yanked inside out. He had a momentary sensation of disembodied movement, then all feeling dissolved into a murky blur.
When Audrey returned, her aunt stood waiting for her in the living room.
'I got the cognac,' the girl said, holding up a brown paper bag. 'Where's Skip?'
Aunt Edith shook her head and smiled sadly at her niece. 'I'm sorry, dear.'
'Not another one?'
'I'm afraid so.'
'You gave him the test?'
'Like the others, he failed.'
'Oh, Aunt Edith, won't I ever find a man who will want me for myself and will be true to me?' She put her arms around the older woman and lay a cheek against the cushion of her breast.
'Of course you will, dear.' Aunt Edith stroked the girl's hair. 'It's just a matter of meeting the right one.' She smiled. 'But in the meantime, remember that it's not a total loss.'
'That's true.' The girl sighed and stepped back from her aunt. She turned her eyes to the mantel where seven erect figures stood in a row at attention.
'Will you be wanting him tonight, Aunt Edith?'
'No, dear, you first. It's only fair.'
Audrey crossed to the mantel and grasped the newest of the rigid figures. It was warm and pliable to her touch.
'Good night, Aunt Edith,' she said.
'Good night, Audrey. Enjoy.'
As his sensations gradually returned Skip realized he had no power of movement. After the first flash of panic he relaxed, stopped resisting, and let himself be thrust head first into the warm, wet orifice. The slippery walls closed around him, caressing him all over.
A hard way to go, maybe, he decided, but all things considered, not so bad.
DAUGHTER OF THE GOLDEN WEST
Dennis Etchison
At the school were three boys who were best friends. Together they edited the campus newspaper, wrote or appeared in plays from time to time, and often could be seen huddled together over waxed paper lunches, over microscopes in the biology lab, sometimes until dark, over desks leafed with papers most Saturdays, elbow to elbow with their English Department advisor, and even over the same clusters of girls gathered like small bouquets of poppies on the steps of the cafeteria, joking and conning and in general charming their way through the four long years.
Almost four years.
Don and Bob were on the tennis squad, Don and David pasted-up the Buckskin Bugler feature pages, Bob and David devised satirical skits for the annual Will & Prophecy Class Assemblies, and together they jockeyed for second, third and fourth positions in their graduating class — the first place was held inexplicably by one of those painted-smile, spray-haired secretary types (in fact she was Secretary of the Senior Class) named Arnetta Kuhn, and neither separately nor
Until May, that is: the last lap of the home stretch.
Until Bob disappeared.
In the Formica and acetate interior of the mobile home in Westside Hills Court, Don of the thick black hair and high white forehead, lover of Ambrose Bierce and master of the sweeping backhand, and David, the high school's first longhair, collector of Marvel comics and articles on quantum physics, commiserated with Mrs. Witherson over cans of sugar-free cola (it was the only kind she had, now that Bob was gone), staring into their thumbnails and speaking softly in tones that were like a settling of throttled sighs over an as yet unmarked grave. It was a sad thing, surely, it was mysterious as hell, and most of all, each thought secretly, it was unfair, the most unfair thing he could have done.
The trophies, glassed certificates and commendations Bob had earned reflected around Mrs. Witherson, bending the dim, cold light into an aurora behind her drooped, nodding head.
'Maybe he ran off with a — With some kind of woman. The way his father did.'
Instantly regretting it, a strange thing to say, really, Mrs. Witherson closed a shaking hand around the water glass and tipped it to her lips. The sherry wavered and clung, then evaporated, glistening, from the sides; she had taken it up again weeks ago, after the disappearance, and now the two were concerned about her as if by proxy. For Bob had told them, of course, of the way she had been for so long after the loss of his father. He had been too small to remember him, but he had remembered the fuming glasses and shaking hands, he had said, and now his friends remembered them, too, though they did not speak of these things or even look up as she drank.
'I thought — '
'He had. So much. Going for him.' Bob's mother drained the glass, gazing into it, and David saw the tip of her slow, coated tongue lap after the odor of nonexistent droplets along the lip. 'You all know that.' And it was a larger statement than it sounded, directed beyond the trailer to include and remind them all, whoever needed to be reminded of the essential truth of it, herself, perhaps, among them.
They jumped, all three of them. The telephone clattered with an unnatural, banshee urgency in the closed rectangle of the trailer. The Melmac dishware ceased vibrating on the plastic shelf as Mrs. Witherson picked up the receiver. She took it unwillingly, distastefully, between the circle of thumb and finger.
David pushed away from the unsteady, floor-bolted table and chewed the inside of his mouth, waiting to catch Don's eyes.
'Mm-hm. Ye-es. I see.'
It might have been an invitation to a Tupperware party. A neighbor whose TV set was on the blink. A solicitation for the PTA, which could have accounted for the edge in her voice. But it was not; it was not They both knew it without looking at each other, and were on their feet by the aluminum screen door seconds before Mrs. Witherson, white-faced, dropped the receiver. It swung from the coiled cord, dipping and brushing the chill linoleum floor.
The lieutenant at the police station wrote out the address of the county morgue and phoned ahead for them. They drove in silence, pretending absorption in traffic lights. It was really not like the movies. An official in a wrinkled white smock showed them three 8 x 10's and there was not much talk, only a lot of nods and carefully avoided eyes and papers to be signed. Don stepped into a locker room and returned so quickly that he must have turned on his heel the instant the sheet was lifted. During that brief moment and through the miles of neon interstices after David did not think of the photographs.
What was left of Bob had been found by a roadside somewhere far out of town.
And it was 'just like the other two,' the attendant said.
They drove and did not stop even when they were back in Westside. Don took corner after corner, lacing the town in smaller and smaller squares until each knew in his own time that there was nowhere to go and nothing to be said. David was aware of the clicking of the turn indicator and the faint green flickering of the light behind the dashboard. Until he heard the hand brake grind up. The motor still running. Without a word he got out and into his
