Into her sweet waiting lovewomb, Futzy arced his seed, the pair’s urgency fueled by years of denial and by what was transpiring in the gym.
Adora collapsed upon him, exhausted, laughing aloud. He fancied the glass top, stretched almost to shattering, might give way beneath them.
“Whew.”
“No kidding,” he said. “I think you found the gun.”
“I most assuredly did.” Her eyes glistened above their shared laughter.
He looked at her. “You’re my wife!”
“I don’t think so.”
“No, I mean really you are. We’re in a tight spot—”
“Well you certainly are.” She gave his cock a vulval squeeze.
“—we, unnngh, I mean there’s no time for bullshit at a time like this. We could die at any moment. You and me are crazy to be doing this and I love it. I love you. In the morning, if we’re still alive, I’m reclaiming my life, I’m putting my foot down, I’m ordering the sorry bitches I married to pack up and get out.”
“They’ve hurt you,” she said. “I’ve heard stories.”
“I let them do it. I needed it. I don’t need it any more.” It was true. Adora had broken a logjam in him, one that had robbed him of years of happiness.
Right now, however, he had a school full of terrified students to save. but they’re all mine. Eventually the little savages would throw off their inanities and insensitivities, straighten the warps in their warped little noggins, and grow into the imperfect adults we’ve somehow managed, the rest of us, to become.
“I love you, Futzy.”
“I love you too, my sweet Adora Phipps.” He gave her a quick kiss. “We’ve got to go.” She nodded. “But this isn’t over. This has only begun, you understand?”
“I do.”
A humming kicked on. The service elevator on the far side of the wall was in operation. During school hours, a host of sounds masked it. But here, at night, with the throb of music no longer pounding in the gym, the elevator’s hum could not be mistaken.
They heard its door open.
Something rumbled out, into the hallway, just outside the principal’s office.
Futzy helped Adora off, the flesh that joined them reluctant to let go. The snubnose lay in the middle drawer. He drew it out, moving swiftly and soundlessly to the door.
Adora swayed behind him.
Get back, he motioned. Then he yanked the door open.
The stench of death assaulted them.
A clothesrack. A confused tangle of limbs, oddly bent, more flesh than went with two bodies.
Then Adora gasped and Futzy resolved what he was seeing.
Not two but four bodies.
The zipper-mouthed boys zipped together, clothed and bloody.
And the girls who went crazy over them, naked, broken-limbed, somehow joined at the crotch. Bloody gleams of zipper. The rumors about them were true.
Adora gripped him from behind. She bit his shoulder through a thickness of suitcoat, saying nothing. Then her sobs took on volume, and the depth of her fright set his own mood plunging.
Matthew Megrim had never been the designated slasher. But he knew, as did most teachers, the location of the unassuming, vine-hidden, slightly rundown garage a block east of school.
It was tucked into a quiet residential alley. A punch code that ought to have changed each year, but never did, secured the garage. The teachers knew it and kept it secret to avoid the inevitable student pranks.
Rolling down his window, Matthew punched in FUTZYB. The garage door opened. His mind dwelt on the unknown slasher, on his daughter, and on his drowned wives, fluxidermed in the vestibule of his home.
Cam and Arly’s death had been terrible and swift, an act of God.
Tweed’s death, if indeed it had happened, would be a perversion, the assumption of godlike power by mere mortals.
Inside, a bend of lights lit a ramp that corkscrewed down out of sight. To hell with the law, thought Matthew, and drove ahead. In the rearview mirror, as his descent began, the garage door rumbled shut.
The dirge once more filled his mouth, wordless, full of ire and regret, an opera hero, treacherously murdered, gone down to death. The song, as did his mind, danced with fire. Someone must pay, it said. Wrongful death must not go unpunished.
But hope burned strong as well.
On the phone, the woman’s voice had spoken of possible salvation, as if she, whoever she might be, would do her best to stop it.
Matthew had passed the school, its skull-flag flapping in the night breeze.
Now, parallel fluorescent lights led the way down the ramp, affixed where the damp gray cement walls met cement ceiling. A slow steady half-block of driving drew his car beneath Corundum High.
The ramp widened onto the slasher’s parking area. There sat a bulky powder-blue car waiting for its owner.
Whose was it?
On school days, Matthew tended to arrive early and leave late. So his knowledge of other teachers’ vehicles was spotty.
No time to rummage. It would be clear once he met the slasher, and there’d be only one such roaming the backways.
Matthew parked beside the powder-blue car, yanked up on his handbrake, and killed the engine.
“I’ll get them.”
On the driver’s side of the slasher’s car, in harsh light, stood an elevator.
What a joyless grimy hellhole this was. It ought to have been more inviting, a dark version of the faculty lounge perhaps.
What was he thinking?
More societal indoctrination. Years of it drummed into him, into them all.
They ought rather to shut down this vile place, bulldoze earth into it, strike flat the garage, close off the backways at school, close off all backways everywhere at every last high school in the Demented States of America.
It was nothing short of barbaric, this ritual slaughter of the young.
Matthew stared at the hatchet on the passenger seat. Fool thing wouldn’t be needed. The anger had drained from him, leaving urgency, yes, and regret. What was done was done, though he much feared what that might be.
Leaving his car, he approached the elevator, its metal surface scarred and dinged red with age. He punched a battered silver button.
Nothing.
He tried it again, held it down.
Something connected. Motor sounds, rumblings from above. Would they betray his coming?
What did it matter?
He would find the slasher, verify the phone lady’s story, milk his colleague-assuming said colleague hadn’t died at Dex’s hand-for details about Tweed’s murder, details he would then use to shame the promgoers.
There would be no animosity, hard feelings, nor thirst for revenge against the one chosen to carry out the slash. That was an impersonal task. An honor. One did the deed, then let it fade into collective memory. To some, it was a revered act of heroism.
To others, it was a scandal.
Krantor Berryman, the earth science teacher, had been routinely shunned for years.
He had been chosen once.
Rather than take part in what he called the country’s shame, he had paid his fine and served a year in
