“No, Dudley’s busy right now.” Winnifred’s grin spread as wide as her legs had been. “He’s helping our master.”
Madness, Tom thought.
“We,” she went on, “as in myself, and…her,” Winnifred Saltenstall pointed into the dark. “Your new sister, Tom.”
A shadow stood in the corner. Tom turned on the overhead. What stood there looking at him was a freakish hooded woman in a long black cloak and sunglasses. She grinned…hideously.
Fluid giggles floated up, like kindergarten kids laughing.
Madness, Tom thought again.
“We need you, Tom,” Winnifred said.
—You’ll be happy with us. Our master will be very happy.
Both women stepped forward. Winnifred continued, “We’re inviting you to take part in a miracle, Tom. We need you.”
The woman in black kept giggling in abrupt, wet bursts. On and off, on and off, the giggling went, like the sped up cackle of a band of witches. The sound made Tom want to puke.
Winnifred was giggling too. Her sparse trim of pubic hair showed unabashed, glistening from self excitation. A black pendant lay between her big, bloused breasts. It looked like an upside down cross. On her left hand was a square black ring. In her right hand she held—Tom’s eyes bulged—a hammer.
The woman in black was holding something too. It looked small, slender, sharp. It looked like a nail.
A nail? A hammer?
Her shaded gaze shifted in on him; she moved gently forward. Her lips were red. Her face was lustrous, perfect white.
Something glistened, and all at once Tom collapsed. Suddenly his neck hurt. He lay on the floor, paralyzed. Shadows stepped around him. Winnifred’s face smiled down like a godhead in the sky.
Did someone say “Destiny”?
The cloaked woman giggled some more. Tom felt numb. The black pendant swayed as Winnifred, girlishly uncoordinated, knelt very daintily and placed the nail in the center of Tom’s head.
««—»»
And at precisely the same time that Tom McGuire was being introduced to “destiny” in a most bizarre manner, Wade St. John was having a nightmare. In this nightmare, Professor Dudley Besser, as an inbred, cannibalistic creek person wearing size 54 overalls, was dragging screaming halter topped blondes onto a nighted swamp pier, stripping them and chopping them up neat as a butcher. Like a machine, the heavy cleaver chunked through flesh, bone, and wood. As he chopped, a pendant swung back and forth about his fat, dirt lined neck. Professor Besser’s eyes were dim silver, and when he opened his mouth, dim silver light came out, and a silver moon cast dim silver light onto the dead water. Professor Besser was chopping away like a regular one man slaughterhouse. Chunk, chunk, chunk, the cleaver went, all night long. Wade was sitting in a lawn chair at the end of the pier. He was reading a book and drinking a bottle of Samuel Adams lager. He knew this was a dream and was therefore unconcerned that his biology professor was dismembering naked blondes mere yards away. Wade supposed he would help the girls if this weren’t a dream, but it was, so he didn’t. A casual glance upward showed him that Besser had kicked his psychotic chicanery up a notch. The overalls had come down and now he was copulating with one of the torsoed blondes...or at least trying. His obesity prevented any effective intercourse and eventually he just said “Damn it!” and began masturbating with another girl’s severed hand.
Charming, Wade thought. Man, this is some fucked up dream.
The cold beer was great in the dank hanging midnight heat of the swamp, but the book he was reading was not so great. It had a girl on the cover, who was beautiful in a way that could not be described. Each page of the book was blood-red. There was writing on them but the writing was in some indecipherable language that was somehow mocking. Dream knowledge informed Wade that only women could read the weird glyphs; men could not. A great fear rose in him, and he threw the book into the swamp. The chunk, chunk, chunk of Besser’s chopping had ceased. Then a scream burst forth loud as a trumpet. Terror pricked up Wade’s back, plucked his skin. Murmurs drifted vaguely in front of him. What were they? When Wade gazed down the pier, he shrieked. Professor Besser lay belly down by a rotted piling. He was no longer dressed in creekman’s overalls but in the usual slacks, shirt, and tie. He lay very still. Oh, and one other thing: his head was gone. Wade wondered where it was. He thought: People don’t take heads. They take exams, they take vitamins, but they don’t take heads! This seemed a very workable social rule; you could generally count on it. But soon the whereabouts of Professor Besser’s head became immaterial. A far more pressing matter arose. The pieces of the girls Besser had chopped up began to reassemble. Pretty, severed legs hopped about, awaiting reclamation. Arms waited to be reconnected to proper shoulders, while torsos bellied through the pile of twitching limbs. One girl with high, pointed breasts twisted an arm off another girl’s shoulder. “That’s not your arm! It’s mine!” Another girl with a broad rump clumped footless through the pile. “Where’re my feet?” she asked. “Has anyone seen my feet?” Slowly but surely the group of butchered girls pulled themselves back together. Wade wasn’t too keen on confronting a bunch of reassembled—and probably very pissed off—women. But the only way off the pier was through them, unless…unless… Wade looked into the swamp water. It was black, mirror still, and it smelled nice, like perfume. I wonder if this bitch is deep, he asked himself. “Of course it’s deep,” chided the girl with the rump. But what was that rasping noise? Wade’s eyes nearly popped out of his head; the girl was sharpening her teeth with a crosscut file. Not good, Wade reasoned. The high breasted girl said, “It’s more than deep, Wade. It’s bottomless.” Wade opted not to jump in the water. He would just have to fight the girls, and was that so bad? It should be easy; women were the weaker sex, right? “Right,” one girl answered. She was petitely slender, ninety pounds if that, with little cupcake breasts. She picked up Professor Besser’s headless, three hundred pound body as if it were a bag of packing peanuts. “See how weak I am?” she said, smiling. She heaved the massive corpse past Wade, where it hit the water like a pallet full of mason blocks. The girls rejoiced in laughter. Wade pissed his pants. No more need be said of the weaker sex. The girls were all reassembled now—perfectly—with no signs of Besser’s methodical butchery. “Does my hair look all right?” one girl fussed. “Oooo, that fat guy broke one of my nails!” complained another. “Girls, girls,” reminded a third. “We have work to do.” “Woman’s work,” came the low chorus. Their eyes all focused on Wade, but were they eyes or dim silver gleams? Wade didn’t know. That was the problem with dreams—you never knew what was what. Was a cigar a phallic symbol, or just a goddamn cigar? The girls closed in on him now, stepping in time very slowly. The high breasted girl assumed the group’s speaking chores. “Wade St. John, it’s time for your sentence.” “Huh?” Wade intoned. “You are an affront to womankind,” she said. “You treat women as objects for your own pleasure.” “Not true!” Wade yelled back. “I have great respect for the female mind.” The girls on the pier laughed, and their laughter was a song of truth. Wade faltered. How many girls had he taken for granted, used, discarded? Dozens? he thought. The girls on the pier laughed. Probably more like a hundred. How many had he deceived for the mindless entity in his pants, lied to, cheated on, hurt? For the first time in his life—and in a dream, no less—he realized what a despicable sexist piece of shit he was. This was the sentence he’d been waiting since puberty to pay. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry.” “Tell that to all the girls you treated like garbage, all the girls you used.” “I’ll repent!” he exclaimed. The girls on the pier laughed. But he would, by God, if only they’d give him the chance. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he muttered, then heard an absolutely bloodcurdling scream. A shadow moved away. Wade sat spread legged in the lawn chair, his jeans down. The women watched, their eyes full of dim silver light. But what were they watching, and who had screamed? Then Wade knew: his appeal had been revoked. The spokeswoman was saying, “…and your sentence shall hereby be executed at once.” It didn’t take Wade long to figure this one out. The girl who’d been filing her teeth stood before them all, chewing something with vigor. Wade finally recognized the scream—his own—and he looked down in horror to see that he no longer possessed a pair of testicles. Wade screamed again, long and hard, and the girls rejoiced at his horror. The girl with filed teeth grinned as her jaws worked enthusiastically on their new fruit. “They’re kind of crunchy!” she exclaimed. She rubbed her stomach and swallowed. Wade threw up. Then someone shouted, “The Mother’s coming!” “She’s coming back!” the leader rejoiced. “She’s accepting another sacrifice!” Wade was mortified; he gestured at his
