And for the love of Christ, stop staring at us!
14. Prom Askewity
Tweed’s dad shut off the TV and his Personal Flogger. Wincing from the welts, he shrugged out of the device and wiped his eyes with a tissue.
The same damned dirge rose from his lips, his voice quavering as Tweed’s memory persisted.
Smiling.
Standing at the door.
“Good night.”
A vision. The sudden flash of her life. She had popped from Cam’s womb, growing much too fast toward womanhood.
And now?
The answering machine on his nightstand caught his attention.
A one. Not a zero.
A deep red number one, staring back at him.
Why hadn’t he noticed it there on the phone?
How had he missed the ringing?
Before his bath. Toothbrushing as sinkwater furied from the faucet. Humming a foamy fossil-fossil-fossil mazurka.
Matthew bet-no, he knew -that that was when the call had come.
He hit Play.
An unfamiliar woman’s voice scoured inside his head, using his daughter’s name. She berated him and confirmed his worst fears.
Matthew had to play it twice to get it all, its harsh message of death and possible salvation so unsettled his mind.
There was a tight fear in him and a sobbing.
But there was also anger. At himself, at Corundum High, at the entire warped ritual so ingrained in the culture.
If this unknown caller spoke the truth-and her words carried conviction-Tweed and Dex were either dead or saved. Either way, it was too late to do anything about it.
But his anger grew. It refused all reason, shaping its own reasons, acts that impelled.
Kill the killer.
Leap to the gym lectern and grab the mike.
Shame the entire student body, the faculty, with an impassioned speech that would haunt them the rest of their days, that would force them into battling against the custom’s continuation, that would at the very least halt the futtering of his daughter and her boyfriend.
He would bring them home in one piece. He and the Poindexters would join hands, mourn for the dead, speak from the heart in support of the anti-slasher movement.
Matthew dressed, muttering, singing a song quick and curt and choppy. The sobs that welled up threatened to crush him. But he gritted back his tears and pressed on.
Insane, this pointless flurrying, he thought. Tweed is dead. Stolen from him.
But his fingers vigorously zipped and buttoned, thrusting wallet, keys, coins, and handkerchief into his pants pockets.
He bounded down the stairs.
Stopped on the last one and stared.
By the front door beyond her fluxidermed moms, Tweed at her loveliest looked back.
“Good night.”
Matthew’s palm arced on the newel post. He headed away from the vestibule, into the back of the house and along a hallway.
“I’ll get them.” The phrase matched his stride, drums and percussion sounding in the background. “I’ll get them.”
Into the laundry room, past washer and dryer, he tore open the door to the garage and hit the button, shoulder-high on his left. The garage door rumbled up.
His eye caught the hatchet on the wall, nails angled to hold it, a worn leather cover sleeved on it like the hood over a hawk’s eyes.
He grabbed it. Solid heft. It bounced once on the passenger seat.
Then he fired up the car, intent on getting to Tweed, on saving her or making them pay for her life.
Something. Anything.
It was against the law for anyone but the designated slasher to use the school’s backways.
But the law wasn’t going to stand in his way. Not tonight. He wouldn’t allow it.
Matthew backed out too fast, rotating the wheel. Drumming filled his head. Percussion. A surge of fierce melody. The garage door jiggle-rumbled down in counterpoint. The roadway at the end of his driveway curved and reversed beneath him.
He gave a bitter laugh.
“I’ll get them.”
Crazed father to the rescue.
The trumpet wept and wailed like an old man slumped over, smoking a cigarette, eyelids heavy, against a moonlit wall in an alleyway.
Sandy’s boyfriend looked dazed, as he often did. Rocky rarely gave himself credit for having any brains. “But I thought,” he said, “our third would be some guy outside of school.”
“I did say that,” said Sandy. “But Cobra is different.”
Cobra was staring at her breasts, but she could tell his attention was divided. His glance flicked toward Peach Popkin, who was cozying up to two losers. “Hey Rocky, come on,” he said. “I’ve never been part of this fuckin’ school, and you know it.”
Sandy felt exceedingly jazzed, as if her entire being were drenched in lubricant and every move she made, down to the least breath, turned her on even more.
She was used to erectile eyes painting sex patterns on her body. Mostly, that had been a subliminal annoyance. Not until this moment had she herself felt a fraction of the fantasized sensuality at play in those eyes.
The concluding bell had done it.
It sparked something in her. It planted a seed. When she and Rocky burst out of that smelly locker room with the other kids, it felt as though she rode on a wave of freedom.
She was free to be whatever she wanted. No limits. The balloting was done, Rocky would be king, she’d be queen, and no one could coerce her into fulfilling some fantasy of theirs.
Not any more.
They would test-drive, at least, this Cobra. He was different. He was dangerous. It would be fun to jump his bones. Fun too to watch the hood and the jock turn one another on.
She couldn’t wait.
“Well, Sandy knows best,” said Rocky.
“Damn fuckin’ straight, she does.” Cobra’s hands did spastic fidgets, a nicotine jag. His eyes slipped up her dress and licked between her thighs.
“But none o’ that drug stuff.” Rocky sat high on his horse, the one whose saddlehorn Coach Frink had stuck up Rocky’s butt.
Cobra looked sharply at him. “Drugs? What are they? I never heard of any dee-are-ugs, not in my whole fuckin’ life. You clear on that, muscle man?”
