It all just goes to show you, Edna thought. She had married the top jock, the best-looking boy in school, and look what he had turned into. On the other hand, her cousin Jennifer had married the class nerd and now he was a wealthy Hollywood screenwriter and Jennifer lived in a big house in Malibu, wore designer clothes and drove a fifty-thousand-dollar sports car. Go figure, Edna thought. Who would’ve guessed? Life was a cruel joke. She pushed open the window and leaned out.
“Goddamn it, Harold!” she screamed down at him as he looked up guiltily. “I spent all day yesterday washing your clothes and look what you’re doing to ’em! You know I work very hard around here, tryin’ to keep up with you and all your sloppy habits! And I get no help from you at all!”
She slammed the window back down furiously. “Jerk,” she mumbled, going back over to the TV. They were still on the mass murder story. The anchorman had just turned it over to the reporter in the field.
“Police Chief Scott Fitzsimmons had no comment about the murders when reached early this morning,” the reporter was saying as he stood outside one of the cabins down by Crystal Lake. In the background, an ambulance and police squad cars with flashing lights were visible. “Detectives at the scene, however, were baffled by the brutality of the killings,” the reporter continued. “Bodies were found literally strewn over the four-square-mile campground in the remote lake region.”
“Oh, my God,” Edna murmured, biting her lower lip as she leaned forward slightly to adjust the antenna on the portable TV, improving the picture. She sat back again and resumed winding the yarn. The camera cut away to a shot of a pretty blond girl being taken out of the cabin on a stretcher. The reporter provided a voice-over commentary as she was loaded into the ambulance.
“Ginny Field miraculously survived repeated attacks by the ax-wielding killer and was taken to the hospital today,” the reporter said, offscreen. “She is in serious condition, suffering from multiple stab wounds and severe hysterical shock. The names of the eight victims are still being withheld pending notification of the next-of-kin. Reports of cannibalism and sexual mutilation are still unconfirmed at this hour. The person responsible for the Crystal Lake horror remains at large . . .”
Edna reached forward quickly and turned off the TV. She didn’t need to hear that sort of thing. My God, she thought, cannibalism? Sexual mutilation? And the killer was still at large? She wouldn’t get a wink of sleep tonight.
“Harold?” she called, in a shrill voice. “What’re you doing down there?”
There was no answer.
“Harold . . .” Edna set her mouth in a tight grimace. She hated it when he got sulky and didn’t answer. “I swear . . .”
She looked out the window, but there was no sign of him in the yard. Shaking her head, she put her knitting on the couch and went downstairs. She went out the back door into the yard, stood looking around for a moment, then glanced at the laundry hanging on the line and sighed. A work shirt and a pair of pants were missing. She picked up the basket and started taking down the clothes.
“Jesus Christ, Harold,” she said, talking to herself, “you take what’s yours and you leave the rest for me to do. So inconsiderate. Why didn’t you just finish the job?”
No, of course not, that would be too much to ask, she thought. If I hadn’t come out here to see what that big dope was doing, the laundry would’ve hung out here all night.
“Do I have to do everything around here?” she said to herself. Given the lack of response from Harold, she was saying things to herself more and more often. Christ, she thought, they’ll be coming to take me away to the rubber room pretty soon. That’s if I live so long.
She heard a footstep crunch on the gravel in the drive.
“Harold?”
She squinted into the darkness and, for a moment she thought she saw a large figure moving past, but now the sheets hanging on the clothesline blocked her view. She moved to look around them and saw that the door to the wooden shed out back was open. She put the basket back on the porch and went to see what the hell that jerk was doing out there in the middle of the night. Sometimes she simply couldn’t figure him out at all. Most of the time, she thought, sourly.
Meanwhile, Harold was bent over the fishbowl in the back room of the market. He opened up a little can of fish food and shook some flakes out into the bowl.
“Okay, boys, soup’s on,” he said, shaking out far more flakes than necessary. In addition to overfeeding himself, Harold had a tendency to over feed his pets. He had already fed the goldfish twice that day and now some instinct of self-preservation kept them from eating any more. “S’matter, aren’t you hungry?” he said, coaxing them. “It’s good. Here, look, I’m eating it.”
He shook a few flakes out into the palm of his hand and licked them off. He smacked his lips, raised his eyebrows in appreciation, and shook some more flakes out into his palm. Not all that bad, he though, giving the fish another taste. Wonder what’s in ’em? He turned the can around to read the ingredients as he munched the flakes.
“Mayfly eggs?” he said, aghast.
He immediately began spitting out the flakes.
He heard a loud crunching sound and glanced up, wondering where it was coming from.
