The Collection

Dad,' she said.

Ed left the garage, closing the door. Something was wrong. He could feel it, but he couldn't put a finger on it. He could sense that something was not right, that he was be­having oddly, not the way he used to behave, not the way he was supposed to behave, but he did not know what was making him feel like this.

He went into the house, where Bobette was in the living room, pedaling her exercise bicycle while watching Oprah. There was something so ordinary, so wonderfully pretrip about the scene that he just stood there for a moment watch­ing her. The sight triggered something within him, and for a split second he almost remembered what had eluded him in the garage. It perched on the tip of his brain, unable to be ar­ticulated by his conscious mind, then retreated once again into the shadows, and he was left only with a strange sad­ness as he watched his wife exercise.

She glanced in his direction, frowned. 'Something wrong?'

He was filled with sudden anger, anger that she could go on with her normal life after the trip as if nothing had hap­pened. Was she so damned stupid and air-headed that she'd forgotten everything already? Of course something was wrong.

He just didn't know what it was.

'I'm going to the store,' he said.

'Okay.' She continued pedaling. 'Pick up some milk while you're there.'

He nodded absently, then stepped out the door, pulling his keys from his pocket.

He returned several hours later. It was dark and well past dinnertime. He had walked through stores, through shop­ping centers, knowing he wanted to buy something but not knowing what it was. Then he had seen what he was look­ing for and everything suddenly clicked into place.

Now he walked across the driveway holding the sack. Pam and Eda came out of the shadows to meet him, and though he had not been expecting them, he was not sur­prised. He took out the boxes and handed one to each child. 'These are for you,' he said.

He took out one for himself, dropping the sack on the ground.

They unwrapped the boxes.

Bobette was washing dishes when they came through the door. There was an angry expression on her face and a plate of cold food untouched on the table. She looked up, glaring, as she heard the noise behind her, but the lecture that had been on her lips died when she saw the carving knives in their hands. She looked from Ed to Pam to Eda. 'What are you doing?' she asked. Her voice was suddenly shaky, scared.

'The house needs redecorating,' he told her.

Bobette tried to back up but there was no place to go. She was flat against the sink: She was too stunned to scream as the three of them moved forward.

Ed smiled. 'We're going to wallpaper the living room.'

His knife went in first. Pam's and Eda's followed.

 The Man in the Passenger Seat

I was working at a job I hated, and I stopped off one morning on the way to work to get some money from my bank's ATM. I got the money, walked back to my car, and discovered that I'd forgotten to lock the doors. There was a homeless man lurking on the pe­riphery of the parking lot, and I found myself won­dering what I would have done if the man had opened the passenger door, sat down, and buckled himself in. How would I get him out of the car? And what if he kidnapped me, made me drive him somewhere?

It would be all right, I thought, as long as he didn't injure or kill me.

At least I'd get out of work for the day.

Brian was already late for work, but he knew that if he didn't deposit his paycheck this morning he'd be overdrawn. His credit rating was already hovering just above the lip of the toilet, and he couldn't afford another bounced check.

With only a quick glance at the clock on the dashboard, he pulled into the First Interstate parking lot. He grabbed a pen, a deposit slip, and his paycheck from the seat next to him and sprinted across the asphalt to the bank's instant teller machine. Behind him he heard the sound of a car door slamming, and he glanced back at his Blazer as he pulled out his ATM card.

Someone was sitting in the passenger seat of his car.

His heart lurched in his chest. For a split second he con­sidered going through with the deposit transaction and then going back to his car to deal with the intruder-Kendricks was going to be climbing all over his ass for being late as it was-but he realized instantly that whoever had climbed | into his vehicle might be attempting to steal it, and he pock­eted his card and hurried back to the Blazer.

Why the hell hadn't he locked the car?

He pulled open the driver's door. Across from him, in the passenger seat, hands folded in his lap, was a monstrously overweight man wearing stained polyester pants and a small woman's blouse. Long black hair cascaded about the man's shoulders in greasy tangles. The car was filled with a foul, sickeningly stale smell.

Brian looked at the man. 'This is my car,' he said, forc­ing a toughness he did not feel.

'Eat my dick with brussels sprouts.' The man grinned, revealing rotted, stumpy teeth.

A cold wave washed over Brian. This was not real. This was not happening. This was something from a dream or a bad movie. He stared at the man, not sure of what to say or how to respond. He noticed that the time on the dashboard clock was five after eight. He was already late, and he was getting later by the second.

'Get out of my car now!' Brian ordered. 'Get out or I'll call the police!'

'Get in,' the man said. 'And drive.'

He should run, Brian knew. He should take off and get the hell out of there, let the man steal his car, let the police and the insurance company handle it. There was nothing in the Blazer worth his life.

But the man might have a gun, might shoot him in the back as he tried to escape.

He got in the car.

The stench inside was almost overpowering. The man smelled of bad breath and broccoli, old dirt and dried sweat. Brian looked him over carefully as he slid into the seat. There was no sign of a weapon at all.

'Drive,' the man said.

Brian nodded. Hell yes, he'd drive. He'd drive straight to the goddamn police station and let the cops nail this crazy bastard's ass.

He pulled onto Euclid and started to switch over to the left lane, but the man said, 'Turn right.'

He was not sure whether he should obey the request or not. The police station was only three blocks away, and there was still no indication that the man was carrying any sort of weapon-but there was something in the strange man's voice, a hint of danger, an aura of command, that made him afraid to disobey.

He turned right onto Jefferson.

'The freeway,' the man said.

Brian felt his heart shift into overdrive, the pumping in his chest cavity accelerate. It was too late now, he realized. He'd made a huge mistake. He should have run when he had the chance. He should have sped to the police station when he had the chance. He should have ...

He pulled onto the freeway.

Several times over the past two years, on the way to work, he had dreamed of doing this, had fantasized about hanging a left onto the freeway instead of continuing straight toward the office, about heading down the highway and just driving, continuing on to Arizona, New Mexico, states beyond. But he had never in his wildest imaginings thought that he would actually be doing so while being kid­napped, hijacked, at the behest of an obviously deranged man.

Still, even now, even under these conditions, he could not help feeling a small instinctive lift as the car sped down the on-ramp and merged with the swiftly flowing traffic. It was not freedom he felt-how could it be under the circum­stances?-but more the guilty pleasure of a truant boy hear­ing the schoolbell ring. He had wanted to skip work and shirk his responsibilities so many times, and now he was fi­nally doing it. He looked over at the man in the passenger seat.

The man smiled, twirling a lock of hair between his fin­gers. 'One, two, eat my poo. Three, four, eat some more.'

Brian gripped the steering wheel, stared straight ahead, and drove.