Slaughterhouse High

1. Special Delivery

Sheriff Dewey Blackburn had a soft spot in his heart for the week leading up to prom night.

He never told anyone, though.

Wouldn’t have been professional.

As Blackburn cruised the streets of Corundum, Kansas, scanning parks and sidewalks for ne’er-do-wells, he felt mighty glad that his hand gripped the tiller of the law, keeping the more deranged impulses of the citizenry in check. Corundum was a thriving town, not so small as to bore one to tears, yet not so large as to lose its charm.

In the back seat, his charges shifted.

The woman released a low moan. The prom gown into which she had been tucked—a waste of fabric, to Blackburn’s way of thinking—whispered and crinkled like Christmas wrapping paper. She had been a real scrapper in the holding tank, resisting the needle with every ounce of strength.

Not so her male counterpart, some aimless drifter who stank of sewage until Blackburn’s junior deputies washed, coiffed, cologned, and tuxedo’d him. Obligingly had he hazed toward his fate, a sheen of resignation smoothed over his eyes. The blunt, ragged remnants of his earlobes betrayed the shame of his past: ducking out on his prom (“promjumping,” kids called it these days), being arrested and ostracized, having his lobes crudely docked before being thrust out to fend on his own.

Along the trim-lawned street, gawkers gawked from picture windows. Blackburn idled by, casual fingers guiding the steering wheel, an elbow bent at his rolled-down window, siren quiet. But folks knew he would be out and about. This neighborhood burst at the seams with teachers, and a squad car with a drugged-out, dressed-up couple in the back and a plastic trough cinched to its top meant only one thing on prom night.

The sheriff hung a right.

A left.

Down the way, a porchlight blazed. The house’s big black digits matched the address on his clipboard. Blackburn angled into the driveway and killed the cruiser.

Art teacher’s residence.

Plenty of strange rumors circulated about Zane Fronemeyer and his wives. The man coaxed perverse paintings out of his students at Corundum High. Scuttlebutt had it he had entered the teaching profession for the sole purpose of being chosen. It had taken years, but the sick bastard’s wish had finally come true.

Blackburn got out.

The doped-up couple had at least an hour of grog on the meter, but they’d be checking out long before that timer popped.

The sheriff strode up the walkway, highly tuned to the neighborhood geeks and gawkers.

He raised a warning finger to the threesome on the lawn across the street. They ducked back into their house, two scrawny joes and a fat she-bitch, all three buck-nekkid except for their lobebags. Them and their fellow rubberneckers would keep their traps shut. They always did, on account of the heap of penitentiary time they’d face if word leaked early which teacher had been chosen.

One ring. Two heartbeats. The door swung back.

“Zane Fronemeyer?”

“You’re looking at him.” Fucker smiled in oil. Behind him, like a matched pair of aproned bowling pins, huddled his wives, their left lobes decently bagged, their right ones chewed up more than most folks would consider proper. “You brought me a couple o’ good ones, I hope.”

Christ, what a creep, thought Blackburn. “Here’s the paperwork,” he said. “Help me with the trough.”

Fronemeyer passed the bulging packet to his creamier-skinned spouse and followed Blackburn to the squad car. The sheriff reached up and slipped the knots. In the old days, the steel troughs had been gut busters. These new plastic jobbies with their squat fat legs were a hell of a lot easier on the back.

Hefting the front end, Fronemeyer led the way into his house. “Sheriff,” he said, “this here’s Camille. That’s Hedda.”

The sheriff nodded without registering which wife was which, so badly did he want this part of his prom night duties over.

In the front hall, the art teacher sported a matched set of stuffed parents, upon whom an inept fluxidermist hadn’t bothered to make his sex-ready alterations at all subtle. What had been done to them was strictly against the law, but the statute was so honored in the breach that Blackburn would be laughed out of court if he tried to call these three on it.

Fronemeyer led the way to the basement steps. The air cooled as they descended.

Tweed Megrim, eighteen, naked, and brimming with anticipation straight down to her tippytoes, stepped through tickling bursts of bubbles into a steamy-hot bath.

With a wince she withdrew her big toe, then slipped it all the way in. The rest of her in an abundance of glory swiftly followed.

As the water rose to embrace her, visions of Dexter Poindexter danced in Tweed’s head. At this very moment, just a few blocks away, Dex was stepping into his tub too.

No, wait.

Showers were Dex’s preferred mode of bathing. He was standing beneath the punishing blast of a shower, yes that was it, his eyes shut, his mouth open against the downpour. She pictured Dex’s sweet head angled right, his left earlobe buttoned cutely at the base of his ear, looking (this all in her imagination of course) like a fat blunt thumb bereft of nail and bone.

Tweed gasped.

Don’t go there. In the bathroom, both her lobes were naked, as were his. On the right the friendship lobe, kissable, touchable, and viewable in public. And on the left? The secret, naughty lobe that her classmates cracked jokes about by their gym lockers.

Funny how it was okay for it to be unbagged when you were alone. And it was okay for little kids’ lobes to be exposed until they grew breasts or their voices lowered.

But otherwise, only wedded twos or threes in the dim-lit privacy of their bedrooms were allowed to fondle that concealed length of flesh. Only there could it be pinched and licked and sucked so that their love partner gasped with surprise and delight, going all gooshy in the down-there place.

A devilish grin widened upon her face.

Everyone thought pretty little Tweed Megrim so innocent. Such a goody-goody.

They were right, of course. Plenty of girls at school, from all reports, were supremely slutty (Peach Popkin came to mind). And it was true that she, Tweed, had only thought exciting thoughts. Never had she dared act upon them.

Until tonight.

She had decided. To get Dex’s motor running, she had even hinted.

If he futtered off a choice bit of flesh for her—a nose tip, a lobe, half a nipple, something like that—if he emerged from the frenzied crowd with his miniature cleaver dripping and a special prize clutched in his hand, why then, in the dark quiet of his parents’ car, she would let him touch her lovelobe through her lobebag. Maybe she would even let him brush his nose against it.

Or rub his…

By God, she gasped, floating up through the bubbles and exposing the tips of her nipples.

…rub his bagged lovelobe against hers.

Tweed panted and laughed.

Enough of that. She felt light-headed. It wouldn’t do to get herself all worked up so early in the evening.

She forced herself to concentrate on the pink-sequined dress that waited on a hanger in her bedroom. On the matching lobebag clipped to the hanger. And on her soft pastel pumps.

Her dad had spared no expense in decking her out.

Why should he? There was only one prom night in anyone’s life. Well, okay, if you didn’t count teachers, principals, janitors, school nurses, and such. They had one every year.

But they were grown-ups. Odd old folks whose generation didn’t matter worth a hoot.

Nope. Tonight belonged to the kids.

She and Dex would survive. They hadn’t been chosen to fall beneath the slasher’s knife. Some other couple had.

A full life lay ahead for Dex and her, and cruel fate would not step in to cut it short.

The day before, Dex bragged that he would punch the slasher’s lights out, he would defend her, if by freakishly bad luck they had in fact been chosen. But Tweed put a finger to his lips and told him, “Hush up now, we won’t be.”

And she was right.

There was no question.

Tonight would be the most wondrous night of their lives. And many more nights of wonder lay before them.

Downstairs, her dad was singing.

“Take ’er easy,” grumbled the sheriff, his shoulders stooped as he footed his cumbrous way down the stairs. The back end of the trough was wide and unwieldy.

Fronemeyer, struggling with the front end, nodded and slowed.

Doggy smell. A high soft whine like the plaintive scree of a clothesline pulley.

In the dim spill of light, the pup looked pitiful. Rib-winded, sick-eyed, underfed. It strained at its tether, eager for companionship.

But the sinkpipe held. Puppy claws scrabbled ineffectually on concrete. Light brown whips of turd swirled up from the floor by the dryer. A long-handled axe lay across the washing machine lid.

Blackburn’s eyebrows rose. “You’re practicing on a pooch?” he asked.

“There’s no law against it.” Defensive scum. “I used my own money. At the pound. They’d’ve snuffed him anyway. They’d’ve entered him in a dog-cracking contest, sure as we’re standing here.”

“Maybe so.” The sheriff’s tone betrayed him.

“I’m planning to work up. Most first-timers do, don’t they?”

Blackburn’s ears burned but he said nothing.

When they had set the trough near the drain in the floor, Fronemeyer arched his back and let out an exaggerated groan.

The sheriff glared at him and headed for the stairs. “Let’s bring ’em in.”

Upstairs, Fronemeyer’s mates were draped in wifewear ten years out of date. Red-pink checks. Frilly aprons.

Blackburn nodded at them. He passed an end table that held the school’s instruction packet, doing his best to ignore the fluxed elders in the vestibule.

It was a relief to hit the air outside. But the art teacher dogged his heels, putting in one small-talk goad after another.

When they reached the cruiser, Blackburn opened the back door. “I’ll hand you the guy. “Walk him to the basement. Me and his date’ll be right behind you.”

The woman was propped against the man, both of them doped to the gills. It was a deal and a half to set her straight and wangle the man out, his ungainly shoes struggling for balance as the sheriff propped him up.

Fronemeyer, his eyes agleam in the moonlight, staggered beneath the passed burden. Shouldering one of the man’s arms, he poured soused-relative, coaxy soothings into his ear and steered him toward the house.

The woman groaned. Blackburn shifted her out, her gown rustling like wads of packing. A prom pass was pinned to her dress. At her side hung a miniature cleaver and a small Futterware container, green-lidded.

Authenticity, they said.

As far as Blackburn was concerned, it was nothing but a waste of taxpayer money and a huge boondoggle to the Futter family empire.

The woman reeked of perfume. She had a nice shape to her, fleshed-out and curvy, twenty-five tops. Were it not for the freakish dye-job done on her exposed friendship lobe—pale green from some fringe group’s absurd protest against the sexification of the lobes, as if God had intended anything else, for the love of Christ—the lawman would have thought her attractive.

“Where am I?” she ventured, slow-tossing her head, unable to open her eyes.

“Just a little further,” he said, guiding her past Camille and Hedda. “There’s a nice couch for you downstairs.”

Yeah. Old. Dusty. Discolored foam poking out of threadbare fabric. But in her state, she wouldn’t notice. And in nine-ten minutes tops, to judge from the art teacher’s zeal, she’d be way past the point of noticing anything.

Again the dog.

Scree of a clothesline pulley.

Fronemeyer panted at the couch. Snailtracks of sweat eased down his cheeks. The seated man’s head lolled back, his mouth agape as if preparing to break into snores.

Blackburn placed the woman beside her date. Whipping the receipt from his pants pocket, he pushed the axe aside and smoothed the paper on the washing machine lid. On it he scrawled the time of delivery and his signature.

“Sign here,” he said, “and here.”

“No problem,” said Fronemeyer, taking up the pen. The ratswim of hair on the back of his hand Blackburn found repulsive.

When he was through, the sheriff tore off the pink copy, left it on the lid, and clipped the pen to his shirt pocket. The mutt’s soft high whine had gouged a killer headache into his skull.

“It’s done then?” asked Fronemeyer.

What was this citizen’s problem?

Did he burgle beyond the Maximum Swag Rate? Did he run red lights? Clearly he felt guilty about something.

One could never tell about folks. What went on inside them was a mystery.

“A deputy’ll be by in the morning to pick up the corpses. All three. Leave ’em here in the trough. We do autopsies, so nobody’d better try any shenanigans—”

“Oh, we’d never—”

“—not before, not after. No diddle, no fondle, no lobeplay. Am I clear?”

“We’re not the sort to—”

“ Am I clear? ”

“Yes, sheriff.” A nasty glare. “You are.”

“I’m going to check these two out myself.” He pointed a harsh finger at the teacher, feeling bombs land and detonate, bullseye, bullseye. “The dog’s part of it too. I’ll be scrutinizing Fido here real close, you hear what I’m saying?”

“Yes, sir.” Deflation.

“I’ll see myself out.”

And that he did. Fronemeyer’s wives, in the midst of a fondle on the upstairs couch, bade him good night. The blonde one mumbled it around a nipple.

Blackburn’s squad car, even with a linger of the drugged woman’s perfume, hugged him like home. Firing it up, he headed for Corundum High and his duties there, the lockup, the speech.

If there was any justice in the world, he would never have to see Zane Fronemeyer or his wives again.

Shyler Bleak and his wife Bitsy sat on their bed, propped up against pillows. Their cardigans matched, their black patent leather loafers had been spit-polished to a bright sheen, and their fingers were lovingly entwined.

The TV on the dresser claimed pretty much the Bleaks’ entire attention.

Ceremonies at the Shite House.

Down the hall there sounded a steady blast of shower water.

Gerber Waddell was Corundum High’s feeb head janitor. Shyler and Bitsy Bleak housed, clothed, and fed him. Tonight, of course, he would be very much on duty.

The Bleaks got plenty of mileage out of the community for their sacrifices on Gerber’s behalf. Store discounts, pleasant ego strokes, sympathetic words of encouragement and looks that said better-you-than-me.

But right now, on the heels of applause for the puppet president’s introductory remarks about the nation’s need for divine guidance, the Right Reverend Sparky Reezor bounded up to the podium and seized the lectern with his huge hands as if to rip it clean off its base.

“Mister President, distinguished guests, and all o’ you sinners out there in this great nation of ours,” intoned the burly churchman in his deep bass voice. “Got-damm it! Let us pray!”

He bowed his great white head. His eyelids clamped down tight, as if doing so tuned his mind to the eternal frequency.

Behind him, a TV camera caught Cholly Bork, crack puppetmaster and the brains—such as they were—behind the President. His masterful hands worked an elaborate airplane control. He mince-walked President Windfucker to a plush chair and angled his head as though he were listening in respect. Then that head bowed. The President’s delicate oaken fingers steepled piously betwixt chest and belly.

“Dear God-in-heaven,” thundered Sparky, “once again, as the year rolleth around like that vast immovable boulder (ha! but we know better, don’t we, my friends?) that shut air and sunlight out of Thy Son’s tomb, into our hearts and minds and pleasingly proud bosoms hast Thou rolled the marvel that is prom night.

“We in these Demented States of America are blessed to live in the greatest got-damned country on the greatest got-damned planet in this triple-got-damned wonder we fondly call the universe, my fellow citizens, ain’t it a piece of work? And we have Thee, dear Lord, to thank for that.

“JEEsus—when He roamed the earth with those penetratin’ eyes o’ his—tugged with a harsh hand upon his friendship lobe and condemned us sinners, every one.

“JEEsus, the only man unfallen, swept His glarin’ gaze, those condemnatory orbs whose sting we know so well, across the race of the fallen and He shouted, ‘Let the little children suffer.’

“Got-dammit, let them suffer.”

Shyler Bleak and his wife whispered the words along with Sparky Reezor.

“And JEEsus the Lion, He ramped back upon His great hind legs, His thighs tawny and muscular and slick with sweat. Across the tenuous fabric—that warp and woeful weft, my friends—of our smug complacency, JEEsus the Lion clawed bloody rents, roaring out: ‘Cursed be the meek, for they shall eat camel dung.

“‘Cursed be the poor, for money, the measure of all worth, proclaimeth their unworthiness.

“‘Cursed be the peacemakers, for war alone has the power to set rods of steel in backbones that are otherwise fa-a-ar too bendable.

“‘Cursed be the cowards and the whiners, for rage and fear alone nourish the human heart.

“Lord, I’m not gonna recite every one o’ Your glorious be-RAY-titudes, much as I’d like to. No! For we are gathered here this evening to celebrate the annual sacrifice of our young.

“Here in Washington and aw-w-l up’n’down our eastern shore, from the great state o’ Maine to that blinkered backwater we call Florida, senior proms are just itching to begin. Our brave boys and girls’re champing at the bit like the prize studs and fillies we’ve raised them up to be. Their hooves are digging up divots from the dirt and flinging ’em skyward, as they wait for the starting gate to clang on back and for their death knell to sound.

“So I’ll simply say THANK YOU, LORD, for the wisdom of our forefathers. THANK YOU, LORD, for this marvelous rite of spring, established in antiquity upon our great got-damned land to honor the spirit of your Son. For His rage and hatred, we give abundant and abiding thanks. His ferocity we worship. We strive to emulate it. Every year on this aw-w-l important night, we seek to renew that living dogma, so as to kickstart our nation out of the dying days—out of the morally suspect doldrums—of winter and on into the rejuvenatory times of spring and summer.

“All of us, old, young, and in-between, bow our heads. Some small number of those heads shall roll, never again to rise upon the youthful necks that bear them.

“Their bodies shall, by their sorrowin’ school chums, be futtered, so that reminders, dried and preserved, disseminate across the land and on into the future of this great and pow’ful nation. Mementos of prom night. Mementos too of those brave young souls, unaware—until the abrupt unlooked—for fall of that short sharp shock o’ death—that they have been so chosen, that they have been so honored.

“Honored may they be.

“Honored, their parents.

“And may vast new hordes of talented seniors be unleashed upon this land, upon an economy in dire need of their skills, upon this close-knit community of sinners known as the Demented States of America.

“Got-damn, got-damn, in all manner of ways I say, got-damn!

“In JEEsus’ name. Amen.”

2. Slasher Slashed

Bastard sheriff. Damned gun-totin’ goof had tried to throw a kink into this special night.

Couldn’t. Not the essence of it anyway.

Zane ribbed the squealing mutt with a swift kick to stop its noise, but that only cranked up the volume.

Zane knelt before the couple, his knees cracking in protest. Through layers of fabric, he squeezed the woman’s breasts, the man’s organ.

The bag that clung stubbornly to the base of the man’s left ear convinced you there might be something beneath. But his lack of a right earlobe—the sole blat in an otherwise persuasive visual symphony—told the real story.

Promjumper.

Even so, his exposed lobe-stump was quite the turn-on. Ditto the woman’s undocked friendship lobe, whose faux-chartreuse dye-job reminded Zane of the crushed kernels of pistachios. And this doped-up duo was completely at his mercy.

The mutt’s whimpers began again to grate on him. Zane checked his watch. Time to shake it.

He kissed the two of them on the lips, the man pretty much out, but the woman responding as in a dream, her pretty pink tonguetip starting to show.

They couldn’t trace lipmarks.

Zane was sure of it.

Further play could wait until just before he axed them, once the dog was dead.

After he’d had his practice? The young pair at the prom, whose names and place of death waited inside the packet upstairs.

Zane untied the leash from the sink trap.

Stupid mutt tried to lick his face, had to be batted away. He slack-jerked it into the light, then retied its leash to the trough leg closest to the drain.

That would minimize cleanup.

“Zane? You need anything?” Top of the cellar stairs.

Bitch wife wanted to watch. She had tried to coax him into taking her to the prom. Hedda would lick blood if he let her.

“For the zillionth time, I’m fine. Leave it alone, Hedda. You’re staying home.”

A hurt pause, then petulance: “Just trying to be helpful.”

She shut the door.

The promise of the evening flared in Zane’s body. Fired up by blood lust, he would come home from his killings at Corundum High and undo his worst mistake. Into the dustbin of memory would he drop-kick his sorry-ass wives. Then he and his lover would run off, assume new identities, and begin afresh.

When he let go of the leash, the dog’s dumb exuberance yanked at the empty trough.

Damned thing needed ballast.

Zane’s eyes lighted on the drugged couple. “What the heck.”

The man alone might suffice.

They had shaved him at the jail. Homeless men typically had stubble or beards, but for prom practice they tended to clean up nicely.

Zane tugged at the man’s right biceps.

“Come on, junior,” he coaxed, shouldering the lulled deloused carton-dweller off the couch. The woman slid along the cushions, soft moans issuing from her lips. “You’ll feel right at home in here.”

It took several tries to get him into the trough. Zane knee’d one tuxedo’d leg over the rim, then the other, and lay the bastard down. He was heavy, more a matter of large than well-fed.

But this was the last time Zane would have to lift him.

More puppy tugs. More whimpers. More scrape and movement of the trough away from the drain.

Zane sighed.

The woman was in a bad way, her perm crushed against a couch arm as her fingers fretted at her brow. “Come on, honey. Your turn.”

“Please, no.” She was as listless as a sack of tapioca.

Zane drew her off the couch. A corsage of white carnations edged in blue tickled his nose. He snaked a hand beneath her gown, felt hot thigh, a bikini’d rump, hints of a slit.

Maneuvering her troughward, he wondered why no one this sexy had ever come on to him when he was her age.

He had her now though and, the law be damned, he would use her in some undetectable way, her and her companion both, before he was finished.

Zane positioned her atop her date, felled refugees from a wedding cake. The man’s lobestub glistened like a dare. Zane pressed his lips to it.

The thrill of it blooded him below. Were time not pressing, he would have slipped off his lobebag and stroked himself to head-heaven.

The trough, which he pushed back into place by the drain, now had sufficient weight to anchor the dog’s ardor. But the couple was showing signs of revival.

The medicine cabinet.

He raced for the steps. Hedda stood at the door, Camille topless beside her.

Zane glared at them. “Stay out of the basement,” he warned, leaving the door ajar.

“Do you need anything?” Hedda asked.

“I’m fine.”

Hallway. A snap of the light. Tired old sink. He clicked the mirror open and swung it aside. Medicines, sleeping pills, laxatives, a generous supply of Tuffskin-in-a-Tub.

Ah.

Chloroform.

Sampler drug-baskets had been the rage among realtors when he and the wives had traded up in houses two years before. Zane snatched the bottle up, shoved a few gauze pads into his back pocket, and returned to the basement.

The couple, still groggy, had begun to shift about in the trough, struggling for the energy to open their eyes. Zane knocked the man out first, then the woman, same pad on both. He had bought himself maybe ten minutes.

Keep focus on the mutt, keep his nerves calm, don’t jinx his aim. Those were his goals.

Ready.

Ice Ghoul? He’d give them Ice Ghoul.

The axe seated itself in his hands, palm-wrap behind its blade. He walked about the drain until he faced the wag-tailed, droopy-tongued pup in the dim light, the gray trough stuffed with a heap of prom costumes.

Zane’s practice chops in the woods outside of Corundum had been a cakewalk. Flinders flew. His arms sang to the rhythm of exertion, and the scent of tree sap swirled in his nostrils.

Here? Nothing but a chore.

Zane gritted his teeth, raised the sucker, and let fly. Missed the ribcage. Caught a paw instead. Blood bloomed where toes had been. The dog’s whine rose to a freakish yelp.

Focus. Focus.

He inhaled on the upswing, then brought it down with a huff, slamming the dog back into the trough, gashing its belly. Out gushed a geyser of crimson, spilling across the concrete.

As the fur blackened around the blow, Zane lifted the axe once more, fine droplets in the air, that same stench that bullied its way down the school hallways when butchery class let out.

Again!

A hind leg, sliced, dangled awry. Those eyes, the panicked yelps; he should have chloroformed the damned dog.

Finish him, why don’t you?

The next blow struck an artery. Blood fountained up and out, drenching Zane’s pantleg. It splashed hot, then went cold and clingy. Such life there was in the mutt, struggling out of the carnage as if to undo it.

Zane caught its eyes, held them as he brought the blade straight down between them, burying it so that the skull collapsed and fell—a bleached steerhead in the desert—to the cement floor.

Zane’s heart was pounding.

He laughed and cried with joy.

Through the cellar door, he heard a doorbell chime.

Let the bitches get it.

Despite an overpowering need to be chosen as the school’s designated slasher, Zane had always preferred violence at one remove.

The televised electrocutions on Notorious were just his speed. Indeed, he often used the show’s soundtrack, its screams tracking the rise and fall of electricity through the victims, to draw the most amazing artwork from his students.

Now, he wasn’t so sure.

This dog weren’t no cord of wood. This had been life itself, and no more direct contact with life had Zane Fronemeyer had than in ending it.

First step, doggiedom.

Next, the homeless.

But could he endure their eyes? Damned straight he could!

Zane planted himself on the couch and sat forward, the axe angled like a leaf rake between his jittery knees.

Come on, come on, he thought, I didn’t give you that much chloroform. Open your frigging eyes so I can finish you off and be on my way.

The cellar door unlatched.

Zane looked up in annoyance.

Dexter Poindexter averted his gaze from the mirror. He was a shy guy. Too shy for his own good, some people said.

That’s what Mommy and Daddy told him, though Daddy Owen, the spouse they had divorced the year before, disagreed.

Dex fluffed the wide ends of his bone-white bowtie, nice smooth ripples. Its color and satin sheen matched his lobebag, a tight garter band right around the base of the ear and a generous splay below.

He sincerely hoped these things were dry-cleaned between rentals. It grossed Dex out to think of some other guy’s lovelobe in this same bag. Maybe many guys, though styles changed often enough that it wasn’t likely.

Dex shrugged into the coat, buttoned a button at his waist, and shot the sleeves.

His tux looked sharp.

Tweed would whistle at it. Her eyes would go wide. Of course, Dex would be busy admiring what a knockout she was in her gown, which she had described again and again these past few weeks in great detail.

It was fortunate they were in the dance band. Running through one chart after another would take their minds off the general terror.

As sophomores and juniors, he and Tweed had played senior proms, learning first hand what it was like to see the murdered couple carried into the gym, laid out beside the centerpiece, danced around, and at midnight torn apart.

That reminded him.

He went to the dresser and lifted the cleaver, its blade no longer than his index finger and not much wider. His church group—all church groups across the nation did this—had given him and Tweed practice. An expendable sheepdog. Dex had gotten a cross-section of tufted ear and only been nicked once.

Of course, tonight there would be more kids diving in to futter the couple. And their state of mind would be way more agitated.

That was for sure.

Dex’s right leg twitched.

You had to be brave, cram in there, push and shove and lunge, praying that some doofus did not, by design or accident, clip your lobes, or slice off your fingers, or slash your face.

Dex raised his suitcoat’s right flap.

These tuxes, the more expensive ones anyway, had a special pair of loops. On the right loop, he secured the handle of his cleaver. On the left, his Futterware container.

The cuffs caught his attention, as wide as high collars, and as flappy.

Cufflinks.

As stern as Dex’s father was, he always had his son’s welfare at heart. Dex removed the lid from the white box on his bureau. On top of a layer of cotton waited the gold-skull cufflinks his father had worn, and Dex’s grampa before him.

Signs of love.

Mommy and Daddy had that ferocious look stitched to their faces. Harsh words spilled in profusion from their mouths. They were quick with the whip and Christlike in their savagery.

But they were proud of him, pleased in his choice of Tweed as a girlfriend, and bursting with joy that tonight was Dex’s prom night.

He would brave the slasher, cut his way through the brambles, and emerge triumphant and ready to take his place as a useful citizen.

What more could he ask of life than that?

Dex poked a cufflink through a stiff ironed hole and snapped it into place.

The principal of Corundum High was taking his sweet time getting ready.

He wasn’t showering.

He wasn’t dressing.

Nor was he busy thinking mean thoughts about the little shits who would get their comeuppance tonight.

In point of fact, Peyton “Futzy” Buttweiler was on his hands and knees in the playroom, being whipped senseless by his lacklove wives.

“I’m sorry,” sniveled Futzy.

Torment sneered. “Far as I’m concerned, you’re not nearly sorry enough. He isn’t, is he, Trusk? Lay into the fucker!”

And Trusk, the heftier wife, did as she was told.

Frayed and beaded whip-ends sizzled through the air and snapped away, interwoven with the high smack of Torment’s bullwhip, crosswise upon naughty little Futzy Buttweiler’s back.

Bloodspray spattered the walls, an abstract mural in progress.

Futzy’s much deserved flaying fired up his brain. But his dead daughter’s image burned as bright as ever.

“Harder,” he pleaded. “Harder!”

“You miserable little shit-smoocher,” said Torment. “Don’t you dare order me and Trusk about. We’re not a couple of high school tramps. You see all those blood flecks on the wall?” She bunched up twists of Futzy’s sweat-slicked hair and yanked his head back. “Tomorrow, first thing, you’re going to lick ’em all off, every damned one of them. No breakfast for old Futzy-Wutzy till he gets these walls spanking clean.”

“His wounds are closing,” observed Trusk.

“Well, fuck,” said Torment, “we can’t have that now, can we? Open ’em back up. Make new ones. Real fierce and frenzied, Trusk. Slice the scumwipe some indelible memories. Volley!”

With that, Trusk and Torment redoubled their effort. Grunting into their swings, they so minced the skin covering Futzy’s shoulders and ribs, that wide expanses of bone peered through. Seas of red rushed in, to be parted by renewed whipsmacks.

“ Fuck his sorry ass!”

Futzy wept.

Kitty’s young face shone bright and smiling. Her senior picture.

But around the edges of her smile peered an accusatory look, a look of shame and disgust at her father’s inaction at her senior prom.

She was right to scorn him.

Do it, he thought to the two bitches he had taken in to punish him after Kitty’s death.

A marital masochist, that’s what he was.

Do it. Do it!

He dared not say it aloud, lest they withhold his punishment entirely.

“Now,” said lean and mean Torment, the brains of the duo. “Give off. Man the machine.”

Trusk’s whip handle clattered to the floor.

Futzy braced himself for the pain.

Spang went the release mechanism and hush-hush-hush the grains of salt from the funnel above. They pinged and stippled against his skin, finding their way, much of them, into the V’s of his wounds.

Salt knifed into him everywhere. Pain waved through his body like the unending misery twenty years before, the thoughts he could not shut off no matter how hard he tried.

Futzy passed out, the harsh words of his wives ringing in his ears, longing for death but knowing it would not yet be his.

The blue clunker pulled up to the curb and parked two blocks from Zane Fronemeyer’s house.

A quiet walk past manicured lawns, no faces peering out. The doorbell chimed. Zane would be in the basement. But if not, if he was finished already, knifing three of them wouldn’t pose too great a problem.

All planned, all smooth.

Familiar heads appeared at the decorative window in the door: Hedda and Camille, taste of sex on the lips, a threeway suckle on left lobes until they had gone giddily into simultaneous oral orgasm.

The deadbolt snapped and the door swung open.

Surprise lit their faces.

“Hello, you two.” Casual. Not too loud.

“Zane’s home,” said Hedda. “Are you sure—”

“It’s all right. If he comes upstairs, I’ll offer an excuse. I have a few things I wanted to give you. Is it all right if I come in?”

Better be.

Discretion cautioned against the ruckus of forced entry.

Empty boxes in the clutched paper bag hid the shape of the knife.

Camille fretted. “Well I don’t—”

“Sure,” said Hedda.

Snap judgment.

That and her sex drive, a burning focus on whatever flesh happened to be at hand, were Hedda’s most alluring traits.

The door settled snug in its frame as Hedda surged forward into a kiss.

Camille went nonlinear: “Hedda, what are you doing? Zane could pop up any minute!”

Hedda’s hunger was palpable. “Take us away,” she urged. “Tonight.”

“Soon. I promise.”

“Zane’s a prize bore,” said Hedda, her eyes hard and fiery. Amazing how such an attractive woman now held no interest at all, had become so guiltlessly killable.

“We don’t like him,” Camille offered.

“The three of us will be dynamite together. It’ll happen soon, not much longer. But for now, I’ve got to go. I only wanted to drop these gifts off.”

Beyond the art teacher’s fluxed mother, the vestibule arched into the family room, where heavy curtains shut out the night.

As they approached the couch, they passed an end table that held a thick packet with Corundum High’s clocktower logo in its upper left corner and “Z. Fronemeyer” scrawled across it in loopy ballpoint.

“What’s the occasion?” asked Camille.

“Nothing special. I just wanted to express my love for you both. Hedda, sit here. Camille, beside her. That’s it.”

The bagtop uncrumpled. No footsteps clumped up the cellar stairs. A free shot at Fronemeyer’s wives.

Inside the bag, the duct-taped boxes split on a hinge to yield the knife handle.

“Close your eyes and open your hands.”

“Oh come on!” Blond-haired Hedda gave a practiced flick to her head that tossed just so her shoulder-length shag-cut. But she grinned.

“Humor me. Please.”

They did.

The razored edge opened Hedda’s throat to the bone, savage and deep, no need to grip a hank of hair. Just as well, since Camille’s eyes sprang open at the sudden gesture. Her mouth sucked in air for a scream.

Clamp that mouth.

Press her back into the couch, off-balance.

Putty.

Once more the knife blade. Its swift passage reflected in Camille’s eyes. She pitched right, dying, as the weapon was wiped clean on an end-cushion.

Doing Zane in was the goal, which wasn’t yet a sure thing. No time to savor his wives’ death throes. These two were mere pawns.

Kill Zane.

Then tackle the packet.

Game plans were always easier when you knew what your enemy had in mind. Besides, a map of the school’s secret backways would be a welcomed refresher.

The kitchen flashed by in bright fluorescent light. Racing heartbeats erased all detail.

Stay calm. Set things right.

An image of the Lion of God slaughtering the moneychangers flared up. Some sanitized filmstrip from Bible school long ago.

Love owed, love denied.

These moved the world.

The knob felt cool. The flimsy cellar door, flung back, gave onto blue-painted steps.

Exasperation: “Hedda, for the last time—”

“It’s me, Zane.” Conceal the knife behind a pantleg. In the subdued light on the stairs, it would look perhaps like an injured arm.

Zane puzzled out his lover’s name. His voice turned surprised and annoyed. Halfway down, Zane became visible, the washing machine behind him.

He rose from the couch, holding a bloody axe. The trough was dimly lit, but a bare lightbulb above the dryer caught glistens of gore threading into the drain. “But we were going to meet at your place after I… what kind of a… hey wait, what do you think you’re—”

The axe looked tricky, a sharp thing that might fall in a scuffle. Go for the bold move, came the thought. A left-handed grip on the axe handle. Done!

Zane clenched tighter to counter.

The knife flew up and over. It caught on something hard in his chest, then slipped past to stab deep.

A Greek mask frowned upon his face: a bunched brow, anguished eyes, lips fizzling like a limp balloon, all of it in motion. Flares of life flashing by tried to stick and hold. But something vital had been skewered.

Zane collapsed, a house of cards falling inward. The axehead hung abruptly left, his fingers releasing their grip on the handle. The axe clattered to the floor. Then Zane, drifting downward, took to the tattered couch.

“Why—” he wheezed.

“Call it payback.”

A glimpse aside into obscurity. The cellar smelled like meat and sewage. You would think the homeless would catch on. But they were as dumb as Thanksgiving turkeys.

Zane had just snuffed two more here.

Close to fifteen thousand nationwide bought the farm every year, if the networks told the truth.

Fifteen thousand more in prom couples.

A chill took hold, then burgeoning heat.

The blade angled from Zane’s chest, the stir of a gelatinous stew. Its grim handle gristled in strained grip, curving and turning as the killer carved.

It wouldn’t do to risk the possibility of revival. Zane would pay the price, as his spouses had done.

And the payments would continue, multiplying toward midnight, until healing took hold and love thrilled the heart once more.

Upstairs waited the packet. Keys, maps, agendas, the naming of the couple.

Not that this last was more than a curiosity.

One couple alone would not suffice.

Nothing near.

Still, they were names to bear in mind if ruin threatened and they fell to hand.

Fronemeyer’s wristwatch, upside-down and spattered, read 6:20. Time to move on. The worn cushions soaked up his blood. But the stairs beckoned.

Music rose out of memory’s ashes, slap’n’smack mixed with terrified slow-shuffling embraces on the dance floor.

Moving on, feeling high, sailing toward fated waters.

Tonight would be beautiful indeed.