The Collection

maze of cheaply paneled rooms with red carpeting and bare bulbs hanging from low ceilings. Each room had several doors and each door led into another room which, in turn, led to other rooms.

I just ran. With Kathy over my shoulder, I ran. Behind us, I could hear the sound of bowling pins being knocked over. Loudly.

Only they weren't really bowling pins.

The rooms we ran through now had furniture. In one was a low couch, in another a bed. More beds became notice­able, and in one room we ran through, a man and woman were sitting together on a waterbed.

It became apparent that we were running through the back regions of some monstrous bordello.

Then the cheaply paneled rooms ended and we were in my room, in my house. Kathy and I.

I had her back.

She was still in some type of trance, but her eyes were be­ginning to move, and I thought I saw her left pinky wiggle. Quickly, I carried her into the bathroom and placed her gen­tly in the tub. I turned on the cold water and splashed it over her face in order to jar her awake. But the water was like acid to her, and she stared to melt into the liquid.

And she was gone.

From somewhere, I heard laughter.

That was the last straw. I could take anything but this ... desecration of my life with Kathy. And suddenly I didn't care what happened. I just wanted to save myself, to pre­serve my sanity, to get the hell out of there.

Without even stopping to put on real clothes, still in my robe, I ran out of the house and into the garage, where the car waited. I grabbed the key from its hook on the press-board wall, got in the car, and slammed the door. The car was a little difficult to start since it had not been used after Kathy left, but eventually it kicked in.

And I was off.

I drove straight through the town without even looking. The people must have thought I was mad. It had been so long since I'd driven that I was not very familiar with the area, I did not know where many of the roads led. But that didn't make any difference. I just drove. And drove fast.

The car stopped around noon in a strange city. With smoke pouring from under the hood, I pulled into a gas sta­tion. A mechanic dressed in greasy jeans and an oil-stained T-shirt came out of the garage and popped open the hood. I got out of the car to join him.

'Your radiator's leaking,' he said simply.

'Can you fix it?' I asked.

He closed the hood and looked at me, pulling a rag out of his pocket to wipe his hands. 'I can either patch it for you or replace the radiator. I have a lot of parts in the back.'

'Which one's cheaper?' I asked.

'Patching. It won't last forever, but it should be good for a couple of months at least.'

'Fine,' I said. 'Patch it.'

He said it would take a couple of hours. Since I had an afternoon to kill, I started walking down the main street of the town. It wasn't very big. I browsed through the one tourist shop, looked through a bookstore, sat down and had a cup of coffee in the grimy coffee shop, and still had more than an hour until the mechanic said he'd be done.

I decided to check out the town's department store.

I was looking through the greeting cards, wondering whether I should warn Kathy that I was coming or just drop by uninvited, when a gunshot rang out. I turned toward the entrance and saw what looked like a gang of terrorists mov­ing, commando-like, into the department store and spread­ing out. I hit the ground.

A burst of machine gun fire destroyed the lights and the store was plunged into semidarkness. One woman screamed and was shot. 'Stay where you are, don't move, and you'll be all right!' the leader of the terrorists announced. He strode up to the checkout counter nearest me, and I could see that he had a ski mask pulled over his head. Like the rest of the group, he was dressed all in black. He picked up a tele­phone, punched in a number, and spoke into the mouthpiece. 'Don't move,' he warned again, and his voice echoed from speakers throughout the store.

I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned around, expecting to be shot, and saw instead a man in a three-piece suit lying on the floor next to me. The name tag on his jacket said: MR. BOWLES, MANAGER. 'Come on,' he whispered to me. 'We have to get upstairs. It's our only hope.'

There was suddenly a lot of shooting and commotion in the shoe department, and the terrorist leader left our counter to investigate.

'Now!' the manager whispered.

Crawling on our hands and knees, the two of us reached the escalator. Like the lights, it was shut off. We crawled up the serrated metal steps, keeping our heads below the rails. We reached the second floor and—

We were on the ledge of a cliff, overlooking the beach. Below us, our people were playing happily in the sun and sand, frolicking in the water. We were watching them. 'They don't care if they ever leave the beach,' the manager said disgustedly. 'Look at them. They really don't care.'

And they didn't. Although the small strip of sand was surrounded on three sides by the large cliff on whose ledge we were standing, and on the other side by the ocean, the people did not feel trapped in the least. They were just happy to be alive.

'Well, we can't just sit around and play,' the manager said. 'We've got to get out of here.'

The prospect frightened me. I had never been away from the beach, and even climbing this high up on the cliff had been a major departure for me.

But I knew he was right.

We started up.

The cliff was mostly sand and several thousand feet high. We had to be very careful how we climbed. One slip and we'd fall to our deaths. Several times, in fact, one of us made a wrong move and slid down a couple of feet in the sand before again finding purchase.

It was dark when we reached the top.

We crawled the last few feet over the edge and found our­selves in the parking lot of a huge mansion. All of the lights were on in the gigantic house, and we could smell the scent of a multitude of gourmet foods wafting toward us.

We hid next to a bush. 'It's the boss's house,' I whis­pered.

'Yeah,' the manager whispered back. 'Which one of us is going to ask?'

'You,' I told him. 'I'm afraid.'

'Okay.' The manager glanced around to make sure no one had seen us, then ran across the driveway toward the door. Lights and bells went on in the trees around us and a burst of gunfire mowed down the manager. I was suddenly grabbed around my neck and—

I was sitting in my car. In my garage.

I had never left.

I could never leave.

To be honest, I do not know how long I've been here in the house. I don't know why Kathy and I moved here to begin with, and I cannot recall how all this started. I do not even know how many days or weeks or months or years or decades ago Kathy left me. For now I just exist. Every day is like every other and I cannot tell them apart. My routine is established and I seldom vary from it.

It was different when Kathy was here. We performed our duties, of course, but we also got on with our lives. We had friends. And we had each other, corny and trite as that may sound.

But they grew stronger even then. Our nights, more and more, were taken up with this ... combat. Our dreams be­came less our own. Our time together became more difficult.

Finally Kathy had to leave. She too realized what our po­sition was, where this house was located, what it would mean if we left, but in the end she didn't care. The respon­sibility was too much for her.

I could not leave, however.

So here I am—isolated, partly by choice, partly by cir­cumstance, in this house. Alone. And here I stay, trying to figure out what to do next, trying to stay on top of what is real and what isn't. There is no one to help me, and with these latest developments I don't know how much longer I can make it by myself.