Samuel Minier:

Writing in the Dark

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 "Slasher"

Splinters pelting my face as the machete came down, but I stumbled back and all he got was air. I sprinted past the wood-chipper, hit the rear doors hard, never losing my pace. Then the forest beckoned. Though he was far behind, I ran as fast as I could. Smiling. As always, I’d never felt more alive.

"There’s been a murder in New Haven."

Mom had the newspaper spread around her like a wall as she told me. I knew she was putting her face on behind it, using that little swivel mirror with the attached make-up tray. Part of the morning ritual: a new homes guide and the clunky portable phone to her right, a bowl of soggy low-fat granola forgotten at her left. Just another May morning, 1988.

"No shit?" I pulled a Pop-Tart from the cupboard.

Down crumpled the wall. Disapproval narrowed her mouth and eyes toward each other, emphasizing her early wrinkles. It was kinda sad. It was also pretty funny.

"Well no kiddin’." I emphasized my clean-cut astonishment. "Golly gee, June, just what the heck is happening to this town? Next thing you know, there’ll be coloreds living next door."

"Danny, this isn’t one of your disgusting movies. Somebody. Really. Died." She shook the paper at each of those words.

"Got it Mom, I got it." She was still preaching as I walked out the door.

That morning after the first killing, you could feel summer looming in the air – a shimmer of heat patiently waiting behind the cool morning dampness. I could see each bead of dew balanced precariously on each droopy blade of grass as I backed out of the driveway. She’d been on my ass to mow for a week – "It’s important, Danny. Who would want to buy a house from me with my own looking like an overgrown jungle? Appearance counts."

Yeah Mom, got that one too. I dropped Ozzy’s Ultimate Sin into the tape deck and drove to New Haven High School.

Her name had been Louise Schneider – mid-twenties, lived alone – and her death was big news in a small town. All day her name drifted through the school halls, carried on currents of gossip that wound between denim-jacket sleeves and across Benetton t-shirts, through the after-stink of hair spray and amid the crank-slam of locker doors. All those bobbing heads voicing different pieces of the story:

" . . . came in through her back window . . ."

". . . gutted man, I heard she was gutt –"

" . . . killed her cat too . . ."

I got the call to the counselor’s office in third period American History. Screeching opening over the intercom, then - "Mr. Hartline, could you send Daniel Feldman down to Mr. Drusenberry’s office please?"

Thanks, real discreet.

The class quietly shuffled. A couple chuckles. Some jock asshole – probably a friend of Denise’s, that fuckin’ bitch – fake-coughed "psycho!" as I walked past. I kicked the leg of his chair, almost took it out from underneath him, then nonchalantly kept going as Asshole raged and Hartline clamored at both of us.

Drusenberry greeted me, gestured to have a seat. Thick - the most efficient description of him I can offer. Thick glasses, shaggy mustache, gut with the droopy density of the well-fed middle-aged. The only thing thin about him was his smile; his moustache hid his upper lip, so that when he tried to smile his mouth disappeared.

He said nothing, just sat looking at me. "I’m not trying to be rude, Dan, I just wanted to get a look at your shirt, " he non-smiled. He sounded-out the movie title on the shirt, as if having trouble making out the words in their blood-drip font. "I . . . . Dismember Momma?"

"You’d love it, " I said. "It’s about family values."

"Given what happened last night, don’t you think that shirt is in phenomenally poor taste?"

The way he enunciated "phenomenally" made me want to hit him. I just shrugged instead.

"So far we’ve had two students complain about that shirt. One of them was almost in tears. I was wondering what you thought about that?"

If a shirt makes her cry, maybe she should go home. I shrugged again.

He sighed, fluttering stray mustache hairs. "Come on Dan, don’t give me the silent treatment. You’re lucky I’m the one they came to and not the vice-principal – "

"Look, I just grabbed this because it’s the first clean thing I found. I didn’t even know about the murder til I was leaving the house, OK?"

He sat back, prodded my story with his eyes. I just kept my face blank. Fuck you and your mind games.

He sighed again. "Well, even on a normal day the knife and the half-naked woman would make it inappropriate for school. Just do me a favor and turn it inside out."

"Fine. Do I need to change in front of you?"

That reddened his face. "No, in the bathroom will be fine. So . . . how are things?"

"Good, " I said automatically.

"Haven’t seen you in a while."

"No need to. I haven’t said a thing to her since Christmas." Denise Longley, fucking bitch.

"I know, I’m not accusing. How about your dad, how’s his treatment going?"

I hadn’t seen Dad in five years. "Doin’ better. Look, I probably need to get back to class."

He surveyed me again. "Dan, if there’s anything you need to talk about – "

"Your door’s always open, got it."

"You’re changing before you go back to class, right?"

Yes mother, okey-fucking-dokey. "Yeah."

He scribbled me a hall pass, kept staring at me as I walked out. In the bathroom, I pulled my shirt off, scratched at my head. I’d probably tried a hundred different shampoos; nothing helped the psoriasis that crept beneath my hair, splotched its way down my back. Some freshman walked in while I was holding the shirt up. "Don’t look at this, " I warned him. "You’ll get naughty ideas." He turned around, left without pissing.

When I came out of the bathroom, Drusenberry was loitering outside his office. Looking in my direction. He nodded at the ghostly image of the reversed shirt-print on the shirt, then strolled back in and shut his door.

Fucker didn’t trust me. I headed back to history.

Late that night, after my shift at Dante’s, I came downstairs to grab a snack before starting the movie. I Dismember Mama, in honor of my favorite guidance counselor. The morning paper was still spread out on the kitchen table, the streetlight’s beam pouring onto the headline. MUTILATED BODY FOUND. Beneath the words was a picture of a cop standing before a plain-looking white two-story. The cop’s feet were planted, but his upper body was flailing in an awkward dance-pose as he shouted something to someone off-camera. From the expression on his face, I think he’d either pull his gun or start crying if somebody sneezed.

Here’s somebody who finally gets it. Some middle-class defender of the public – probably a family man, probably with two little girls, probably adorable-fucking-blonde twins. And then he walks into this. And all that shit that he thinks makes up his life, that he thinks gives his life meaning, all of that is piled onto a paramedic’s stretcher. A human-sized dough mound, the sheet covering it darkening as the shadows underneath seep up through.

And suddenly he knows. He sees suffering, he sees meaninglessness, he sees all that shit nobody wants to think about. Finds it still-chested and waiting for him on a fine spring morning.

Mom was right, this wasn’t one of my movies. This was a thousand times better. Wake-up call, buddy. Welcome to reality, where your adorable little girls will change and grow, and fuck and hate and bleed and decay. And lay in their rooms at night and come to the fleeting realization that life’s pretty lonely when the only guarantee is a patient muslin sheet . . .

My head was pounding. I sat and pushed my forehead against the cool tabletop until my breathing slowed down. I went back upstairs to watch the movie, but not before cutting the picture out. Too good to go in with used tissues and yesterday’s milk jugs. That’s how the scrapbook got started.

The next night at Dante’s, Jack Gershon was running his mouth like usual. "Man, I hope they fry this asshole when they catch him. Strap his ass down and let the juice get loose."

Don pulled a large pepperoni-and-mushroom from the oven. He was ex-Navy, with cheap-ink tattoos on his beefy forearms. "How do you know it’s a ‘he’?"

"You think a woman could do that?"

"Son, you never been married. Woman’s most dangerous creature on the planet."

Don play-punched me in the arm and laughed like a fool at his own joke. I liked Don a lot; he was a good boss and could make, as Dante’s slogan said, one hell of a pizza. But I liked Don most because when he laughed, you knew that he knew he was full of shit.

Jack ignored the joke. "You know what the problem is," as he loaded the pizza into a carryout box, "the problem is all these crazy people they just let run around in the streets . . ."

I kept my eyes down, chopping banana peppers.

" . . . why aren’t they locked up, you know? I just heard on the news that they’re closing another state asylum or whatever they’re called, and I’m like, well that’s just freakin’ great! Why don’t they just give ‘em butcher knives for parting gifts!"

Was he trying to pick a fight, or was he just that fucking stupid? Thunk thunk thunk, the weight of the knife beneath my hand.

"I mean, that’s what these people do. Ask Feldman, he’s the psycho-expert. Right, Psycho? That’s what you learn from all those movies?"

I stared into his shitty smile, the hard glint behind his eyes. I pointed at him with the knife. "Well, for starter’s I learned you don’t piss off the guy with the butcher knife – "

"Jack, that pep-and-mush is gettin’ cold. Let’s get a move on." Don had his back to this whole affair, but his tone left no room for argument.

Jack mouthed "Psy-cho" to me as he strode out the door. I was watching him reverse out of the parking lot when Don play-punched me again. "Hey Danny, if that guy ever learns his ass from a hole in the ground let me know, awright?"

"Deal." That was my cue to get back to work.

I averaged over forty hours a week at Dante’s during school, closer to sixty in the summer. Out of school by two, work at Dante’s from three to nine, then come home and watch a movie or two, crash sometime after one. My schedule kept Mom and I down to the occasional sparring match before school. Fine by me; even when she did see me, she couldn’t bitch about money. I was basically self-sufficient. Money from Dante’s took care of my car, my insurance, funded my movie and music cache. That was important: she could morally object all she wanted, but that shit was all mine, bought and paid for.

See, I knew she was just scraping by. Money’s been an issue for years; as she’s more than willing to tell you, ‘real estates not a consistent income.’ She’s out there wheelin’ and dealin’, trying to sell mansions to the parents of the preppy drones wandering around my school, putting on a show with a cheesy smile and that goddamn squeal of a laugh she uses when blowing smoke up somebody’s ass, her blue blazer and trim skirt showing off legs she did all that Jane Fonda shit for, just whoring herself out to those assholes – why? Why not just get a normal job, instead of having to be an independent businesswoman, a prestigious entrepreneur, the whole time blaming Dad for not being able to help when truth is you’re just fuckin’ greedy –

"Danny?"

Tracy was in front of me, concerned. I looked down and found I’d basically puréed a green pepper.

"Oh." When the hell had she come in? Smooth, dumbass, smooth.

Don passed by, laughed. "Hmm, baby-food topping. Ok, why don’t you work on dough for a while, let Tracy take over the vegetable slaughter. I’m going out back for my smoke break."

I moved to the opposite side of the counter, so that Tracy and I were facing each other. She was sleight, close to skinny, with big eyes and tiny tiny hands. As always, her brown hair was slipped into a thin and easy ponytail that trailed down her back. My own hair was almost that long but curly as hell – gift of my redheaded father, same with the psoriasis – and I had to keep it wrangled through a baseball cap. I thought about that sometimes; how silky her hair must feel, in contrast to the flaming bramble-patch that grew out of my own head.

We worked in silence. Tracy had a shy, easy presence to her – no need for idle chatter or mindless bullshit. There was quiet comfort in that. Plus, she lived out in the county and went to a different school, so I didn’t have to worry about my reputation preceding me.

Still, I felt like I needed to say something, not just stand there and gawk at her like I was doing.

"Pretty crazy about that girl, huh?" I regretted the words as soon as I said them. Stupid, unoriginal. And a cop-out: ‘crazy’ was a throwaway explanation for Louise, a Jack - ism.

Tracy gave this pained little smile, her eyes not aimed at me. "Yeah, pretty crazy." That was it.

Wonderful. Fucking brilliant. Every movement I made suddenly seemed large and ridiculous. Maybe I could work on the dough at the back counter, away from the scene of this idiocy –

"I saw her that day, " Tracy said.

"Huh?"

"I saw her, " she repeated quietly, "on the day she was murdered." Still her uncomfortable smile.

"When? How long before?" Couldn’t help it, it was the first thing in my head.

"Maybe two hours. The police think I was the last one to see her alive. Other than – you know."

The words had a chill to them. "Damn, " I managed.

The honesty must have put her at ease. Her shoulders dropped a bit as she began to open up. "Yeah, I was visiting my dad over at his girlfriend’s; they live in the same apartment building that Louise - did."

She called her by her first name, the way everyone had started to. Live normal and you’re unknown; die spectacularly and you’re fucking famous. "Did you see – "

She laughed at the eagerness, the anxiousness in my voice. "No. No sign of the killer. I already told the police that. They questioned everyone in the building, took my statement. It was just - "

" – like a movie, " I finished.

She looked surprised, embarrassed . . . afraid? "That’s exactly it. I mean all of it. It’s like this picture in my head . . . I’m looking out the window as she comes up the stairs. She looks worn out, probably just getting off work. But still pretty, black hair to her shoulders in big looping curls. Small bag of groceries in one hand. I can see her chipped fingernails, she’s that close. But she never looks up, never sees me. She passes by the window, out of the frame, and . . . that’s it. Just like that."

"Fade to black. " I said. The beautiful fleeting woman, hours from her death. God, she was right, that was a great closing shot. The only thing missing, of course, was the death itself.

She had stopped chopping, was picking at her cuticles. ""God, it just seemed so . . . perfect, somehow. I tried to tell my sister this, but she looked at me like I was nuts – "

"Nuts, oh, we’re talkin’ about Feldman?" Jack butted in as he came through the door.

Tracy abruptly dropped her head, hiding her face with the dangling slip of her ponytail. She began self-consciously whacking at the vegetables again.

"What? What’s the big secret?" Jack’s pace slowed.

"No secret, " I said. "I’m nuts and you’re a dick, right Jack?"

"Fuck you, Psycho – "

"Hey." Don’s voice boomed from somewhere in back. "Knock it off. Jack, bring your delivery money on back."

Tracy gingerly lifted her head after Jack had walked away. "thank you" she mouthed to me as she kept chopping.

The knife seemed three times too big for her, like a giant sword in a child’s hands. The thin veins on her wrists jumped out as she brought it down.

The poem came all at once, as I watched the knife rise and fall. I just kept repeating it silently until I could slip off somewhere and scribble it down:

I’ll show you how to hold it.

Mom was already gone when I woke up Saturday morning. Large clipped letters on a scrap piece of paper – Closing on 1467 Clarion, gone all morning. MOW please. The "please" was an after-thought. Still I broke down, did as she said just so I could quit hearing about that goddamn yard. Psoriasis killing me the whole time, so that I spent half the mow scratching and shaking my head like I had fleas. I untied my hair, hoping the sun would help dry out the itching, but that just left me with sweaty strands clinging to my neck. I finished mowing and immediately jumped in the shower, scouring my fingers across my scalp, drawing blood in a few spots. My mother’s voice – It’d be easier if you’d cut your hair. Look nicer too.

After my shower I headed to the video store. Didn’t have to be at Dante’s til three, figured I could squeeze a couple of movies in. Something old, something new: I bought a used copy of Last House on the Left, rented April Fool’s Day. The old lady running the counter always held the videos with the very tips of her fingers, like she didn’t want to touch them.

I was halfway to the door when the fresh-paint smell hit me, dropped like a hand on my shoulder and I was six again, walking through here with Dad, back when this was McCormick’s Paint Plus and we were buying up the red. Stacks and stacks of interior, exterior, satin-gloss, latex, all that we could carry in his big hands and my little ones and that cla-clunk cla-clunk of the red wagon. Any whiff of paint always makes me think of Dad. Dad and Ole Three Tits.

Outside, the phantom smell evaporated under bright sunlight. If you weren’t stuck mowing, the day was actually pretty damn nice. I rolled all the windows down, blasted Iron Maiden’s Seventh Son of a Seventh Son on the way back. We lived just north of town, our sub-division – fucking real estate word, thanks Mom – our neighborhood separated from New Haven proper by a dense tract of woods. For Sale signs, some of them with Mom’s name, jutted from the strips of weeds on the edge of the woods. That’s right Mom, sell the Earth, turn it all into one big outlet mall, fuckin’ McDonald’s arches instead of trees. Get rid of the last thing Dad and I ever had.

Of course, ignore-it-and-move-on had always been her philosophy concerning Dad. After he was gone, I’d started having nightmares about Ole Three Tits. Soon I was up to wetting the bed and sleepwalking. Mom took me to the doctor, then to a shrink. That lasted exactly one session, until he recommended we start family counseling. Me and her and Dad. She balked at that shit, quit taking me to that ‘quack’.

Instead, she started her own brand of therapy. Wouldn’t let me sleep with her after the nightmares. Made me change my own sheets when I pissed the bed. The best was the bell tied to my bedroom doorknob, so she could track me down and jostle me out of my sleep walking sessions. It scared the absolute shit out of me, threw me off-balance; once I fell and cut my head. Four or five times a night if she had to, but over two weeks that ended it. Joyce Feldman cured her fucked-up son all on her own, just so she didn’t have to deal with any of it.

See, one summer morning when I was six Dad asked me if I wanted to come help him work. He was a house painter, said he was headed to the paint store to pick up some red. "Real important job, Dan the man, " he’d said confidentially, "the most important of my life, and I was thinking my son oughta be in on it with me."

He stopped me when I went to get in his work truck. "I got a better idea." He came out of the garage pulling my wagon. "Hop in, cowboy, we’re taking a shortcut."

The trip through the woods took an hour. We emerged two stores down from McCormick’s. I had a bruised butt from thumping and bumping over nestles of sticks and jutting tree ruts. Dad had barely broken a sweat, was smiling like a madman. "Alright, let’s start working."

We stacked the wagon: two rows, two gallons high, every one of them scarlet. Dad took two cans effortlessly in one hand, slowly drug the wagon out of its inertia with the other. I carried one can with both hands, my chin resting on top of the lid. We tromped back into the woods with our burdens. That trip took two hours, with a half-dozen stops when the paint columns toppled. By the time we got back to the house, the sickle-crescents carved into my palms throbbed like cuts. I stared in awe at the jump and twitch of Dad’s arms as he neatly stacked the cans against the back of our garage. Mine went on last, a crowning achievement. He picked me up, hugged me deeply. "Good job son. You ready for another trip?"

I was six and knew my dad needed me, needed me for more than just the paint. What the hell else was I gonna do?

We were on our fourth trip back when night fell. The people at the paint store wouldn’t look directly at Dad, just slipped the CLOSED sign in the window as soon as we were out the door. The woods seemed to step forward in the darkness, eagerly to swallow us. I was a mess by this point: crying, runny nose, soggy pain between my toes. "I can’t make it Daddy, I can’t!"

Cheerful, scary. "Well, imagine you’ve got to run home. Imagine that something is chasing you, something with a long dragon tail. Three tits, with an eye on each nipple"

In spite of my pain, I snickered at the word nipple. He lost it.

"Don’t laugh, damnit! DON’T!" He roared. "You’ll bring her down upon us for sure!" Then furtively, as if realizing something might hear him. "If we can just get home, we’ll paint the house, paint it red paint the whole town red and Ole Three Tits will never find us."

I ran as best I could the rest of the way, imagining three blinking boobs stalking us.

Mom was waiting when we got home; finally, after her full day of real estate, she saw what we had been doing. Confusion and anger bowed to fear when she saw my bloody feet, heard Dad’s incoherent explanation. She locked her and me in the bedroom, called the police. And that was the beginning of the end.

Well, not really. He’d been falling apart for a long time, we just hadn’t known. Turns out he hadn’t done a paint job in months. How the fuck could she have missed that? And the last three jobs he had done, he’d refused payment for – "People need more color in life than the Almighty Green." Much later, Mom found receipts for the five rented storage units. They were filled floor to ceiling with gallon cans. All red.

The cops took a look at my blistered feet and called it child endangerment. Then came evaluations, and words: manic obsessive psychotic blah blah blah fuckin’ bullshit that meant nothing. Mom made sure to constantly address the issue of my safety. Dad could see what she was trying to do, how she was cutting him out of our lives. At the divorce and custody hearing, it took five cops to drag him out of the courtroom: "Paint it red, son! Paint it all red!" The last I’d heard, he was living a couple of towns away, in an apartment near some psychiatric center. Probably still trying to paint–

Seventh Son of a Seventh Son had ended. I’d been driving around for almost an hour. I headed back home, parked behind Mom’s Cadillac - ‘it’s important to present the right image’. Yeah. Even if you can’t afford it.

When I walked in, I was expecting a thank-you for the lawn. Instead I got a silent stare. "What?"

"Would you mind explaining this?" She held out a folded pizza ticket.

Shit, the poem about Tracy. "What the hell are you doing going through my stuff – "

"It was laying in the middle of the kitchen floor. Fell out of your pocket?" Her calmness was unnerving.

"Look, it’s nothing, it just – "

"I thought you were done with all this."

"I am, it’s not a big deal – "

"Yes, it IS!" Ah there, I knew she couldn’t stay composed for long. "Or don’t you remember how close that girl’s parents came to calling the police?"

That girl. Denise Longley Fucking Bitch. That’s how I hear her name in my head – all as one big proper noun. She’s the one who got "Psycho" started, so hey, the least I can do is re-name her, right?

The thing is, she didn’t say anything until her cheerleader friends found the poems in her purse. Then it was all tears and I’m so scared of him, he’s stalking me, blah blah blah. Before that, though, little Miss Prep never said shit. Never told me to stop. If she’d said quit writing those, I would have quit. I swear. Hell, she was the one who started all this, had asked to borrow the "Close My Eyes Forever" single. I’d brought it up in English class when we were reading Romeo and Juliet, talking about love and suicide. And she never did give me that tape back. Fuckin’ irony.

"Is there another girl?" Mom demanded.

"No." The lie was instantaneous, a survival reflex. "I just got thinking about Denise, wrote that last night."

Mom shook her head. Mocked me with a little laugh as her eyes drifted from the ticket stub to the movies in my hand. "I cannot believe this. Some poor girl gets murdered, and here you are, still obsessed with this . . . junk . . ."

Oh god, here we go again . . . "Oh for Christ’s sake, quit worrying! Nobody’s gonna find out, it won’t hurt your fucking sales!"

In the stunned silence before she erupted, I watched the blood swell to her face.

Paint it red, son. Paint it all red.

In the dreams, my bedroom and the video store are one. Dim fluorescents drape my room in hazy shadow. A multitude of pyramidal display cases, twenty or more, like a smattering of standing stones. Faces leer out from the covers, breasts slope past their contours, knives jut out beyond the boxes’ boundaries. This is his shrine, where he pays homage to his ancestors. Their masks adorn the walls – hockey and clown and utterly blank. They bear witness in this holy place: the center of the universe, the beginning of the world that we have created. He and I.

SECOND SLAYING, the headline shouted. Not a very good picture this time, just a shot of yellow tape cordoning off a triangle of trees at Sanford Park. No comment from the police on a link between this one and Louise; you could almost hear the clamping of their mouths, as if locking down for siege. New Haven was maybe 10,000 people. They hadn’t had a murder in six years, and now they’d had two in two weeks.

Cheryl Leigh, New Haven Homecoming Queen 1986. She’d just finished her first year of college, was home for summer break. Even a social outcast like me remembered her. A wet dream made flesh: the face of an angel on the body of a whore. Rumor was the park worker who found her thought she’d been run over with a lawn mower. Such was the shape she’d been left in. Stuff like that was too important to let slip by; I carefully printed such details down, taped them in the scrapbook next to the official clippings.

School was a fucking circus. The scandal of Louise was contorting into something more kinetic, the stagger-shock of having actually known the dead. Demanding snippets of teacher-talk, filled with imperatives and something-must-be-dones, all that bullshit bluster. The honesty leaked through in smaller ways. You could see it in the perpetual wariness of the eyes, the way heads jerked at street noises. Some girl let loose in the middle of Algebra II; my class heard her coming down the hall like a banshee, howling the full-length of the school. They knew, even if they wouldn’t admit it. The wound was open, the beast was loose.

An impromptu memorial had started in front of Cheryl’s glass-encased picture (State Tennis Doubles Champion 85, 86) by the gym: flowers and stuffed animals and we’ll-miss-you-so-much poems. I was just depositing my own contribution at the end of the day when – "What the hell are you doing?"

Denise’s boyfriend hulked before me. She was at his arm, tugging ineffectually. "Brian, let’s just – "

"Shut up. We don’t need his psycho bullshit right now." He swept up the note before I could grab it, broke it open with football-tough fingers. "’Wake up little ones, the knife-light is upon us all.’ What – what the hell is this?"

His voice drawing gawkers, hostile stares. The center of attention for the whole damn hallway, and still Denise’s eyes hovered only at my feet. Wouldn’t even fucking look at me. "Do you still listen to that tape?" I asked the top of her head. "In bed with him? I don’t blame you, you’d need something – "

That got her looking: an embarrassed flush swept away by unbridled hatred as Fuckhead got a fistful of my shirt, some chest-skin too, and that’s it I’m taking his fucking eyes out –

"Enough. Enough!" Drusenberry’s voice, tired to harshness, his hands knocking us out of each other’s grasp. Even given the circumstances, he looked haggard. He began to lecture: the phenomenal disrespect, of fighting at a place where people are trying to honor blah blah blah. I walked off, ignoring his protests, Fuckhead’s taunts, Denise’s now-burning gaze. Fuck ‘em all, I was going to Dante’s. Make some money and buy that goddamn single. Again.

We had crap for business that night. At eight Don announced he was closing up early. "You don’t think we’ll get a late rush?" I asked.

"Not on a Tuesday, " he said. "Go on, get outta here."

Tracy caught me outside as I was climbing in my car. "Hey, " she called out hesitantly, "hey, do you – could you give me a ride? My mom was supposed to pick me up at eleven, but I can’t get hold – "

"Sure," I said too quickly.

Silence like a third person in the car. Could she feel it too, this nervous presence sitting between us? "Put in whatever you want, " I nodded at the stack of tapes as I fired the car up.

The wind flipped at her hair while she timidly browsed. Time thudded by; she probably hated metal. "You can just turn on the radio, if you don’t like – "

"No, I’ve got one, " she said.

I shifted as she was putting the tape in. Our hands brushed, her palm smoothing across my knuckles.

"Oh I’m sorry, I’m sorry!" Overly concerned.

"No harm done. " I tried to smile. She smelled great.

I couldn’t hide my surprise when the Halloween theme began tinkling through the speakers. "Bad taste?" she asked. "I mean, with the murder –"

I thought of Drusenberry, started laughing. "Yeah, phenomenally bad. You’re a horrible person. Good thing I am too."

"I can’t believe you’ve got this soundtrack. I don’t mean that like you’re weird," she quickly added, "it’s just, I’ve always loved this music."

"Yeah?"

"Even when I was little. My mom would make me leave the room when the commercial was on, ‘cause she thought it’d give me nightmares. I had to hide in the hall and just listen."

"Did it scare you?"

"Oh the mask scared the hell out of me." We both laughed at her dainty profanity. "But not the music. The music makes me think . . . of running, I guess. Like somebody running, as fast as they can, just wild and free."

"Maybe they’re running because there’s a maniac with a knife chasing them." I laughed again.

She just smiled. "Well, whatever the reason."

Michael’s theme carried us out to the thickets and fields of orange twilight surrounding her house. "Thanks, " as she stepped out of the car, and I thought that was it. She lingered though. "Do you want to come in? For a pop or something?"

Two Dr. Pepper’s in the living room. I brought the soundtrack in with me, played it as we talked about movies, music. She was more of a Steven King fan than me, and I made puking noises when I saw her Bon Jovi albums. Still, she agreed Leatherface was both scary as hell and silly as shit, so I told her there was some hope left.

She caught me eying her single of "Close My Eyes Forever". "Great song, " she said. "You don’t have it?"

"Long story."

A slow descent into seriousness; asking about her school lead to her mom, her dad’s affair, the divorce. "They’re both happier now, so I guess that’s what’s important, right?" She sounded doubtful though. I just agreed, said nothing of my own family dramas.

Night crept in as we talked. It blurred the furniture, cast everything to mysterious mounds. I watched her disappear in the darkness. She finally turned on a light, but that feeling remained: the tantalizing, scary tingle of night in an unfamiliar house, an uncertain situation. Should we sit here or over there? How close? A spring breeze through the windows, with a sugary taste to it. Was she that airy, that sweet? I did my best not to think, not to let all these possibilities overwhelm me.

I left before her mom arrived home. Awkward shuffle at the door – would I? Should I? She was the brave one. Without looking at me, she said, "You can, I mean, if you want . . ." Then her chin beneath my fingers, the back of her neck too, and lips just enough apart that I could feel the presence of her teeth, but no more. No tongue. Very proper, very chaste, and yet close to engulfing.

The wind kept her cool against my mouth all the drive back home. I tried to watch a movie, but I couldn’t focus. Restless, pacing around my room, still remembering the texture of her lips. Quick trip back to the car, concrete imprinting my bare feet. I tried the movie again, this time on mute and with the Halloween soundtrack streaming overtop everything.

A whole new vision: the sneaking and the fucking and the dying all reduced to their barest images, their needless justifications eliminated. The chase unfolded, until it was only the slasher and the final girl, running running running and Tracy was right this sound was the epitome of freedom, something beyond freedom, something like oblivion.

The sheets against my bare thighs, that still spring night teetering on the brink of summer, just waiting to stretch out forever. Endless possibility: Tracy’s lips, her hair, her small hands. I’ll show you how to hold, how to bring it down, stick it in . . . I was on the cusp, balanced on the edge. Within a day I would kill the cat and nothing would be the same again, but on that last night I was still holding on, holding myself, watching the slasher come closer and closer, one small part of my mind whispering careful, Dad knew about oblivion too . . .

The slasher stuck the girl, and I went all the way over.

The moment before he appears . . . it seizes you, leaves you standing there dumbstruck and gawking as the splinters fly and – there he is. Imminence, then emergence. That sense of inevitability, that no matter what you do, he’s coming. That’s the moment that scares the shit out of me, pumps the adrenaline, jacks me up, gets me hard. It’s quite a turn-on actually, watching your destiny step out before you.

About that goddamn cat . . .

"Wake up, kitty! Wake up, you big hairy pussy!"

"I love big hairy pussy."

I was in the video store parking lot when I heard laughter like roofing nails across a blackboard. I peered around the corner, saw two long-limbed bodies in dirty jean jackets. Tim Gonden, Larry Dees. Tim wore t-shirts that said things like "Silly faggot, dicks are for chicks" and dropped acid in the showers after gym class. Larry was worse; he was the one emptying the bottle of lighter fluid into the garbage dumpster.

My shoulder scraped against the brick as I leaned further out, watching those two assholes. Larry squeezed the bottle dry and flung it down into the dumpster. "There, take it, bitch!" Something rattled, frantically bounced off the metal walls.

Tim had a book of matches and was casting them into the dumpster one at a time. There was a grace to his movement; you could tell he really wanted to get this right.

Larry was more blunt. "Man hurry up, that fucker’s gonna jump out!"

Tim stayed focused on his task. "Fuck off, the fluid’s not catching – "

There must have been chemicals in there, or fertilizer, or a goddamn stick of dynamite. I heard a whomp, and a split second later the whole bin jumped. Tim was blown off the side as five-foot flames shot up. He hit the ground on his back, his jacket sleeve on fire. He furiously beat the sleeve against the ground while Larry doubled-over in laughter.

Tim scrabbled to his feet, his arm extinguished. "Fuck-shit, man, I almost blew my hand off!" He was on the verge of laughing too.

Larry was already running toward the trees, criminal instinct taking over. "Let’s go, man!" Tim followed, rubbing his hand.

I waited until they were out of sight, then cautiously approached the dumpster. The flames had died almost immediately after erupting. A haze of black hung in the air. I could smell the flash-heated metal, the stink of roasted garbage, and something else. Something scorched. The closer I got, the more that smell clotted my throat.

A black shape arced out of the dumpster. In the air it looked dark and sleek, and I thought it was a miracle, that lucky son-of-a-bitch had pulled through. Then it hit the ground, its legs unable to support its weight, and I saw the cat wasn’t supposed to be dark, that the few tufts of hair left on its tail and hind legs were bright orange. It left charcoal rubbings in the dusty asphalt as it struggled to stand. There were no pads left on its feet – no feet, really, just four little melded lumps. It must have gotten caught directly in the blast. That leap out had been its final burst of energy, a last-ditch attempt to get away from the site of the explosion.

It lolled its head at me as I approached. The ears had melted, and its face was covered in a puffy-crunchiness that swallowed its muzzle and eyes. It made no noise other than a few hard breaths as it continued to kick uselessly against the ground. It wasn’t in pain – the third-degree burns had eaten right through its nerves.

I reached out, hesitantly, until my fingers found a patch of fur on the back right leg. At my touch, it dropped its head to the ground. The hair was tough, like the bristles on a brush. Somehow its skin was still soft. I could feel the slow pump of blood through an artery. Like a sink drip, slowing petering out. And that’s when I decided.

I scanned around for a minute, my fingers never leaving its fur. I was worried I wouldn’t find something big enough until I saw a stray cinder-block mired in the ground behind the dumpster. If I was going to do it, I wanted to do it quick. I stroked the cat’s leg a final time, then trotted over to the block and wrenched it from the ground. I hefted it up above my head. The cat never looked up. I couldn’t tell if its eyes were open or closed.

"Go to sleep, " I whispered, and I brought the block down as hard as I could on its head. I drove it down with my forearms and leaned into it with all my weight.

It worked. The body jumped out straight as a board and then dropped. Just like that.

I was still hunkered over the block, catching my breath, when I heard the gasps. A couple of freshman, boy and girl holding hands, ain’t-that-cute, standing where I had been in the parking lot, faces cast open in horror.

No good deed goes unpunished.

The next day, over the intercom: ""Mr. Hartline, could you send Daniel Feldman down to Mr. Drusenberry’s office please?" In fuckin’ Hartline’s class again.

Rumors about the cat had already made their way through the school. No little snickers this time, just cold flat stares. Hartline even stopped teaching while I made my exit. I got within five steps of the door, then jumped around and yelled, "Boo!" Nobody flinched; they just continued to watch me, their eyes as lifeless as camera lenses. You’re all dead, I thought.

Drusenberry hadn’t looked the same since Cheryl Lee. His hair, always bushy and wild, just looked like disheveled shit now, and his eyes seemed distant behind his glasses – narrower, untrusting. Not even an attempt at a smile as I entered. He wasn’t messing around, just jumped right in. "There’s pretty bad gossip going around the school about you."

The current version was that I’d killed the cat in imitation of Louis Schneider’s cat. "Well, you know. Sticks and stones, no big deal."

"No big deal? Killing a cat is no big deal?"

"Oh, so now you believe everything you hear?"

He took off his glass, made a face, rubbed his forehead. "Ok, give me a reason not to."

So I laid it all out about Tim and Larry, the lighter fluid, the cinder block. When I got done, he looked as if I’d told him the Earth was flat. "So they set it on fire . . . and then you beat it to death?"

"Hey, we weren’t in on it together. I just finished the mess they started."

"Why didn’t you tell someone this?"

"Wh – " I laughed at his naïve voice, " – what am I gonna say? Tim and Larry aren’t stupid, they’ll just deny it."

"And when you saw the cat was hurt . . . you didn’t think to get help? Call a veterinarian, maybe?"

The memory of the smell, clotting my nose. Its mushroomed ears. Go to sleep. "It wouldn’t have helped."

"But you didn’t even try." Glasses off again, hand against his temple. Seconds passed as he stared at my concert t-shirt. "So, you’re an Ozzy Osbourne fan?"

What was the deal with him and t-shirts? "What the hell does that have to do with anything?"

He ignored the profanity. "You know he bites the heads off bats."

My turn to rub my head. "Oh my God, don’t start this, all this crap – "

"No, this is important, Dan. Even if you are telling the truth about Tim and Larry, –
– if . . . I knew this motherfucker wouldn’t believe me –

"– you still killed an animal. Actually, you stoned it. There’s more and more studies showing cruelty to animals is the number-one predictor for future violent crimes . . ."

You’ve got it all mapped out, I thought, the downfall of Daniel Feldman.

" . . .and then you’ve got Ted Bundy, who just went to the electric chair swearing that the movies he watched made him into a serial killer. Do you see what I’m saying Dan? All these things you’re watching, listening to, putting in your head, they’re obviously having a phenomenal impact – "

That’s it. Poetic inspiration struck, and I’d fucking had it. "So Ozzy ate a bat, and I killed a cat. Maybe next I’ll fuck a goose – hey, this sounds like Dr. Seuss!"

"Ok, that’s enough – "

I stood up, kicked the chair across the room. "You’re goddamn right it’s enough! I did what I had to do. I didn’t stick around to look, but I hope I broke its goddamn skull open. Did the job RIGHT. And speaking of jobs, why don’t you go help somebody get into college or something, and just leave me the hell alone?"

"I read your poem, about the ‘knife-light’." His voice was quietly judgmental. "You’re lost in all of this, Dan, and I think you need some help. I’m going to contact your mom, and I have to notify the police about the animal cruelty – "

This was surreal, spiraling out of control, and I was going to end all this bullshit right now. I heard a cold certainty settle in my voice as I said, "You do any of that, and I’m going to the police about you and Cheryl."

Now it was his turn to gawk. "What are you talking about?"

"What, you didn’t think there was gossip, about you and her and all those after-hours counseling session? Even a loser like me knew about it. Hell, they might even want to talk to you about her murder."

He was pausing too long, his mouth thinner than ever, his hands clenched on top of his desk. "You can’t just start making things up and expect people to – "

"Sure I can. Everybody wants to trash me with rumors? That’s fine, maybe I’ll start trashing back." I smiled my shittiest grin. "Even if I’m lying, the bad press alone will probably get you fired."

He stood up. "Get out of my office. I try to help you – "

"I don’t need your fucking help." I slammed the door hard enough to crack one of its glass panels.

The whole rest of the day I waited for another intercom summons, a phone call, a police car visible through a classroom window. Nothing ever came. Though that did little to calm my nerves. My thumbs played constant staccato-rhythms against the desktops; I had to do something to take my mind off the psoriasis, which itched so bad it almost burned. Running in my mind, over and over: the stench of charred cat. The trace of its pulse beneath my fingers. Suicide love-poems. Red wagons jostling through black woods. Blades diving into flesh as I blew my load all over my sheets. You’re lost, Daniel, you’re lost . . .

Work was rough. I kept changing plastic gloves because I was digging so much at my scalp. Two screaming matches between Jack and me, the second in front of customers. Don pulled me into the storage room after that. "What the hell is wrong with you?"

"It’s not my fault that numb-fuck can’t tell the difference between Italian sausage and ground beef – "

"No, Danny. You’re driving everybody nuts, including me. You won’t even look at Tracy."

I couldn’t. I caught her glances from the corner of my eye, would watch her mouth open to say something, and I would spin away, check the ovens, do anything other than try to talk with her. I was sinking, weighted at the feet and watching her slip away as I dropped.

Don was talking again. "You blow up again, I’m sending you home. You’re worth about three of Jack, so don’t make me do that. Come on, man, get with it!"

I limped my way through closing, tried to sneak out the back without her seeing me. She was waiting at my car. "I . . . I had thought – you could give me a ride . . ."

"Yeah, " I managed.

No music this time, just the grind of the wheels against the pavement. My throat constricted every time I even thought of speaking. She looked out the window for most of the trip. I could see the hurt in her reflection, didn’t have a clue how to answer it.

She said something.

"what?" I was waiting for her to explode, curse me, tell me to go fuck myself.

"I’m sorry," she repeated sadly. Sincerely. "Whatever I did, if I rushed you too fast, or " – her hands fluttered over her face, her body – "if it’s just me . . . I’m sorry . . ."

For the first couple of seconds, I didn’t realize I was crying. It quickly changed to sobbing, so hard that I couldn’t get words out and in a matter of seconds couldn’t see to drive. I struggled to get the car parked at the side of the road and then completely collapsed. Everything came out – the cat, Drusenberry, Denise, even my dad and Ole Three Tits. All my shit spilling over us like molten rock, burying us. She held me as best she could across the car seat.

"It’s OK, " she said once I’d quieted. "I couldn’t have done it, but I’m glad you did."

"The cat?"

She squeezed my hand. "I mean all of it."

It was after midnight when we finally made it to her house. "I hope you’re not in trouble for being late, " I said.

"No. My mom’s at work."

"Oh, OK."

She gently took my hand again. "She’s working all night."

The statement hung in the air. I suddenly couldn’t look at her again, so I stared straight ahead through the windshield. The night loomed huge before us. "Are you asking me?"

"No." Her voice cracked, and she giggled. It was probably the most genuine sound I’ve ever heard. "No, " she said again, more firmly. "I’m telling you. Stay with me tonight."

So I did.

That same night, as they made out at a local parking spot, Denise Longley and her boyfriend Brian were butchered.

The detective’s name was Hawkins. He had thick jowls and a baritone voice barely within the range of human hearing. "Daniel Feldman?" he reverberated when I answered the door at three in the afternoon.

We sat in the living room. Yes, I understood he just wanted to ask me some questions about Denise. Yes, I understood that this was just an interview to gather information and that I was not considered a suspect but that I could have a lawyer present if I wished. No, I did not want a lawyer. Yes, I was 18 – by 2 months, thank Christ. Mom didn’t have to be in on this, didn’t even have to know. Just answer his questions and get him the hell out of here.

"Relax, " he instructed as we sat down in the living room. "You’re awful fidgety."

"I have psoriasis." It’d been bad from the moment I woke up at Tracy’s, like tiny roaches crawling through my hair. It had gotten worse when I saw the newspaper headline.

"Hmm, " he intoned, like a single note from an electric bass. "Missed you at school today."

Shimmer of déjà vu at the deepness of the voice, the hidden meanings in his words. It all inexplicably pissed me off. "I just decided to stay home, sell drugs all day."

His considerable bulk swelled the living room couch as he leaned forward. "Oh, OK, so it’s gonna be one of these kind of talks."

I backed off. "I skipped."

"Any particular reason why?"

All of them, staring at me with their camera-lens eyes . . . "Honestly? Because I didn’t want to get lynched. The whole school knows I hated her."

He said nothing, waited.

I continued, "I mean that’s why you’re here, right? Because of the poems."

"Could I see one of these poems?"

One problem there: I had already glued them in to the scrapbook, along with the headlines from this morning’s paper. Just seemed appropriate to include the poems together, since she died in her lover’s arms and all. But I sure as hell wasn’t showing him the scrapbook. "You’re trying to tell me her parents didn’t keep a copy of one? For evidence, in case . . . something ever happened . . . "

He smiled. "You’re smart, Daniel. Go on, impress me some more. Tell me what I’m thinking about now."

I scratched my head, wouldn’t look at him. "You know, this is starting to feel like an interrogation."

"Then quit fighting with me and tell me about this cat."

Drusenberry, that motherfucker. I relayed the story again, ended with "It’s all true. Especially the part Drusenberry told you not to believe."

"What part is that?"

"About him and Cheryl Leigh. He said I’d try to slander him, didn’t he?"

That time the detective didn’t smile, though I could see the gears in his head turning. "Daniel, I don’t suppose you can tell me where you were last night?"

I knew now was not the time to be screwing around, that of all his bullshit so far this was the one important thing. Still, I wouldn’t say Tracy’s name. It just wasn’t right, to use her as an excuse like that. To let all their lies and judgments and fear force me into revealing her, revealing us. Fuck ‘em, fuck ‘em all.

"Here, all night, " I said.

"Hm. Your mother can corroborate this?"

"Yep." I’d left Tracy’s at five in the morning, threaded my way between her mom returning home and mine waking up.

Hawkins jotted a few notes, told me he’d be in touch. Halfway out the door, he turned. "You don’t remember me, do you?"

"What?"

"Of course you don’t, you were – what five, six? I was one of the officers who came out that night with your dad."

Somewhere in the recesses of my mind, a voice like a distant sonic boom. Mr. Feldman, you’ve got to calm down, there’s nothing trying to get in the house. . .

Hawkins was still talking, "I remember you – how bad your feet hurt, the fear in your eyes. Not afraid of your dad, though. Afraid for him, wantin’ to help him. You’re a brave little kid." He sighed, shook his head. "Which is why I’m going to overstep my bounds and offer you a piece of advice."

"What? Get a good lawyer?"

"No, smart-ass. But if I were you, I’d drop this whole ‘weird’ act. Tone down the language, quit writing your poems. Leave the cats alone. At the very least, quit trying to impress people with how screwed up you are." He smiled bitterly. "Now is not a good time to be acting weird."

I watched him back out of the driveway with burning contempt. Oh wow, you were there the night my dad cracked up, gee will you be my new daddy now? I tried to watch movies for the rest of the afternoon but they just paraded before me without luster, pale in comparison to the story unfolding around me. Why the fuck should I have to change? Just to accommodate them, to make them more comfortable, these people who walk around with their eyes closed and then yell at me for being scary? Hey, the world is scary; I’ve just got my fucking eyes open.

Stop acting weird. Well, then here’s the big money question, Mr. Police-Officer-Sir: what if this whole weird act is not an act?

"Daniel."

I jerked out of my inner tirade. Mom stood in the doorway, silhouetted by the collapsing sun. She had her hands folded in front of her, her head cocked slightly as if examining me. She wore a cautious smile. Very cautious. "Daniel, a policeman talked with me today."

"Yeah, me too."

"He asked me where you were last night."

I said nothing, just watched her unchanging face.

"You weren’t home when I went to bed at midnight. And this morning, you had just gotten home when I woke up, hadn’t you?"

Did she hear me? I had parked on the street, used the back door. "No I didn’t – "

"I felt the hood of your car before I left for work. Your engine was still hot."

My head fell back. I couldn’t believe it; she’d checked the fucking car. I’m the weird one, the paranoid one? "Well thanks for the trust, Mom – "

"Daniel." The smile was gone now. "Where were you last night?"

"I stayed the night at a friend’s house – "

"You don’t have any friends."

Damn, she wasn’t holding anything back. I sighed. "A girl’s house. My . . . my girlfriend." Don’t say her name, at least hold that back. I still hated myself at that moment.

Her face wavered between surprise and suspicion. "Is that who that poem was for? This girlfriend?"

"Yeah."

"You told me there wasn’t another girl. So were you lying then, or are you lying - "

Her voice faded out as her gaze fixed on something. I registered too late where she was looking, tried to hop off the bed and grab it but she speed-walked past me, swept up the open scrapbook that was laying on my desk.

Her plum-colored nails briskly flipping the pages back and forth. She flung it away from her when she got to the poems about Denise. Her eyes were pooling, threatening to wash her make-up into a bruised-black mess. "Danny, what is wrong with you?"

I’m weird. But even that seemed like too much, and I was so fucking tired of justifying my self, explaining myself. "Everything, Mom." Now I was leaking too: not tears, but pure liquid frustration. "I am everything that is wrong in the world. I’ m my father’s son. I’m crazy, sick, I’m a monster –"

I stopped suddenly, the words caught in my throat. Through her tears, even through my own blurry vision, I recognized her look. Her confusion and anger bowing to fear. The same look in her eyes the night of the wagon and Ole Three Tits. And she’s going to do the same thing to me she did to Dad – shut me out, throw me out, cut me out of her heart.

Well fine. That’s just fucking great.

Maybe I’ll cut her first.

"You’re right, you know." I slowly rose off the bed, approached her in measured footsteps. "I mean, you all should have seen it before, right? History of mental illness in the family. Schizophrenia’s inherited, right? The maniac son of a loony. We already know he kills animals – "

She raised her chin up, tried for a firm voice. "Daniel – "

" – he says SHIT and FFFFUCK to his MOTHER! No respect, no conscience. How couldn’t you have seen it before?"

"danny, " she was backing away from me now. Her heel banged against some heavy piece of floor-clutter, pitching her off-balance. I steadied her by clamping hold of her shoulder. Slammed her against a ripped poster.

She wasn’t crying now, or fighting: her eyes were just huge in her skull, her lips locked together. That painted-up phony face, now genuine in its terror .

"Fine, Mom. You’re right, I’m the killer. The goddamn New Haven slasher. There, I admitted it. Are you happy now?"

I leaned in, brought my other hand against her other shoulder. Our faces were inches apart, close enough to kiss.

"Na, I guess not. Well maybe one of these days I’ll kill you too. Maybe tonight. Will you finally be happy then? To know you were right all along about your fucked-up reject son?"

My hands slipped off her, but she didn’t move. She was still trembling in my bedroom when I walked out of the house for the last time.

To Dante’s like a bat out of hell: a continual blast of wind through the open windows, Ozzy caterwauling. If words failed, maybe I could just use the night. Just get her by the hand and lead her outside. Can you smell it, the freedom? Let’s go, let’s go tonight Tracy. Tell me yes and we’ll leave right now. Stop and grab some clothes for you and that’s it. I don’t need anything, I’m chucking it all: Mom, Dante’s, New Haven. Even my movies. Fuck all of it, start over, clean slate. Just say yes and let the night take us. Just say yes cause otherwise I don’t know what I’ll do . . .

When I shoved through the door into Dante’s, the first thing that hit me was the stench of burning cheese and charred oregano. Oily smoke rolled from the top vent of the double oven. Even as I scampered toward the oven, though, other little details jumped out at me. Table rags dropped in mid-wipe so that they formed little crumpled tents. A stack of order tickets spread across the counter in pick-a-card-any-card fashion. A palm-print stained with sauce on the oven door. Nobody in sight.

I was halfway around the counter when my feet went slick on me, the whole restaurant lurched, and I was careening toward the stainless steel oven. I threw my arms up, hoping to take the burn on my hands instead of my face, but inertia threw me completely off my feet. I flat-smacked on my back and bounced my skull off the concrete. The back of my head was wet; when I checked with my hands they came back red. There was blood all over my shirt, my pants, I was sitting a pond of it, not able to figure out where it was coming from until I looked to my right and saw Don.

The bread knife that has been driven through his skull with such force that it held his limp body in a sitting position against the counter. His one remaining eye was stretched wide, more surprised than anything.

I tried to stand but couldn’t in all the blood and numbness. After three tries, I just dropped back to my hands and knees. This is a movie, think like the movies, don’t be stupid. That got me crawling forward. Don’s feet bumped against my knees as I passed by him. I rounded the corner of oven racks and found Jack facedown. His back was the texture of ground beef, but he groaned in response to my touch.

"Jack, " I whispered into his ear. His hair was soggy, coppery. "Where’s Tracy?"

He managed to get an eye open, but his only response was uneven breathing.

I crawled back toward the counter, steadied myself against the support pipe as I stood up. My head still vibrated with each pulse-beat. I picked up the phone receiver with one hand, a chopping knife from the counter with the other.

A rattle from behind me, suddenly hushed.

The phone squawked at me, what’s your emergency what’s your emergency. I clamped my hand over the receiver to silence the voice. Behind the pizza ovens, running down the center of the building, were three free-rolling cooling racks. Each had a canvas back to it, so that I had three rows of hiding spaces to deal with. I waited, forced myself to stand still.

The noise again, and a flicker of movement against the pale blue canvas. Behind the second row. Tracy . . . or somebody else?

I noiselessly laid the phone on the counter, brought the knife in front of me. Underhand, better control. I crept forward, heel-to-toe. My feet strained through my boots not to slip in the blood. I was just even with Jack’s body when Tracy stepped from behind the second rack. She was maybe ten feet from me.

"Danny, " she said in involuntary relief. Too loud.

And the storage room door five feet behind her exploded open.

I never saw his face. I don’t know how; we were only fifteen feet from each other, but I can’t tell you about him from the neck up. It’s all partial body shots: the sway of his shoulder, the heavy clop of his boots behind Tracy. The crinkled vein in his fist as the knife came up.–

I lunged for her but immediately fell. Covered in blood, too much blood. He grabbed her by the ends of her long hair. I was still on the ground when he landed the first one between her shoulders. Her eyes and mouth rounded, and the thought just came to me naturally – Halloween II, the nurse in the corridor, with the scalpel. I was on my feet for the second and third ones into her back, running full-speed as he spun her around – one in the stomach, one in the chest that went all the way through.

Then he shoved her forward, in dismissal. He was done with her. Her legs took an automatic step, and she stumbled into my arms. Into my knife. My hand sloshed into her already softened-stomach as we both collapsed.

He had turned, was strolling toward the back Exit sign. I tried to scamper up again, my eyes locked on that broad exposed back. Then I felt her hand on mine. I looked down.

She was blubbering, her eyelids heavy, her arms cast about as though she was trying to give directions. I tried to cradle her, but she felt as though she was made of liquid. And she couldn’t die. Not wouldn’t, but couldn’t. As soon as her swollen lids would close, her head would lull and she’d pop back awake.

She was crying. I tried to tell her it’ll be OK, but I couldn’t form words, I couldn’t even grunt. How was she still going? How could she have any blood to let her eyes cry? I held her head, touched my finger to her lips.

"Go to sleep, " I croaked out.

She kissed my fingers. And I don’t give a flying fuck if you believe any of the rest of this story or not, but I swear that’s what she did. And the knife was very warm and very pleasant in my hand, and I remembered my poem. This is it. Once she’s gone, I’ll use it on myself, go with her. I imagined the blade breaking open the integrity of my neck, ripping a final ear-to-ear grin, bathing her in a red-sheeted waterfall. And the ache is so strong I almost do it right then, but for her heavy, pleading eyes, eyes that should have closed what seemed like hours again, though it hasn’t been more than five minutes. So instead of ripping my goddamn throat open like everyone wishes I’d done – like I wish I’d done – instead I pushed her jaw shut, keeping my fingers against her wet lips, and with my other hand I pinched off her nose.

"Go to sleep."

Her eyes never left my face, even as her upper body bounced and those so tiny hands came together in limp claps. I kept looking at them long after her body stopped jumping, all the way through the approach of the sirens and the rough barking of voices in authority.

Mom came to the jail the next morning. She looked in at me, eyes ringed with something. Not tears. In a loud, clear voice, still looking at me the whole time, she said, "He told me last night that he’d kill me too."

                                           Hammerhead

Please.

No.

It’s the last one.   Just to get us through, until we’re finished –

No.

(Silence)

(Silence)

Aren’t you gonna ask?  Aren’t you even curious?

No.

Why?  But oh please, why not?

Because I’m tired.   My hands ache.  My mouth is raw from grinding.  I don’t want to do anything but finish this, and then sleep.  Crawl into a coma.

Please.

(Chewing sounds)

For me.

(Silence, then a sigh)

So.  What’s this one about?

Thanks –

Don’t.  Just tell the goddamn pitch, don’t fawn like some goddam little girl.  And keep working while you’re doing it.

Ok. 

(Deep breath of preparation)

Ok.  I call this one Hammerhead.  There’s this poor little deformed kid, an actual kid with a head shaped like a hammer head shark –

Human mouth or shark mouth?

Oh.  Human, definitely. 

Hm.

What?

Nothing.  Keep going.  And pass that, the left one.

Here.  But what’s wrong with the mouth?  Oh it sucks already, doesn’t it?  I’m never gonna break into the movie biz –

Don’t start, goddamit.  Don’t even fuckin think about it.  Tell.  Your.  Idea.

Ok . . ok.  So this poor little deformed boy, with a rectangular head, one eye stuck on each end.  His skin is shriveled and hangs from his bones like drapery.  Each eye is shrunk to a pinpoint, from lack of sunlight –

 - cause his mom doesn’t let him go outside to play.

Right!  Of course not.

Course not.  Can you do your share?  Pretty fuckin please?

Ok. 

(Becoming muffled.  An occasional crunch). 

Ok, so he’s not allowed outside because of his mother.  She’s worried they’ll all make fun of him, all the other kids.  So he just sits in his boarded-up room and watches movies all day, and puts his beady little eyes, one at a time because of the shape of his head, you know,  he alternates each eye, peering through the single knot-hole in the planks over the window.  Straining to see outside.  That’s his days – movies and the knothole.  And checking to see if she forgot to padlock the door.

And then one morning she does.

Right!  And so he charges out the bedroom triumphantly, running to the front door, his beautiful spirit shining through his horrible face –

But when he makes it outside all the kids scream and scatter.

Wrong!  Just as he is opening the front door, his Mom returns home.   And when she catches him, catches him breaking her number-one-rule . . . she kills Makura.

She kills the kid?

No, not him.  Makura.

Who the hell is Makura?   Here, give me that.  I can snap the bone down easier.

Makura’s his pet shark.  Didn’t I mention that?

No.  Where the hell does he keep a shark?

In his aquarium, on his dresser.  He’s only like two feet long.  Hammerheads only grow to the size of their containers.

I think that’s alligators.

Oh . . . oh shit, you’re right.  I’ll have to rework –

(A slurping noise)

 - that.  But yeah, when his mom catches him trying to leave, she throws him back into the bedroom, then reaches into the aquarium, snags Makura by the tail, and smashes him against the wall!

(Sigh)

The boy beats the Mom to death with the shark’s lifeless body, right?

Damnit! 

(pause)

Damnit!  How did you see that coming?

I just know how your mind works.  Kinda hard not to.

It sucks, doesn’t it?  Just like all the others?

(Silence)

Doesn’t it?

(A pause, then a thick, choking, raging laugh)

Yeah.  It fuckin sucks.  But at least it’s not as bad as the rest.  The deformed shark-boy who makes the team, becomes a football star – yeah, that’ll work – 

Shut up.

– or the – oh God – the deformed shark-boy who falls in love -

(More hacking laughter.  Spattering of food bits against a wall.)

Shut up!

– with a fuckin carp . . .  oh God . . .

I’m just trying to better our lives, get us out of here . . .

No, that was my decision!  Remember, two days ago?  And now I’m stuck listening to these shitty pipedreams, ever since we –

DON’T!

YES!  Because that’s it.  Your blockbuster idea, your runaway hit.