That was when Samantha realized she had gotten married not for herself, but for her mother, for appearances, because “that’s what people did”. She had duly reproduced with someone unworthy, and without a mate of current record she had nothing to look forward to except eventual grandparenthood and death. Or pooching out one last foetus, to reset the whole game. We discussed it; vetoed it. Her career had enabled us to have two homes and sufficient timespace for me to rally my own work ethic. She had risen to head of publicity for a movie studio; more than once I had declined her offer of a subsistence job in the same ratbox, because you just don’t want to be around even the most loved and trusted person you know 24/7. She understood that I did not want to be her employee or subordinate. Nevertheless, entropy and stasis worked their sorcery and here we were, living in two separate houses. Our split was too reasonable, almost drained of emotion, because we both knew we were already finished.
I had the .380 because I have never understood how people believed they could defend their home turf from one or more intruders by swinging a baseball bat around in the dark. In their underwear. Cite me a single time this technique has succeeded ... or kept the home invader from shooting off Batman’s dick with a Glock. Then let’s crucify the imbeciles who keep using this cliche in movies and television.
Yeah, I was all about the truth.
Truth was, Samantha was an emotional parasite. She fastened, fed, battened, and traded up. I was the suitable man-thing to do her donkey-work and heavy lifting until deposed by a more suitable man-thing. I occupied the “husband slot”. Her idiot fifteen-year-old son Ricky once stole my car and tried to hock it. Her seventeen-year-old daughter Shannon once offered me a blow-job to keep quiet about her indiscretions. They were a nest of vipers who would eventually be forced to eat each other, and I needed to escape their toxic family values.
Gun-first, I stealthed into the garage.
Opened the freezer.
There inside, curled up like a slumbering infant, was the finger-critter. It was nearly three feet tall. It had both arms, a torso, wings, legs and a tiny fist-like head. Its rude slash of a mouth was slathered in dry blood. Tissue gobs were clotted into the ebony nails on the claws and feet. And it held a hank of curly, coppery hair in one hand.
Samantha had curly, coppery hair.
I was so shocked by this that I missed the offering that had been left for me on the workbench, also in a pool of blood. It could have been a stray knob of meat from the freezer, but as I lifted it in my hands I knew that at last, finally, I had won my ex-wife’s heart.
~ * ~
I couldn’t concentrate on anything that resembled work.
The creature emerged at dusk. I heard the kitchen door to the garage open and close. Nails scratching on the floor.
Shyly, it peeked around the corner until it saw me sitting at the desk. Then in a rush and a flurry of wingbeats, it was right next to me, tilting its head in curiosity just like a cocker spaniel.
Its flesh was nearly translucent now. Fine blue veins. Its eyes were pupil-less black orbs. I wanted to blast off from my chair to clutch the ceiling like a cartoon cat. It sniffed me, hesitantly. Then it yawned, stretching, its wings unfurling and shuddering slightly at the apex of extension. It worried its claws together in a peculiar watchmaker’s gesture, rocking from foot to foot.
“Hi there,” I said. My body wanted to die.
But it perked up at the sound of my voice, stopped rocking, and commenced an even odder up-and-down motion. I’ve seen lizards do it.
It smiled. Its mouth was full of needled teeth and it still had dry blood on its chin.
Okay, what was the procedure, here?
“So what do I call you?” I said. “What are you?”
It seemed to enjoy the sound of my voice.
I almost asked if it was hungry. Bad idea.
“What do you need? Do you need to go out?”
It shook its head no. The move was so simple, so human, that it stopped me cold. Stupid question. If it wanted out, it would go out.
It kept looking around my body to see the computer screens. I clicked to change the image and captured his complete attention.
I decided to name him Bob.
~ * ~
When the police showed up to inform me of the murder of my ex-wife, I thanked the dark lords that they had not come bearing a search warrant, since her fresh DNA was spread all over my garage, and they might have confabulated a few idle questions about the little gargoyle sleeping in my freezer, too.
I cleaned Bob up and pitched all the incriminating evidence into the Hollywood reservoir. Bob just brought it back the next day.
Then he brought me parts of Shannon and Ricky.
He also developed a preference for long-form, multi-arc television dramas - the modern soap opera dolled up with feature-film production values and presented to a non-discerning viewership as something exciting and new. It kept him happily occupied when he wasn’t napping in the freezer or off on one of his midnight sorties. Religion, as Marx said, is the opiate of the masses, and nostalgia is the soma of the vanquished, but television remains an ideal babysitter, even for your own little monster.
Regretfully, I was already thinking about how to kill Bob. He could not be restrained or deactivated. He seemed to slaughter according to his own interior hourglass. No matter how I disposed of his little keepsakes, he brought them back because they were, well, for me. So I had to destroy them instead, chopping up one and flushing it down the toilet, and shoving another into the maw of the garbage disposal, which clogged and began to back up the kitchen sink. I’d never be able to scotch all the invisible evidence even a lazy forensics team might find. In due course, representatives of law enforcement returned to convey the sad news about Shannon and Ricky, and this time I was scheduled for an interview and asked not to leave town.
As I returned from my interrogation some dipshit in a long-cab Ram 3500 with “truck balls” dangling from the trailer hitch almost T-boned me coming off the 101 as he tried to change lanes and text at the same time. Bob brought back a heart... and the fake balls. He snuggled up to them while sleeping in the freezer as though they were his own personal hacky-sack.
Bob slept in the freezer because I had put him there. The cold did not bother him. He never seemed to eat while I was watching. When the faceless female voice called to pester me about my payment plans, Bob decamped for nearly a day and a half. In my own (intact) heart I knew he had flown all the way to Minnesota to disembowel some anonymous drone whose crap job was to hector me. And while this seemed horrific, I could not deny the notion felt really good. Bob was vitally in tune with my feelings. Bob wanted to eliminate anyone and everyone who made me feel bad about myself. He never asked for anything, not that he could speak. He fed, if he ate at all, out of my sight - probably while eviscerating whomever had pissed me off that day. When he wasn’t sleeping he watched TV and hung out, always vaguely interested in whatever I was doing. His presence in the house was utterly non-threatening. In a darker humour, I wished for a burglar to chance along ... not that I had anything worth stealing.
And really, how many people annoy you? Do you ever run out of candidates?
The loudmouth ahead of you in line at the supermarket. The street loon who wants change, smokes and a chance to tell you his whole tragedy. The bartender who blows you off or the potential lover who adjudges you as not young, rich, or attractive enough. Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Killing Bob had something to do, I was sure, with cutting off his long white fingers. Bob did not like scissors, clippers, or anything that resembled them. I’d had to calm him down once when I was power-shredding another dunning letter from a credit-card company.
I could not sneak up on him and hope to mutilate him. He had never done anything bad to me.
Define love, now. What are its covenants? Strip away the fantasies, lies and bullshit, and tell me what love really is; how it is expressed. Love is accept
ance, tolerance, compromise, coordination, and the warmth generated by the subtle dovetailing of those qualities. A comfort zone; a safe house against the brutal world at large. Love requires patience and maintenance.
Which is why I am writing this down on non-edged paper with a soft pencil, behind the locked door of a maximum-security cell. One too many visits from the police is all it takes to get you where I am now. And I wait, because you have to be willing to wait for the best things that ever happen to you. I am waiting for the soft sound of friendly claws, scratching at the window beyond the bars.
Bob will come.
He loves me.
<
~ * ~
LAWRENCE BLOCK
Hot Eyes, Cold Eyes
SOME DAYS WERE easy. She would go to work and return home without once feeling the invasion of men’s eyes. She might take her lunch and eat it in the park. She might stop on the way home at the library for a book, at the deli for a barbecued chicken, at the cleaner’s, at the drugstore. On those days she could move coolly and crisply through space and time, untouched by the stares of men.
Doubtless they looked at her on those days, as on the more difficult days. She was the sort men looked at, and she had learned that early on - when her legs first began to lengthen and take shape, when her breasts began to bud. Later, as the legs grew longer and the breasts fuller, and as her face lost its youthful plumpness and was sculpted by time into beauty, the stares increased. She was attractive, she was beautiful, she was - curious phrase - easy on the eye. So men looked at her, and on the easy days she didn’t seem to notice, didn’t let their rude stares penetrate the invisible shield that guarded her.
But this was not one of those days.
It started in the morning. She was waiting for the bus when she first felt the heat of a man’s eyes upon her. At first she willed herself to ignore the feeling, wished the bus would come and whisk her away from it, but the bus did not come and she could not ignore what she felt and, inevitably, she turned from the street to look at the source of the feeling.
There was a man leaning against a red-brick building not twenty yards from her. He was perhaps thirty-five, unshaven, and his clothes looked as though he’d slept in them. When she turned to glance at him his lips curled slightly, and his eyes, red-rimmed and glassy, moved first to her face, then drifted insolently the length of her body. She could feel their heat; it leaped from her eyes to her breasts and loins like an electric charge bridging a gap.
He placed his hand deliberately upon his crotch and rubbed himself. His smile widened.
She turned from him, drew a breath, let it out, wished the bus would come. Even now, with her back to him, she could feel the embrace of his eyes. They were like hot hands upon her buttocks and the backs of her thighs.
The bus came, neither early nor late, and she mounted the steps and dropped her fare in the box. The usual driver, a middle-aged fatherly type, gave her his usual smile and wished her the usual good morning. His eyes were an innocent watery blue behind thick-lensed spectacles.
Was it only her imagination that his eyes swept her body all the while? But she could feel them on her breasts, could feel too her own nipples hardening in response to their palpable touch.
She walked the length of the aisle to the first available seat. Male eyes tracked her every step of the way.
~ * ~
The day went on like that. This did not surprise her, although she had hoped it would be otherwise, had prayed during the bus ride that eyes would cease to bother her when she left the bus. She had learned, though, that once a day began in this fashion its pattern was set, unchangeable.
Was it something she did? Did she invite their hungry stares? She certainly didn’t do anything with the intention of provoking male lust. Her dress was conservative enough, her make-up subtle and unremarkable. Did she swing her hips when she walked? Did she wet her lips and pout like a sullen sexpot? She was positive she did nothing of the sort, and it often seemed to her that she could cloak herself in a nun’s habit and the results would be the same. Men’s eyes would lift the black skirts and strip away the veil.
At the office building where she worked, the elevator starter glanced at her legs, then favoured her with a knowing, wet-lipped smile. One of the office boys, a rabbity youth with unfortunate skin, stared at her breasts, then flushed scarlet when she caught him at it. Two older men gazed at her from the water cooler. One leaned over to murmur something to the other. They both chuckled and went on looking at her.
She went to her desk and tried to concentrate on her work. It was difficult, because intermittently she felt eyes brushing her body, moving across her like searchlight beams scanning the yard in a prison movie. There were moments when she wanted to scream, moments when she wanted to spin around in her chair and hurl something. But she remained in control of herself and did none of these things. She had survived days of this sort often enough in the past. She would survive this one as well.
The weather was good, but today she spent her lunch hour at her desk rather than risk the park. Several times during the afternoon the sensation of being watched was unbearable and she retreated to the ladies’ room. She endured the final hours a minute at a time, and finally it was five o’clock and she straightened her desk and left.
The descent in the elevator was unbearable. She bore it. The bus ride home, the walk from the bus stop to her apartment building, were unendurable. She endured them.
In her apartment, with the door locked and bolted, she stripped off her clothes and hurled them into a corner of the room as if they were unclean, as if the day had irrevocably soiled them. She stayed a long while under the shower, washed her hair, blow-dried it, then returned to her bedroom and stood nude before the full-length mirror on the closet door. She studied herself at length, and intermittently her hands would move to cup a breast or trace the swell of a thigh, not to arouse but to assess, to chart the dimensions of her physical self.
And now? A meal alone? A few hours with a book? A lazy night in front of the television set?
She closed her eyes, and at once she felt other eyes upon her, felt them as she had been feeling them all day. She knew that she was alone, that now no one was watching her, but this knowledge did nothing to dispel the feeling.
She sighed.
She would not, could not, stay home tonight.
~ * ~
When she left the building, stepping out into the cool of dusk, her appearance was very different. Her tawny hair, which she’d worn pinned up earlier, hung free. Her make-up was overdone, with an excess of mascara and a deep blush of rouge in the hollows of her cheeks. During the day she’d worn no scent beyond a touch of Jean Nate applied after her morning shower; now she’d dashed on an abundance of the perfume she wore only on nights like this one, a strident scent redolent of musk. Her dress was close-fitting and revealing, the skirt slit Oriental-fashion high on one thigh, the neckline low to display her décolletage. She strode purposefully on her high-heeled shoes, her buttocks swaying as she walked.
She looked sluttish and she knew it, and gloried in the knowledge. She’d checked the mirror carefully before leaving the apartment and had liked what she saw. Now, walking down the street with her handbag bouncing against her swinging hip, she could feel the heat building up within her flesh. She could also feel the eyes of the men she passed, men who sat on stoops or loitered in doorways, men walking with purpose who stopped for a glance in her direction. But there was a difference. Now she relished those glances. She fed on the heat in those eyes, and the fire within herself burned hotter in response.
A car slowed. The driver leaned across the seat, called to her. She missed the words but felt the touch of his eyes. A pulse throbbed insistently throughout her entire body now. She was frightened - of her own feelings, of the real dangers she faced - but at the same time she was alive, gloriously alive, as she had not been in far too long. Before she had walked through the day. No
w the blood was singing in her veins.
She passed several bars before finding the cocktail lounge she wanted. The interior was dimly lit, the floor soft with carpeting. An overactive air conditioner had lowered the temperature to an almost uncomfortable level. She walked bravely into the room. There were several empty tables along the wall but she passed them by, walking her swivel-hipped walk to the bar and taking a stool at the far end.
The cold air was stimulating against her warm skin. The bartender gave her a minute, then ambled over and leaned against the bar in front of her. He looked at once knowing and disinterested, his heavy lids shading his dark brown eyes and giving them a sleepy look.
“Stinger,” she said.
While he was mixing the drink she drew her handbag into her lap and groped within it for her billfold. She found a ten and set it on top of the bar, then fumbled reflexively within her bag for another moment, checking its contents. The bartender placed the drink on the bar in front of her, took her money, returned with her change. She looked at her drink, then at her reflection in the back bar mirror.
Psychomania: Killer Stories Page 23