Sandy imagined the whip in his hand. It made her heart race.
“Hey, but I thought you… I heard that you—”
“It’s all lies, man. Bad rap’s done stuck me with a bad rep all the goddamn time in this fuckin’ shithole. They never get off your back once they climb on. They’re like a Flogger stuck on High with the straps sewn shut. But nobody never proved a thing on me, not one.”
“Sorry, Cobra,” Rocky said, looking cowed. “I didn’t mean nothin’ by it.”
Rocky could have torn Cobra in half without raising a sweat. But Sandy guessed years of bull-headed coaches had made him malleable. She and this dark-eyed mini-thug had years of fun ahead, making Rocky perform for them.
“That’s it, guys,” she said. “Be friends. We have a whole dance to feel this thing out—”
“—I’m gonna feel you out—”
“—and I for one am planning to enjoy it.” She could already sense a dark texture to the air, a miasma of thin-lipped disapproval from students and teachers alike, judging the three of them.
It did nothing but turn her on.
The trumpet music stopped. The drummer began a roll, soft, then faster and louder until finally he spangled off a cymbal shining gold and shimmery in the spotlight.
“Fuckin’ Futzy’s up,” muttered Cobra, “ready to spout more prom bullshit.”
The principal held folded papers in one hand and tapped the mike with the other. He was gazing out, white in the face, beyond the gathered masses toward the Ice Ghoul.
Mr. Buttweiler, a really nice man who winked at Sandy a lot, looked seriously psycho tonight. Too bad the prom committee, many of them friends of hers, had trampled on his feelings.
But he would get over it. Maybe it would help him overcome his twenty-year-old funk.
And if it didn’t?
Well fuck him, she thought, amazed at the crudity of her musings. Fuck him to hell and back. He was nothing, now that school was out, over, and done with forever. He was pasteboard where power had stood. Wink at some other piece of tail, you jackass, she thought.
It made her laugh.
“What’s so funny?” Rocky asked.
“Yeah, babe. What gives?”
“None o’ your beeswax,” she said.
Soft sadness through the speakers. “Can you all hear me?” A squeal. He backed off. The feedback died.
“Maybe not now,” Cobra said with a leer, “but me ’n’ old Rocky here’ll crop it out of you later. See if we don’t.”
“Yeah, Sandy.” Rocky adopted Cobra’s macho stance. “Double welts for you tonight!”
“Promises, promises,” she said.
She caught Mimsy and Bubbler pointing at her, fellow cheerleaders who were a longstanding item. The prissy pair of boob-and-panty-flashers acted stunned.
Well, fuck them too, she thought.
Futzy Buttweiler tapped on the mike, leaned around looking, tapped it again, looked closer and flicked a switch on its neck, then tapped it once more. This time, thunks sounded.
He cleared his throat.
Gerber felt like a shirker.
He’d done the flag thing, the colored light thing, the setting up of the mike, the series of bells by which the senior class got herded here and there for the slaughter and the okay-you-can-get-up-now stuff.
All that stuff.
From where he stood, looking down on the prom, he had done all the right things. But he hadn’t hovered as he usually did. He hadn’t been seen by all the right people.
Gerber was spooked.
Maybe it was the big red monster in the center of the gym. Its face was plenty creepy. The ferocity of its stance made electricity shoot up his spine and into his partial brain. He could shut his eyes, or go as far away as his shoes would carry him. But still, them lightning sparks did their upshoot thing and the cold eyes stuck in that wicked red face penetrated deep inside him and urged him to do bad things.
He gazed down.
Ants. The spotlit bandstand. The big red monster and the dead girls. Spiffed-up seniors milled or stood in clumps on the sawdust.
Something kept Gerber company that night, but he didn’t really want company.
Shadows moved.
Even up here.
Was it him? His feet suggested where to go next. He could already see himself there.
Life weren’t fair.
You grew up, got overzealous, maybe one or two people died what ain’t hadn’t oughta.
So what?
But that weren’t how society saw it. Nope, they cut the bad urges out of your brainpan and chucked the cut part in the trash. Made you safe again. They thought. Made you productive and put you in a janitor suit so’s you could serve a good function for your fellow man. They thought.
Huh.
Their knives weren’t so smart.
But he wasn’t about to tell them so. Maybe he knew shit little, like they said. But he knew that if he told them, they would open up his skull all over again, take out the whole damn thing this time, and toss it in the trash.
Ol’ Gerber was too wily for that!
But he was spooked tonight, for sure. He would catch hell for doing or not doing some shit, though he’d done everything he was sposta oughta. Maybe that was the meaning of the shadows and the sounds.
Guilt goblins.
Conscience. That thing without which he’d been operating before they sliced his head open. Maybe it was filling in the empty spaces.
Great. Useless stuff. Hope I don’t catch any o’ that, he thought.
Then he saw the shadow again, even way up here. And he lowered his head and put his big hands on top of it, cringing and feeling tears come into his eyes.
Go away, he thought. Go away.
His feet wanted to move again.
Jonquil stood less than ten feet from the slain girls, sniffing the as-yet subtle smell of death.
No, that wasn’t quite right.
Pesky’s ribboned belly had begun to steam with a stenchy redolence that pleased her, that stoked her lust and made her think of later.
For the past many years, Jonquil had taken to marauding after the prom. She would find some neighborhood in an obscure section of Corundum, draw a bead on some lonely guy or gal or couple through their window, and fuck the juice out of them. Totally anonymous, dressed like a slut on the troll, she acted with complete abandon.
She loved it.
“Ladies and gentlemen…”
Futzy’s voice faltered. He struggled to regain his composure.
Jonquil wondered where Gerber Waddell was. He hadn’t been around all night. Usually he hung about on the periphery of the prom. In some ways Gerber was the prom, hints of violence behind his soothing exterior.
She found other reasons to wonder.
There was something strange about Flense’s body. The solid white of her gown was now wet with blood. It
