plenty. I want it to be yours.’
Well, it
Jim and I both had our mouths full when George said, ‘Will you be my friends?’
How can you say no to a kid who has just given you a Twinkie?
‘Yeah, well…’ I said.
‘What the hell,’ Jim said.
