What was taking her so long?
Something snapped in the distance. His ears went up. Was it close by? Had it come from the restroom?
20. A White Knight Felled
Delia Gaskin slipped into her third janitor suit. There were two clean ones left, lying before her on a folding chair in the backways.
The thought of trying to tug a soiled pair of coveralls back on over her legs and up her torso appalled her. The stench of gore-soaked denim, the clammy feel of it as it slid over skin, nearly turned her stomach. At night’s end, she would fling them all into the basement furnace. That would happen soon after Gerber Waddell had been thrust into the frenzied masses to be scapegoated and futtered.
Ahead of her hung two floating rectangles of light, innerlit jellyfish exhibits in a darkened aquarium. She recognized them as belonging to the ground floor restrooms in the school’s northeast sector. Fluorescent light bled out of one-way mirrors above the restroom sinks, casting short swatches of light into back corridors, the wood here gone to mold, dust, and disrepair.
Each restroom was viewable from an alcove, a four-foot recess from the backways to the surface of the mirror. On Delia’s first pass through this area, she had chanced upon a folding chair leaning against the alcove wall, CORUNDUM HIGH SCHOOL stenciled in white on the back.
Damned janitor had been a guilty little bugger after all, breaking legions of laws by being in the backways for other than upkeep (and precious little of that there had been), wanking off no doubt to flashes of girlflesh. Delia hadn’t yet checked the showers in the girls’ gym, but she was willing to bet that Gerber the perv had a peephole and a folding chair there as well.
She turned into the first alcove, hoping for victims. Bingo! Three of them. A girl and a guy going at it hot and heavy, right up against the sinks. And Tweed Megrim, pooching out her lips as she painted them.
Delia gripped the handle of her carving knife. This kill would be easy. A quick swing of the mirror panel and a lunge.
She told herself she ought to wrap things up soon. Have the janitor snuffed, comfort Brest and Trilby, free the rest.
But she liked setting the superior little snots a-scurrying.
She loved to terrify them, reducing smug instructors to fear and quivering, slashing the life out of yet another wretch and watching the river of panicked ants roil and boil and jump its banks, a seethe of insectual panic that empowered her after years of powerlessness and scorn.
She reached for the mirror’s catch.
Behind her a voice spoke up.
Or rather it sang.
Delia nearly leaped back in fright. She bit down upon a scream. Blood pounded in her brain. As she turned, she had the wherewithal to conceal the carving knife at her side.
“Wait now,” he sang, “just wait now.”
There stood Matthew Megrim, history teacher and daddy to the bitch who’d been slated to die tonight. By chance, Delia had spared this man’s daughter, though now she was preparing to strike the unlucky girl down in the restroom.
“Hello, Mr. Megrim,” she said.
All the teachers used first names with each other and with the staff. But the staff, herself included, were expected to use titles when they addressed the faculty. It made her feel small. Tonight, she felt bigger.
Her greeting sounded a tad sardonic.
“A question,” he sang. “I have a question.”
Seniors loved this man, whose history lessons were always spontaneous and sung. To Delia, it seemed an affectation.
This sad sack’s past had dealt him an unknown blow, one that drove him into this vocal refuge. His singing voice was smooth and beautiful. It would be a shame to silence it, but she clearly had no choice.
He was wary. Would he think she was the designated slasher? For an instant. Then he would realize that a mere nurse had no business in the backways.
In an instant he would run. Or more likely, he would stand and defend his little girl. Either way, she had to regain the advantage.
“Matthew,” she said in sultry tones.
“What’re you doing back here?” he sang, his notes and rich delivery starting to falter as he registered her words and her manner of speaking.
Her free left hand flew to her sexlobe and snatched off the bag. Her head tilted at a bold come-hither angle.
With thoughts of love did Delia light her eyes. But deep inside, an impulse traveled from head to hand. Her right arm rose, the steel blade as rigid as her guile was soft.
He saw it. Saw what she hid.
Observant bastard.
The teacher’s resolve was swift. He tried to leap at her, to seize her attacking wrist.
But he bobbled. The forbidden sight of the nurse’s sexlobe threw him.
It was enough. The honed blade sheared through his moving fingers, no stop, no averting as it swept up to cut where his shoulder met his neck.
They danced a brutal ballet.
His death leap threatened to hurl them both against the mirror. The kids, frightened off by the report, would slip out of her grasp.
She spun their axis about, even as she swept the knife across his throat. He pitched forward and she slithered behind him, gripping his hair, letting go the knife, and yanking him backward with all her might.
Matthew’s neckslit grinned open.
But Delia had succeeded in slowing him to a dull soundless thud against the glass. A gush of blood sheened down his daughter’s face as she put the finishing touches on her lips and headed past the necking couple.
A death wheeze burbled from Matthew Megrim’s throat: melodic, rhythmic, optimistic even in the grip of excruciating pain. The poor fuck had once more saved his child, who walked oblivious out of the girls’ room, flouncing away from death for the second time this evening.
Delia let his corpse collapse and retrieved the knife from where it had fallen. Not sharp enough for the neckers.
She recovered her blue chiffon lobebag and slipped it back on. From the gym bag lying beside the folding chair she drew a thick rubber mallet. Hefted it. She would stun ’em and drag ’em off to the machine shop for fun and games.
No time to waste.
Kitty Buttweiler’s memory demanded far more honoring. Love by death stolen away could never be regained. But by God, that love could be revered, and she was determined to revere it.
There was nothing like human skin split wide-down to muscle, organ, bone, and marrow-to rouse the blood and focus the attention.
Delia unlatched the mirror and swung it open.
The lust bunnies, Bowser and Peach, an odd pair, separated their kissy lips and arched back to check out the noise, the cool draft, the sudden disorientation.
Delia reached over the sink, a perfect swing to her arm, and smacked the bare-lobed slut first. The fallen Peach pinned her mate, which made it a breeze to lay open his forehead. He fell silent, inert, as she had done before him.
The girl first, then the boy, Delia drew up into the alcove beside the dead teacher. With wraps of twine, she secured their wrists behind their backs.
