Tweed shook her head. “He’s never liked it. We make it worse, of course, me being in jeopardy this year, Jenna next. But Dad contributes to the anti-slasher cause. Sometimes, he attends their meetings.” She raised a finger to her lips. “Our secret.”
“Sure thing.” Dex signaled a turn.
“There’s no telling with parents,” he went on. My mom’s really into dog-cracking. We went to a contest at the fairgrounds last week and she screamed her lungs out for this swung sheepdog. Poor thing didn’t have a prayer against a Saint Bernard maneuvered by a Scotsman. At home, Jesus the Lion is forever on her lips. She likes to shout at sit-com characters to ‘throw the other fist.’ But get her off by herself, just you and her? She’s as quiet and kind and considerate as anybody you could name.”
“I like your mom,” Tweed said.
Dex took his eyes off the road. “She likes you too.”
“I’m glad.” She snuggled closer. “Do you think Mr. Jones’ll make us play a lot?”
“Nah,” said Dex. “He’s rehearsed our butts off, but I think he’ll do like last year. Give us a solid hour of playing, bust our chops, then let the seniors go, and play the remaining sets with a smaller group, him on trumpet—”
Tweed groaned. “He’s so awful!”
“Old blubber lips.” Dex laughed. “Around ten, he’ll throw in the towel and give the rest of the night over to slap’n’smack and dreamy ballads off the turntable.”
Tweed caressed Dex’s tuxedo’d arm. “I hope he plays loads of dreamy ballads.”
Dex smiled. “It’s going to be a special night, isn’t it?”
“We get past the ordeal, you bet it will be.” She put lots of promise in her look. Elation rose in her sweetheart’s eyes.
They had their whole lives ahead of them. Once the fear lifted, the chosen couple had been slaughtered and futtered, and they knew what positions the killings at tomorrow’s corporate picnics opened up, she and Dex could think about directions.
About the future.
About tripling up with someone known or not yet known, someone who would augment their twosome in a splendid new way.
“I love you, Dex,” she said, and he shyly said, “Well shucks, me too, right back at ya.”
Gerber Waddell loved taking showers. Hot water thundered down. Nobody swatted his hand away from his naked sexlobe. And he didn’t have to hide his anger behind a benign smile.
Gerber tugged at his roused lefty like a bell-pull. In his mind’s eye, the generous lips of Jonquil Brindisi, teacher of big sins, teased his sexlobe.
This phantom Jonquil rose from the billowing steam, slurping him in, disgorging him. Her eyes hungered for payback.
Like a panther she padded before him, one hand spanning to finger her nipples, the other down-and-in where she rocked.
But as she sucked his lobe, her skin veined, red and cracked, falling in chunks to the stippled floor. The scalding water needled her until she bled, pain everywhere upon that gorgeous body.
Still, she endured it, her lips fixed on his pleasure, though every suck trebled her agony and plashed the floor hot with crimson.
“Eat it, you snooty little bitch!” he muttered. How she deserved her pain, after years of an aloofness that screamed, I’m better than any lowlife janitor.
Then Gerber Waddell rose heavenward, careful to damp down his howls of joy. Beating streams of water sculpted perfect orgasm from the oval of his mouth.
Drifting down, Gerber stayed with his hatred. Tiles cooled along his spine as he bent at the waist, a jogger stitched for wind. His hair twisted in thunderous waterfalls.
Past torments paraded by.
The corporate heights from which he had once judged others.
The picnic murder of a woman he had loved, his own hand on the knife, and a lethal slash at the jealous bastard who had contrived for her to be chosen.
The petitions.
The forgiveness.
Sojourns in white rooms where they pried out chunks of his brain, taught him docility, thrust a mop and a bucket into his hands. And, after many years, tools.
Tools had their uses. Lately, Gerber had pondered them, how they might express impulses too long damped down and denied.
He slammed the faucet shut. Blasts of water shuddered to a halt.
Gerber rumbled the opaque door open and snagged a towel off the rack. Them green-coated scumsuckers had made a mistake. For all their hacking and hewing, they had missed a spot.
The urge.
Mild Gerber, feeble yes-man at Corundum High.
He’d teach them. He’d whip their fannies. Any more cheek and he would reach into his utility belt and tin- snip their lovelobes off.
Gerber stood before the steam-coated mirror, savagely brushing his teeth. His left hand sawed vigorous and wild across his jaw. The fingers of his right hand stilted against the counter, bamboo shoots white with tension.
When he emerged, the Bleaks were watching TV in their bedroom at the end of the hall. Missus Bleak chirped, “Water okay, Gerber?” and he said “Yes’m, it was,” a hand concealing his left lobe, a towel tucked about his waist.
Gerber went into his room, where Mister and Missus Bleak’s grown son had lived. Blue-black janitor duds lay like a dead flat man on the bed, undies and socks beside them. Off days, he wore Salvation Army crap, clothes that felt more like him than these did. Deceptive comfort for the normals. Put Gerber in somebody else’s house, somebody else’s uniform. Peg him. Make him safe for mobocracy.
But when he wore thrift store hand-me-downs, his thoughts came more easily. And when he wore nothing at all, they tumbled about in his head, wild, nasty, and free. Lull the bastards. Put him in safe togs, slip a denim lobebag over his lefty.
But a game had two players, he thought. One day, one night, he would break a few rules and loose the demon again.
Maybe tonight. Prom night. A night of beauty and savagery. It would be easy to throw a wrench or two into the cogs. All it would take was simply to give in. To act, once more, upon those suppressed urges.
Gerber pictured Missus Bleak coming through the door. Like a pork-bomb, she flew straight apart, warming the air with outflung spews of gore as her pudgy face exploded.
Somehow, it made this more like home.
More inviting.
Shiverful, spineful.
Mia Jenner gave her younger husband Bonn a look, then tossed barbs at Pelf, who sat cozy in his favorite armchair, pooled in lamplight.
“I can’t believe you’re doing that,” she scolded. “Really, Pelf.”
The older man peered over his glasses, one finger stuck in the library book. “Doing what?”
Exasperated eyes. “Reading.”
“I read every night.”
Bonn chimed in. “This is Fido’s prom night. He’ll be down soon in his tuxedo. Bowser will be showing up in his tuxedo. Look at you, sitting there in your robe and slippers.”
“Like this was any old weekend,” added Mia, snaking an arm around Bonn’s waist.
“To hell with Bowser McPhee.” Pelf’s familiar grin slung above his jowls. “I luxuriate on Saturday nights: a soothing bath, a good book, a tumble in the hay and a perfect lobesuck with you two fine folks.” He brushed aside
