the fabric of the shirt and made him look pregnant. Marcy was pointing her Glock at his head. Two nights ago a bullet fired from the same gun had ended the life of a Cleveland officer on routine patrol. It was an ugly weapon. A brutal, merciless thing. And the sight of it pointed at another likely victim made Dream’s stomach churn.
Despite everything, it was still hard to deal with all this killing.
But it was getting easier. Some. And that was maybe the worst thing of all.
She sighed. “You can’t shoot him. Too much noise.”
Alicia cackled. “Ooh, this should be good.” She sat at a little table at the far side of the room. She aimed a remote control at the television and hit the mute button. She turned in her seat to get a better view of the bed. “So what’s it gonna be, Dream? Gonna reach inside his brain, make the motherfucker hemorrhage?”
A toilet flushed and Ellen returned from the bathroom. “No, that’s boring. Make his head explode, like that dude in
Marcy laughed. “That would rock.”
Ellen’s eyes were wide and she was blinking rapidly. She kept licking her lips and wiping her mouth with the back of a hand. Snot dripped from her nose and Dream could see little white specks above her upper lip. Marcy was just as twitchy. The two had spent much of the evening snorting the cuffed man’s cocaine off the back of a Gideon Bible. The stuff had turned up during a search of his belongings, several white Baggies hidden in the lining of a scuffed and dented old suitcase. Turned out the guy was some low-level middleman in the drug trade, information he’d coughed up after a pistol-whipping from Marcy.
Dream sat at the edge of the bed and looked the man in the eye. A muffled whimper issued from beneath the frayed edges of the duct tape. She’d given him a thrashing earlier in the evening, back in those first moments following their invasion of his room. He’d opened his door to step out for some reason. And the moment the door was open Dream and her companions swarmed out of the van and bludgeoned their way into the room. He’d been full of bluster at first, hurling threats and a barrage of sexist epithets. So Dream had been rough with him, surprising him with her strength. She remembered the feel of his nose breaking beneath the force of her fist. She’d pulled the punch. Otherwise the man’s head would’ve come right off his shoulders. She was that strong now. And getting stronger all the time, the power inside her growing by leaps and bounds every day. And full of a fury that had nothing to do with the man’s apparent misogyny. It was only an extension of the darkness that had taken root in her soul, a sickness of the spirit she could only assuage with violence.
Dream pinched the man’s nostrils shut and watched his eyes go wide. He thrashed and managed to dislodge her fingers, sucking in air through the narrow passages. Dream climbed up on the bed and straddled him. Marcy let out a whoop that made her sound like a drunken sorority girl at a kegger.
Ellen dropped to her knees at the side of the bed.“Do it.” Her hands were clasped in a way that was almost prayerful. “Suffocate the pig.”
Dream ignored it all as the man continued to buck beneath her. Her body rolled with the motion of his struggles. She thought of the time she’d ridden a mechanical bull in a bar in Florida. That had been fun. So was this, in a deeply twisted way. There was something distinctly sexual about it, in fact. She hadn’t been with a man in months. A mad impulse to rip the fat man’s pants off and suck his cock to hardness flashed through her. She pictured herself riding the man’s dick and felt a dampness between her legs. She could kill him while he was still inside her, rip his throat out with her bare hands.
Then Ellen’s breathy whisper: “Hey…this is kind of…hot.”
The words broke the spell. Dream would not sate her needs with this man. He wasn’t worthy. And she wasn’t quite debased enough to relish the notion of playing the starring role in a live sex act for her friends. Not yet. So she exerted her strength and pinned the man firmly to the bed. He still thrashed with all his might. Useless. Dream felt that darkness rise inside her again, that sickness aching to feed. She raised her fists and brought them crashing down on his face. She felt bones and cartilage splinter and yield beneath her hands. His head whipped side to side, the motion a blur, like a punching bag in a gym. His face was a bloody, pulpy mess by the time she broke off the beating.
But he was still alive.
Still breathing.
A blood-red snot bubble welled from the end of a crushed nostril and popped. Dream stared at the man’s ruined face and felt the same numb disconnect she always experienced in the immediate aftermath of her violent outbursts. The pillow cushioning the man’s head was flecked with blood. More dark red droplets dotted the backs of his flabby arms. His hands had gone limp, the metal handcuff bracelets having slid down to a spot directly behind the crown of his skull. Looking at him triggered the same muted repulsion she sometimes felt when watching an especially gruesome horror flick. Then the numbness was gone, completely, and she owned this again, this twisted reality that was sicker by far than any cheap bit of celluloid exploitation.
The strip of duct tape had loosened during the beating. She pressed it down and pinched the man’s nostrils shut again. It didn’t take long. He regained consciousness for a brief moment. His hands jerked once against the brass headboard slats. Then he went still. His eyes glazed over and he was gone.
Dream’s shoulders slumped and her chin dipped toward her chest. And here was the next necessary stage she’d come to expect. This abrupt agony of remorse. The tears came, hot and plentiful, spilling in rivulets down her cheeks to moisten the collar of her T-shirt. No one said anything. They were used to this by now. Her friends. She’d started out hating them all. Not anymore. She belonged with them. They understood her. Accepted her. She’d told Ellen she thought of them as family. And it was true enough. Sort of an all-girl version of the Manson family, yes, but family nonetheless.
She sighed and the tears abruptly stopped. The remorse was gone. And now the dead man beneath her was just a slab of meat. A thing to be dealt with, no more significant than a bag of garbage.
She swiped moisture from her nose. “Let’s get this bag of shit out of here.”
Alicia leaned across the bed and unlocked the cuffs. She removed them from the dead man’s limp wrists and tossed them onto the table. Dream climbed off the bed, slid her arms beneath the big body, and lifted him as easily as she’d lift a small child. There was a distant ache in her knuckles as she turned and carried him toward the bathroom. The slight pain was nothing. A normal person’s knuckles would be broken and useless.
Ellen raced ahead of her and threw the bathroom door open. Dream turned sideways and moved through the opening. Ellen followed her in and opened the shower’s sliding glass door. Dream dumped the body inside. It landed awkwardly on the gleaming white tile, one leg tucked beneath a fat buttock, the other splayed across the edge of the tub. The strip of duct tape had come off again and his plump lower lip looked like a rancid sausage. Dream closed the glass door and turned away from the ugliness.
Ellen continued to stare at the dead man. “Look at him. Pathetic. He deserved that.”
Dream shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t really give a shit.”
Ellen followed her back out to the main room, skipping across the beige carpet like a child on a playground. Dream shot her a look of mild rebuke, but the girl didn’t notice. She was bouncing off the walls. That damn cocaine. And now Marcy was chopping fresh lines on the back of the Gideon Bible. The sisters took turns kneeling over the table, inhaling white lines through a clipped fast-food straw. Ellen did the last line and tossed her head back, loosing a manic shriek of exultation.
Dream frowned. “Too loud.”
“You need to loosen up, Dream.” Marcy shook the last bit of white powder from the Baggie and went to work with the razor blade again. “Little Miss Gloomy all the time.” She grinned. “Haven’t you had enough of feeling on the verge of doom every waking moment? I know I have.”
“Yeah!” Ellen leaped into the air and clapped her hands. Then she dashed over to the nightstand next to the bed and started fiddling with the little alarm clock radio. “Let’s have a fucking party!”
The radio’s tinny speaker emitted a long buzz of static as the red dial indicator moved all the way to the left before at last hitting a surprisingly strong signal that turned out to be a college radio station. A student DJ spoke in a monotone before introducing a Violent Femmes song. Ellen shrieked again as the first herky-jerky notes of “Blister In The Sun” rattled the little speaker. Then she leapt up on the bed and began a manic dance that made her look like a person having an extraordinarily violent seizure. Marcy hopped up on the bed and mimic ked her sister’s spastic moves. The mattress springs squeaked in loud protest and the headboard slammed against the wall over and over.
Dream shook her head. “You guys weren’t even born when that song came out.”
The sisters didn’t hear her. They sang along loudly, the combined volume of their voices overwhelming the meager capability of the radio-clock speaker. Dream experienced a reflexive bit of annoyance, but it felt halfhearted. The beginnings of a smile tugged at the edges of her mouth. How strange. Circumstances dictated the exercising of caution at every turn. Otherwise they could wind up cornered by half the cops in Ohio, the last moments of their wild spree playing out on television screens across the country, providing vicarious entertainment for millions of disapproving good citizens in safe suburban homes.
But as Dream watched the sisters some of their enthusiasm began to infect her. “Blister In The Sun” ended and a more modern tune she didn’t recognize began. The girls evidently recognized it, as they let out identical shrieks and continued to torture the mattress springs.
She moved to the table and sat down. She pulled the Bible close and stared at the little mound of powder.
Alicia chuckled. “Go ahead. Have a toot.”
Dream picked up the clipped straw. “I’ve never done this before.”
Alicia braced her elbows on the edge of the table and leaned toward her. “Dream, you just killed a man. That’s five motherfuckers you’ve knocked off since we hit the road. Every John Law in the whole goddamned country is looking for your ass. Most people would be shitting themselves just about now, maybe be ready to swallow a bullet rather than face the music. But not you. Uh-uh.” She made a clucking sound and shook her head, grinning broadly. “Because you’ve got these super freaky powers. On some level you feel invincible. Am I right?”
A corner of Dream’s mouth turned up. “Could be.”
“Damn straight.” Alicia slapped the table and laughed. “Ain’t nobody takin’ you down and you know it. You’re the baddest bitch ever lived, bar none. And you’re telling me you’re afraid of a little powder.” She leaned back in her chair and folded her arms beneath her ample breasts, shaking her head. “Well, shit.”
Dream sighed. “Okay. Stop giving me static.”
She picked up the razor blade-another thing pilfered from the dead man’s belongings-and scraped the powder into a thin white line. Then she wedged the straw into her right nostril, pressed the other nostril shut with a finger, and bent toward the cocaine. She inhaled hard. The stuff hit her nasal passage and she almost sneezed. She didn’t care for the physical sensation at all. But she inhaled again and finished off the line.
She dropped the straw and rubbed at her nose. “God
Alicia cackled. “Kinda grabs you by the short and curlies, don’t it?”
Ellen shrieked and pointed at Dream. “Ohmigod! Ohmigod!” She grabbed a still-bouncing Marcy by the shoulder and made her look at Dream. “Dream’s gone crazy! She’s got white-line fever!”
The girl flopped onto her back, making the bed springs squeal again. Then she rolled onto her side and pressed her face into the pillow, kicking her feet and
