The poem told the story of a man who could no longer afford to keep his dog, and so he threw a stick into the water to trick it into drowning itself. The dog’s naive trust and love showed in its eyes as it bravely tried to paddle back to shore, the stick in its mouth. Finally it succumbed, however, sucked under by a strong current…but in dying, and realizing the treachery of its master in the face of its own unswerving loyalty, a look of contempt for the whole human race came into its eyes. Like a curse, said Hardy.
Marie empathized with the dog.
She shut the book. The salt in her tears burned the vulnerable surfaces of her eyes. She was moments from being swept under. Now she allowed herself to feel the hatred she had been repressing.
It felt like a curse.
Marie rested a hand on her thigh. In Maine as a child, when she was still considered retarded rather than deaf, a baby-sitter had purposely ground her heel into the top of that hand while Marie was playing on the floor…
And the thigh under her hand—Edwin had once kissed it, run his tongue along it. Well, he still did. But he had also crushed that thigh in his hand recently while they were in the car, so upset had he become at her driving. He hadn’t hit her—yet. Marie felt that first blow moving toward her through time. The bruises from his grip had taken days to fade…
Marie rose from the chair, slid the book back into the shelf. At a table close by she stood and gazed down at the unique items spread there. A tarnished pocket watch. Costume jewelry. Several ivory-handled straight razors, the blades old and brittle but still frighteningly sharp…
She sat back down beside the glass counter where the alligator stood, an array of African tribal masks hanging above it like an audience of spirits. Marie didn’t mind their company. They were a comfort, in fact. They could lead her away, if they wanted.
She rolled up the sleeves of her bathrobe, hating the smell of sex on her now also, and anxious to escape it. She
* * *
Mrs. Morris found Marie, and the horror of it made her scream. Pale as she was, Marie looked like a mannequin propped in her chair. Mrs. Morris cried out for Edwin, and bolted upstairs to wake him…
In the open doorway of the bathroom, Mrs. Morris screamed a second time.
It was a perverse way to kill a man, the police said when they came. As perverse in imagination as the creation of that lamp in the first place.
First they found a wooden bowl in the threshold of the bathroom. Then in the tub they observed the male corpse. He had died by electrocution, the cord of the lamp plugged into an outlet close at hand. But rather than simply toss the alligator lamp in there with him, the woman had gone to the trouble of stabbing the nails which protruded from the creature’s palms into the sides of her husband’s neck, so that the creature appeared to be strangling him.
But the sequence of all this was confusing. There was no great splashing of blood in the bathroom, so she had to have slit her wrists after the electrocution. How, then, or when, had the woman managed that other bizarre flourish…wetting the hind feet of the alligator in her blood, and tracking its prints up two flights of stairs and on into the bathroom?
“Freaky,” the policemen said, in disgust of her.
Mass Production
Harris shot his boss first. Though he would have liked to save the best for last, he was afraid that if he didn’t, the bastard might escape. Most of the people in the plant would escape; he had no delusions about killing them all…though God knew he had enough ammo, and enough inspiration, to do so.
He took the courtesy of knocking before he came in, and while his boss was in the middle of churning out one of his patented manufactured smiles, the kind that promised promotions, changes, raises that never came, Harris swept the ten pound Galil assault rifle out from under his rain-spattered coat, brought it up to point from the waist. Now he smiled. His boss didn’t. One cherry bomb crack for the group leader he never became. One crack for the unmade changes. One for the recently denied raise. And Harris made sure that the boss was conscious of the first two cracks before the merciful third. There. Now he’d take whoever else he could.
Turning back toward the door, he folded out the skeleton stock of the gun, an Israeli weapon roughly patterned after the AK-47. It had a thirty-five shot magazine. He had another magazine in one pocket, and a whole box of shells for the .357 revolver holstered on his belt. He had armed up and loaded up with the same care he had taken to shower and shave and dress…a little addition to the daily routine. He didn’t feel a hot, maddened surge inside him, to have set the machine into motion. He stepped out of the office and into the plant as if to go to work.
* * *
Thomas Willis Peterson was the head of maintenance, and at the time of the shooting was up on a step ladder replacing the blown fuse that had cut power for the processor upstairs. At first he thought it was something to do with the plant itself, until moments later he heard female screaming and the correct interpretation came to him. He almost fell coming down the ladder, and held onto it to listen as more gun shots rocked the plant…three in rapid succession. He tried to determine their direction, and to get parts of himself to believe what other parts knew was happening.
Warren was the supervisor upstairs, the one who had told Peterson the processor was down, the one who had insisted he stay and see to the problem himself although he had a dentist appointment at five and the second shift supervisor was certainly capable of changing a fuse. Peterson’s ten year old niece could change a fuse. But Warren had insisted, and here I am, Peterson thought, trapped in the building with somebody going nuts with a gun.
Warren didn’t get it yet, even with the screams and shouts. “What the hell is that?” he said indignantly, insulted at having been startled.
“Sounds like somebody’s on a spree out there,” Peterson said.
“What do you mean?”
“Kill spree. With a gun.”
“Bull-shit.”
“Why not go have a look? Sounds like it’s coming from the social presses.”
“For God’s sake,” Warren hissed, and actually stormed off in that direction as if to break up a squabble between two workers. Peterson had to snort at that. Good. He hated that arrogant dick. He’d put up with his crap for a good fifteen years now. Let him go walk into a bullet. Peterson was going to get the hell out of the plant.
He removed the noisy and heavy hindrance of his tool belt, but first drew from it a screwdriver with a very long blade. More shots. Chaos out there. The most Peterson had experienced in the way of excitement at work was presses running down and toilets running over. He had to smile. This would be on the news for sure. A dentist could be gone to any time.
* * *
Harris had dropped Chuck and Kevin, the two sub-moronic pressmen who had laughed at him several times, as they were wont to do with most everybody in their boozer-jock superiority and perfection. Harris had brought them down to earth—literally. Then he had swivelled and picked off a kid all the way down at the end of the line. He had walked in on the kid doing some coke in the men’s room one night. Scummy little loser. Snort this. The kid got up and staggered out of view, however. Oh well. Three out of four so far…
Peripherally he glimpsed Tracey of the dyed blond hair and skin-tight sweat pants, who had declined the nervous invitation to dinner he had offered her last year, after months of screwing up the nerve. He spun and fired as she was darting for cover, hit the Coke machine by the time clock instead. He started walking casually after her, not too intent on catching her since he had pretty much gotten over that. But he made a very deliberate point of stopping at the time clock. His worst enemy in the plant, it had followed him here from place after place, dogging
