Slob

window.

There's a little production of hanging coats up that he does, and then he sees her sitting there kind of forlorn and he just goes over and takes her hand, talking soothingly, very softly, talking about nothing, and they're sitting together on the bed and it just doesn't seem that natural to be in a motel room with him, she thinks, but she is a grown woman and nobody's forcing her to do this against her will, and she tries to relax, and he kisses her very softly on the cheek, and then again, and then it begins between them for the very first time.

Very very chaste, unsexy, brother and sisterly smooches. Just holding each other, tentatively, with him doing most of the movement, leaning in to her, exchanging a couple of little-kid-type kisses, and from out of nowhere he's shooting this enormous fucking boner into her leg as they are halfway lying in bed, one of her feet still touching the dirty carpet, and they both break up laughing and that helps some and then he's embarrassed and rolls over on his back wishing it would go away and knowing now what a mistake this whole thing was.

And she can sense that this is a very nice man here, a good man, and they can at least laugh together, and she leans over him now and kisses him softly on the lips, and he says it's all a mistake and she says don't be silly and he says I know you don't want to do this and she goes it's probably bad for a man to get a great, throbbing erection and not—you know—climax, and when a man is aroused like that she should reach an orgasm. You know, it's no big thing. We don't even have to do anything together or make love yet. Why don't you masturbate, and it sounds so silly they both break up again.

But she persists with it and she knows what she's talking about, she says, it's probably bad for you to be aroused and so on and so forth and he says yeah very hoarsely yeah it probably is and she kind of takes things in hand herself and begins rubbing him gently and oh my oh oh oh my godddd GOD-DDDDD that feels so good so wild and now he know he's going to be going off like a rocket and he unbuckles his pants and slides his pants down and the embarrassment is gone and hell, he thinks, let her do it and she has matters in hand. A mercy cuddle, he thinks, that's what this is turning out to be.

'Edie, that's almost it, but don't let the top come up like that. You wanna' keep your hand real slick there, see—and just keep a nice steady movement up and down on it, not too loose and not too tight.' I should know, he thinks, after years of devoted whacking off. 'Yeah. That's oh that's it! That's more like it. Do that. Oh yeah. Don't-stop!'

Thing about sex. Even when it ain't too good it's great, he thought. And so they began inauspiciously, to say the least, with a mercy jerk.

Chaingang

He has formed a kind of grudging respect of sorts for the little people. He readily admits they soldier better than we do but that's saying nothing. Our childish, arrogant bumblers are reckless and inefficient in the field. At least the little people have some soldiering ability. He loves to kill them—to ambush them and feel the life flowing from their wiry little bodies. He likes to chainsnap them, crack them open like rotten fruit, slice them, eat their strong life source. Eat their raw hearts.

Once in a killing field where he had gone alone he had discovered one of the major tunnel complexes. First he had found the entrance, a tiny spider hole that he couldn't get more than his leg through, and then some sixth sense led him to the blue feature that ran two hundred meters to the north and he had removed his ruck and shirt and pants and gone in the cold water, diving down with his blade and chain, a waterproof flashlight tied to him, diving down looking for the other hole.

He found the exit on his third dive. He was a powerful swimmer and could easily hold his breath over two minutes, and he feared nothing. He knew Charlie loved to dig down next to blue and make a slanting escape tunnel that would exit out below the water table. Depending upon the season of the year they could be impossible to detect. But inside the tunnel complexes there were traps, blind alleys, secret passageways that only the little people could squeeze through. He found the exit but he could see there was no way he'd be able to cram his bulk through the tiny exit hole. But it was here that he devised the beginnings of his plan.

Yet it was not until he had escaped their efforts to terminate the spike team and destroy him, escaped back to a warm, green place where he licked his wounds and by the sheer effort of his will brought himself back up out of the pit of raving lunacy that still reached up to claw at him, it was not until then that he began to transfer the dream to paper. The plan didn't totally crystallize until he'd finally reached the comparative safety of the mainland 'back in the world' and was roaming, killing again as before.

He had been inside the car for a long time and it was cold and noisy in the foulness of the car, but his thoughts were elsewhere. For long hours he'd daydreamed of the woman he had killed and the amazing and stunning luck of the draw in choosing her. She had proved an incredible, rich, spectacular choice, a truly beautiful woman whom he had been able to keep alive for many hours as he took her down into his hellish horror of unspeakable filth and terror and then killed her with delicious restraint.

Cody Chase was her name. He whispered it to himself inside the darkness of his pyschopathia. Cody . . Chase. Imagine someone being named that. A bright, animated, physically breathtaking young palomino who thought for so long that she could outthink him, outrun him, outguess him, outfox him, outsmart him, outwait him, and then as it went on perhaps just outfuck him, outsuck him, outbeg him, outcry him, outbleed him, and then— she'd finally run out of outs. And that was when his pleasures began. When he could look into those dazzling blue soul reflections and see them turn tombstone gray with fear and know that she was now vulnerable to him the way he wanted. She at last realized that there was no exit. And in her vital, strong, willful abandoning of that last hope he let her rally then and began playing with her, teasing, showing her some of the first, simplest steps in the sometimes stately sometimes frenetic always awesome last dance of death.

He fantasized about another Cody Chase and the refinements of what he now practiced as an art form, nuances and embellishments, small improvements, little tricks to make the next bitch's hell all the more depraved, the more unendurable. Cody . . . Chase the outrageous untouchable bodacious temerity of the cunt to have a name of such lithe, sensual, elitist elegance and to flaunt herself in front of this great, fat, waddling blimp so far beneath her station in life, this disenfranchised, disgusting slob of a wretch who actually had the gall to breathe the same upper-class air as she. Cody fucking Chase in her Neiman's haute whatever, bathing him in fashionable scents and promises flirting with him simply by her bold and undisciplined movements taunting him with her long, shaggy, impeccably coiffed blondness, enraging him with her waspish, tight-pussied, high-assed, firm-breasted, long-necked, slim-legged, pampered, fastidious, God God dammmmmmmmmake her crawl make that bitch eat the foulest shit hurt hurt hhhhhrrrrrrrrrtttttt her and then kill her slow easy slow easy make it lassssssstttttttt ohhhhhhhhh the white-hot waves were coming now and he must be very careful.

The words echo around inside that snake pit of a mind. Cody . . . Chaaaaaaaaaaaaaaasssssssssssssse . . . . sibilant and snaky slithering syllables sliding around the twisted corners and crashing on the rocks. To find her like that and as always to move her to motivate her so easily the ultimate ego stroke to a monster man like him to gently cover her in a blanket of confidence masquerade and lies to play with the bitch that way proving himself that way simply turning her head around and then turning her again leading her so easily, she was so sure he was one thing and she was so maneuverable as he put her in exactly the position he wanted all the time making the cunt think it was her decision, selling her, closing the deal, getting the slut's name right there on the dotted line. And then taking her as he had planned from the first.

He could hardly breathe at the thought of it. The excitement of the kill had got him hot again as he relived it for the third, fourth time, remembering every tiny detail, running it back, playing it over again in his thoughts.

'Why would anybody get in a car with somebody like that?' he'd once heard some ignorant ass ask during an imbecilic television program that never even began to touch on the real guts of the mass-murder phenomenon. 'Who would get in a stranger's car?' some nitwit had asked. Why, YOU would. ANY- BODY would, you dumb, arrogant, insipid ignoramus. If the right strings are pulled, anybody will do anything. If a more powerful mind, a masterful and dominant intelligence, decides you will do something, you will accede to the wishes of the greater