In Laymon's Terms

Weston Ochse

T WAS AT THE World Horror Convention in Denver, Colorado that I met Dick Laymon. One minute we were being introduced, the next minute we were talking like we were old friends. A half-an-hour went by before we noticed that the people around us were burning a pentagram in the carpet.

The next day as we walked across the glassed-in walkway from one part of the hotel to another, we saw a group of protestors down below, decrying the use of animals for medical research.

“I wish I had a poster board,” I said.

“Why?” he asked.

“So I could write on it how we’re dismembering kitties on the fifth floor and quickly running out of them. PLEASE SEND MORE!”

Dick shot me a wide toothy grin. Above that, in his widening eyes as he comprehended the humorous malevolence of my plan, was a look of such childish glee, I knew that given the right tools, we could stir the crowd into such an uproar that the doctors and research technicians would be forgotten.

And their rage would find giggling, our joke lost upon them.