The Collection

Apparently no one had ever done the dog harm or had in any way subverted the animal's natural trust. With virtually no coaxing at all, the innocent pet happily followed him into the apartment on the soothing-voiced promise of lunch. Alan searched through the kitchen for something resembling dog food, found a can of beef stew, and walked into the bath­room, dumping the contents of the can into the tub. The animal hopped over the low porcelain side and began grate­fully chowing down.

He cut off the dog's head with one chop of the hatchet.

Blood spurted wildly from the open neck and severed ar­teries, but he caught some of it in the water glass he used for brushing his teeth.

He hurried back to the kitchen and poured the blood slowly into the simmering pot. The blood swirled and whirlpooled into the center before mixing with the water and spreading outward. The foam turned red, the mouth smiled.

Alan stirred the macaroni. The mouth pursed, opened, closed, and beneath the bubble and hiss he heard a new whisper.

'Human,' the face said, 'blood.'

Alan's heart began to pound, but he was not sure this time if it was entirely from fear.

His palms were sweaty and, as he wiped them on his pants, Alan told himself that he was being crazy. A dog was one thing. But he was about to cross over the line and com­mit a serious criminal act. A violent act. An act for which he could spend the rest of his life in jail. It was not too late to back out now. All he had to do was go home, throw away the pot, never make macaroni and cheese again.

He got out of the car, smiling at the child.

He used the hatchet to cut off the boy's arm.

The kid had not even started screaming by the time he had grabbed the arm, hopped in the car and taken off, the child's shocked brain not yet able to process the insane in­formation it was being fed by its senses. Alan dropped the arm into the bucket even as he put the car into gear.

It was a clean getaway.

Back home, curtains closed, he poured water into the pot, added salt, dumped in the package of macaroni. The face ap­peared as the water started to boil. It looked stronger this time, more clearly defined.

The mouth smiled at him as he poured in the child's blood.

As the water turned pink, then red, as he stared at the happy, bubblefoam face, he felt the mood shift in the kitchen, a palpable, almost physical, dislocation of air and space. He shivered violently. A change came over him, a subtle shifting of his thoughts and emotions, and he seemed to realize for the first time exactly what it was that he had done. The mad savagery of his actions, the complete insan­ity of his deeds hit him hard and instantly, and he was filled with a sudden horror and revulsion so profound that he stag­gered backward and began retching into the sink. For a few blissful seconds, he heard only the harsh sounds of his own vomiting, but when he stood, wiping his mouth, he realized that the kitchen was alive with the sounds of whispering. He heard the bubbling of the water, and above that the voice of the macaroni, calling to him, whispering promises, whisper­ing threats.

Against his will, he found himself once again leaning over the stove, looking into the pot.

'Make me,' the face whispered. 'Eat me.'

Moving slowly, as if underwater, as if in a dream, he drained the macaroni, added butter, added milk, poured in the package of powdered cheese. The finished product was neither cheese orange nor blood red but a sickening muddy brown that looked decidedly unappetizing. Nevertheless, he dumped the contents of the pot into a bowl, brought it over to the table, and ate.

The aftertaste was salty and slightly sour, and it left his mouth dry. But when he drank a glass of milk, the taste dis­appeared completely.

After lunch, he chopped the boy's arm into tiny pieces, wrapped the pieces in plastic wrap, put them in an empty milk carton, buried the milk carton deep within the garbage sack, and took the sack out to the trash can in the garage.

That night, he dreamed that he was a small child. He was sleeping in his current bed, in his current bedroom, in his current apartment, but the furniture was different and the decorations on the wall consisted of posters of decades-old rock stars. From another room he heard screams, terrible I horrible heart-stopping screeches which were suddenly cut off in midsound. Part of his brain told him to break the win­dow and jump out, run, escape, but another told him to feign sleep. Instead he did neither, and he was staring wide-eyed at the door when it burst open.

The man in the doorway held an ax.

He woke up sweating, clutching his pillow as if it were a life preserver and he a drowning man who could not swim. He sat up, got out of bed, turned on the light. In the garage, he knew, the pieces of the boy's arm were lying individually wrapped inside a milk carton in the trash.

On the stove in the kitchen was the pot. And in the cup­board six boxes of macaroni and cheese.

He did not sleep the rest of the night but remained in a chair, wide awake, staring at the wall.

The next day was Monday, and Alan called in sick, ex­plaining to his supervisor that he had a touch of the stomach flu. In truth, he felt fine, and not even the recollection of what he had ingested had any emotional effect on his ap­petite.

He had two eggs, two pieces of toast, and two glasses of orange juice for breakfast.

All morning, he sat on the couch, not reading, not watch­ing TV, just waiting for lunchtime. He thought back on last night. The man in his dream, the man with the ax, had seemed vaguely familiar to him at the time, and seemed even more so now, but he could not seem to place the figure. It would have helped had he been able to see a face rather than just a backlit silhouette, but his memory had nothing to go on other than a bodily outline that somehow reminded him of a person from his past.

At eleven o'clock, he went into the kitchen to make lunch.

The face when it appeared was less ephemeral, more con­crete. There were wrinkles in the water, details in the foam, and the accompanying change that came over the kitchen was stronger, more obvious. A wall of air moved through him, past him. The light from the window dimmed, dying somehow before it reached even partway into the room. He looked down. This face was scarier, more brutal. Evil. It smiled, and he saw inside the mouth white bubble teeth. 'Blood,' it said.

Alan took a deep breath. 'No.'

'Blood.'

Alan shook his head, licked his lips. 'That's all. No more.'

'Blood!' the face demanded.

Alan turned down the flame, watched the elements of the face disperse. Details dissolving into simplistic crudity.

'Blood!' the voice ordered, screaming.

And then it was gone.

***

The shabbily dressed man on the street corner was facing oncoming traffic, holding up a sign: I Will Work for Food. Alan drove by, shaking his head. He'd never seen such peo­ple before the Reagan years, but now they were impossible not to notice. This was the fourth man this month he'd seen holding up a similar sign. He felt sorry for such people, but he wasn't about to let one of them work at his home and he could not imagine anyone else doing so either. For all he knew, such a man would use the opportunity to scope out his house, check out his television, stereo, and other valuables, casing the joint for a future robbery. There was no way for a person such as himself to check out the credentials or refer­ences of a homeless man. No one knew who these men were—

No one knew who these men were.

Blood.

He felt the urge again, and he pulled into the parking lot of a supermarket and turned around. He did not want to, but he was compelled. It was as if another being had taken con­trol of the rational portion of his mind and was using the thought processes there to carry out its will while the real Alan was shunted aside and left screaming. He made an­other U-turn in the middle of the street and slowed down next to the homeless man, smiling.

'I need some help painting my bedroom,' he said smoothly. 'I'll pay five bucks an hour. You interested?'

'I sure am,' the man said.