They’d be pegged down all right.
All the way down.
Though the hallway grate below the peephole muffled sound, Flann’s voice came through loud and clear. “Christ, what a stench! I thought for sure we’d smelled our last carcass at Monday’s final.”
Brandy flumphed, “Someone’s got it in for us.”
“It’ll seep into your dress. And my tux.”
“I hope they’ve given us blankets in there,” Brandy said. “Even a minute’ll get pretty cold.”
The taps on Flann’s spit-polished shoes came to an abrupt halt outside the refrigeration room. “Nothing we can do about it now. But before the night’s over, I’m complaining to somebody. After you, hon.”
Sickening.
Even here they moved with grace. Brandy twirled out of view, and Flann’s taps followed.
In this part of the school, the backways were tight and ill-lit. They stank of old oak, wet and rotting.
Motor hum from the refrigeration room masked sound from back here. But it also turned the couple, the dapper Flann and his redheaded Brandy with the cinnamon heart, into soundless mouths.
Fortunately, the hanging racks of butchered flesh and the ice sculptures provided ample concealment. Moreover, the large panel farthest from the couple’s designated spot had taken two drops of lubricant a half hour before.
Minimal slide, open, shut.
A chilled world stole away all warmth.
Man-sized Ice Ghouls waited here. Legions of them, opaque glassy shapes, sleek and muscled save for a fat howling ghoul who terrified by sheer bulk. Each one raised an icicle dagger, but the howling ghoul’s was thickest and most menacing.
Out through their massed numbers, cautious in movement, an ice pick rode tight aslant the killer’s torso.
Brandy sneezed.
These two had everything. Good looks. An unending stream of sycophants. A smoothness of manner and tone that erased all grief. Unlimited future prospects. Flann’s voice rode upon their assured arrogance. “You okay?”
It would be a pleasure to finish them.
“It’s nothing.” A sniff, a soft blow, one nostril, then the other. “At least we’re out of danger.”
“Somebody,” Flann insisted, “is gonna lose his job.”
“It’s okay. It’s only ten more minutes. No one ever touches a finalist. That’s the law.”
“They can’t do this to Flann Beckwith.”
“We’re fine,” said Brandy. “We’re all alone. Just us and nobody else. And you look real sexy. Sexy as money.”
“Really? You think so?”
Racks of crayola’d pork flesh serried by as the killer threaded through them.
Sides of meat hung near the doomed pair, a protective veil of butchered beef providing one last barrier if only they’d keep jabbering.
“I’ll tell you what I think.” Her prom dress rustled. The sounds of thick smooching and shared mmmm’s betrayed what they were up to. Then they abruptly stopped. “Did you hear something?” asked Brandy.
Caught breath, three haunches away.
“Hey, relax,” said Flann. “All I hear is my heart. And yours.”
“Mmmm, you’re warm.”
“You too.” There was a slight rustle, as of tinsel brushing against a glass ornament.
“Do you think we should?” Yield filled her voice.
“Who’s to know?” More rustling and Brandy’s vulnerable moan. “I’m going to suck my sweetie’s lovelobe.”
The killer stepped free of concealment.
Flann was stylishly hunched over, almost a choreographed flamenco pose. Brandy’s eyelids were closed, her chin nestled upon his left shoulder as he mouthed her lovelobe. From his right hand hung her silken lobebag, limp as a finger puppet.
A gleam of debutante eyes opening. Flann’s embroidered suit-back, a stretched target. The brutal drive of cloaked resentment.
Then came a pin-cushion zit of pierced felt, the ice pick’s keen tip driving through expensive cloth.
The body accepted puncture and impalement as though they were crude afterthoughts, the sudden flair of the ice pick handle stopping its forward hurtle in a pit of depressed serge.
Flann’s head pitched forward as three bodies sandwiched unbalanced against the wall. A shove at his suit helped unflesh the weapon.
Brandy’s eyes widened. Her mouth readied a scream.
Her boyfriend flailed about, arms whipping wide and ineffectual. The lovelobe his teeth had abruptly severed hung like a blood-engorged tick from his lips. Staggering like a drunk upended in a slippery room, he fell away, his skull making a loud smack against the white wall.
Screams now, muffled in the insulated room.
Screams wrapped in puffs of breath.
Brandy’s left hand rose to her maimed ear, blood gush vining down her frail wrist.
The ice pick lifted once. It pinned the girl’s right hand rising to resist, pinned it like a stuck butterfly against her left breast, and filled her heart with steel.
Her eyes held, even as they clouded with death. Healing lay in Brandy’s empty gaze. And in Flann’s. Those eyes begged to be icicled, as had Sheriff Blackburn’s.
Behind them through racks of meat waited the fat ghoul, an icicle dagger upraised at the end of his massive arm.
That would do fine.
But time pressed.
Do Queen Brandy first. Then her lover. Come out of the cold, regain warm passageways, again dare the fear of heights.
The next bit of payback would be a challenge and a thrill, courage and sheer strength tested to the limit. But close by awaited love and healing and an end to years of torment.
Through the motor hum and the meat racks, the leaden-footed dancers’ shoetops scuffed across the floor.
Gerber Waddell sat in his supply closet, the door closed, a dim lightbulb over his head.
Like a great ape after eating, Gerber settled cross-legged on the floor, scratching his belly through janitorial denim.
Thoughts struggled to pierce his rage.
Something not right was seeping through the school tonight. This weren’t your ordinary prom, no way, no how.
He was used to grisly thoughts on prom night.
Young bad flesh in rich clothing.
The anticipated smack.
That’s how Gerber always heard it in his head when they brought the victims in. Smack! An echo from the slash that few if any saw, ’cept for its aftermath, which he had to clean up lest it settle into the walls.
Couldn’t have it settling into the walls.
Had to make them pristine again.
Well tonight, he was hearing lots more oof too, feeling bad things transpire, almost as if he were right there and they were happening in front of him.
He had a feeling there’d be lots more cleanup than usual. Lots more walls to make pristine.
They didn’t pay him overtime neither.
He remembered the hospital geeks.
