There was no answer, but the liquid noise stopped. Now there was another sound.
Chewing.
'Come out now!' he ordered, but his voice was not as strong as it had been.
Monsters.
'Now!'
No answer. Only chewing. A low laugh.
He squinted into the gloom, and, to his horror, his eyes adjusted.
Dwarfish figures were crouched in the shadows against the far wall, low, hairy, misshapen forms clutching long, pointed spears. A tough, cynical part of his mind saw the entire scene in terms of a grocery tabloid headline--Night Watchman Attacked by Trolls--but the more instinctual portion of his brain was making him scream, had let loose the bladder muscle which held back his piss.
Now the shapes were moving, growing, becoming more human, evolving upward through the evolutionary scale until they stood erect. The smells of blood and wine were strong in the air, combined with a familiar underlying muskiness. One of the figures was eating something and threw it in front of him. A partially devoured chipmunk.
Turning, still screaming, trying to run, trying to escape, Ron slipped on the bloody floor. His right foot flew out from under him, twisting painfully, and the door which he'd been holding open with his left foot began to close. In the last few seconds of light, he saw with exaggerated clarity the wet red cement in front of his face, the segment of muscled animal bone beneath his nose.
Desperately in the sudden darkness, he tried to push himself to his feet, tried to pull himself along the floor, but he was not quick enough.
Behind him, the creatures were laughing, screaming, jabbering excitedly.
The first spear entered through his crotch.
From ten to twelve, between the crowded first hour and the noon rush, the bank was virtually dead, the only sounds in the light, air-conditioned lobby the relaxed, easy banter of the tellers, the muffled click of calculator keys, and the low drone of the soft rock Muzak which played incessantly over the bank's ceiling speakers.
April hated this time of day. For most of her coworkers it was the high point of their shift, the time when they could drop the public mask of servile civility, when they could relax and catch up on the bookkeeping or other behind-the-scenes paperwork which kept the bank running smoothly and efficiently. But these two hours always left her feeling bored and restless. Whatever else she was, she was a good loan officer, and she seldom if ever had any extra paperwork or leftover duties to perform. As a result, she usually found herself desperately searching for something to do, some way to look busy. Once she was settled, she knew, things would be different, she would be able to hang a little looser, but for the first few weeks on the job it would not do to look idle in front of her supervisor.
As far as she could tell, her new supervisor was a nice, if rather boring, soul, a family man with framed photos of his overweight wife and two pre-teen daughters set up on his desk. He was dedicated to his job but not fanatic and not overly strict, someone with whom it would be easy to work.
Someone of whom Dion would definitely approve.
It was strange to think that way, to use her son as a behavioral guideline, to mentally consult his taste and beliefs while making simple day-to-day judgments and decisions, but she respected him, she trusted his opinions. Somehow, despite her best unintentional efforts to screw him up, Dion had turned out to be a boy she not only loved but admired, a person with both feet firmly planted on the ground, who knew who he was and where he was going. She was aware of the fact that in many ways their relationship was the inverse of what it was supposed to be. She often looked to him for guidance and support, for strength she did not possess, and though this was something she felt comfortable with, she knew her son did not feel the same way. He would have been happier with a more traditional mother, the kind who offered heartwarming advice while making brownies, the kind who had all the answers all the time and could not only run her own life perfectly but could make sure that the lives of her family ran the same way.
Not the kind of mother she was.
And definitely not the kind she'd had.
All these years later, it was difficult to remember her childhood without seeing it through the socially conscious filter provided by endless TV movies. Her real mother, her biological mother, she could not even remember. She'd been abandoned at birth, and had been passed from foster home to foster home, from uncaring foster mother to uncaring foster mother, suffering the litany of abuses that continued to provide topics for daytime talk shows. She finally ran away from the last home at seventeen, and at nineteen she was a bank teller in Omaha and pregnant with Dion.
She had not done so badly, all things considered. She had not gotten trapped in the welfare cycle, had been fortunate enough to avoid the minimum-wage circuit, but she had never really been as independent as she wanted to be, as she felt she should be. There had always been the men, paving her way with sheets, assisting her financially and opportunistically in each of her attempts to better herself, to gain more experience or education.
And there had been mistakes.
Lots of mistakes.
Big mistakes.
Cleveland. Albuquerque.
But all of that was behind her now. She was going to try to start fresh here, to learn from the past. It was not going to be easy. She knew that. She was like a recovering addict--there were temptations everywhere. But she just had to be strong, to focus her sights on the future, and to always, always keep Dion's welfare--financial, educational, and emotional--first and foremost in her mind.
Mr. Aames, her supervisor, walked across the carpeted lobby carrying a stack of folders, which he proceeded to hand to her. 'Backlog,' he said.
'From your predecessor.'
'Thank God,' she told him, accepting the pile. 'I was running out of things to do.'
He grinned. 'You never have to worry about that around here. Anytime you run out of things to do, you come and see me. I'll find something for you.'
She looked up at him, her eyes level with his gold wedding band. Was that a come-on?
Did she want it to be?
She wasn't sure.
She smiled sweetly at him. 'Thanks,' she said, putting down the folders.
'I'll get started right away.'
The afternoon was slower than usual, particularly in the loan department, and April found herself finishing all of Mr. Aames' backlog before closing. She was cleaning off the top of her desk, putting papers in their proper drawers, preparing to go home, when she heard a familiar voice.
'Hey there.'
She looked up to see one of the new friends she'd met the other night when she'd come home late and she and Dion had had the fight. She couldn't immediately remember the woman's name, but she didn't need to.
'Margaret,' the woman said. 'Remember? Joan Pulkinghorn's friend?'
'Yeah. Hi.' April glanced over at the teller's cage, but Joan was either in the vault or in the back office, not at her station. Her gaze focused again on the woman in front of her. 'So what brings you around here?
Did you come to see Joan?'
'Actually, I wanted to see you.' Margaret sat in the overstaffed chair reserved for loan applicants. 'We all had a great time the other evening, and we were just wondering why you hadn't been by. A couple of us usually stop off at the Redwood Terrace after work to unwind a little before going home, and we were kind of hoping that you'd be one of our regulars. I mean, you certainly breathed some new life into the old group the other evening. I asked Joan about you, and she said she'd invited you to come along, but you were busy. I just wanted to make sure we didn't offend you or anything, or scare you away.'
'No.'
'So where've you been keeping yourself?'
April shrugged awkwardly. 'You know. I've been busy with my job, my son, getting settled ...'
