by Ray Garton
Clyde spun around and glared at the television to see his house on the screen. A number of police cars were parked in the street in front of it and, behind them, bystanders were standing around, watching with every bit as much suspense as if they were watching a thriller on television.
He slapped a hand to his forehead and breathed, “Holy God!” He spun around again and faced the front door.
They’re out there! he thought.
He stared at the front door for a long while, then went to the window and peered out cautiously.
The only cats left in the front yard were in pieces. Blood was spattered all over the grass. He spotted a cat’s head and a few severed legs. But the other cats were gone. They had spread out. He spotted them on the sidewalk licking themselves, across the street curled up as if they were napping, ambling along the side of the road.
And then there were the police. So many of them. All with rifles, very big rifles. And all of them glaring at his house.
“There is something terribly and unfortunately disturbed about a man who would hole up in his house and shoot only at cats, killing as many as this man has with the weapons he has in his possession,” a voice said from the television.
Clyde let go of the curtain and turned to face the screen. He saw a fat, balding man wearing a bad suit, and beneath him were the words: DR. MICHAEL KAMINSKY. Ph.D. Criminal Psychology.
“To take out aggression on other people is one thing. But to needlessly punish and kill — especially in this brutal way — helpless animals, is a sign of tremendous desperation and sickness,” the man went on. “Obviously, the law enforcement officers who are dealing with this man have their work cut out for them. And frankly — ” He laughed a little. “ — I don’t envy them.”
Is that what they think of me? Clyde wondered.
He stood in front of the television, staring at the screen, his eyes wide as he held the rifle tucked under his right arm.
. . . it’s over . . .
He blinked and shook his head. It felt so close.
. . . you are finished . . .
Clyde’s back stiffened and he looked around him. He saw nothing.
. . . the end has come . . .
There was movement in the corner of his eye and he spun around to the left, realizing suddenly, as if the thought had been pounded into his head with a hammer, that the window over the kitchen had no pane.
It was a black and grey striped cat, slinking into the living room. It sat on the floor and stared at him.
. . . finished, the end, no more threat . . .
Clyde made a small, whimpering sound in his throat as other cats filed in behind the first and faced him. They formed a half-circle around him.
He glanced over his shoulder. His only escape was the front door.
. . . we’re too close . . .
. . . to the good old days . . .
. . . the reverence . . .
. . . and the worshipping . . .
. . . won’t let you stop us . . .
. . . kill you first . . .
. . . rip you up . . .
. . . rip and rip and . . .
. . . tear and tear . . .
Clyde began to stagger backward.
“Oh, no, oh God please . . . please, please help me, I’m, I haven’t . . . I’m not guilty of anything, I just, I — ”
Suddenly, he spun around and threw himself at the front door, grabbing the knob. unlocking it, pulling it open
He threw himself out the door, the rifle still held under his arm, and screamed, “I’m sorry, I surrender, I sur — ”
The thunder began.
Clyde felt the bullets and they made him dance down the porch steps, arms splayed, the rifle flying away from him. He felt his blood spattering on his face as his legs waggled down the steps, until he finally fell to the concrete walkway.
The thunder stopped.
He could feel the blood leaving his body, could feel it spilling from the holes made by the bullets. But that was not what captured his attention. Instead, it was what was going through his mind during the last moments of life.
. . . gone, he’s gone . . .
. . . can go back to the plan . . .
. . . reviving the good old days . . .
. . . the gold statues . . .
. . . the reverences . . .
. . . the pharaohs . . .
. . . the queens . . .
. . . worshipping . . .
. . . revering . . .
. . . when we were gods . . .
. . . gods . . .
. . . and rule . . .
. . . ruling, yes, ruling . . .
. . . owning . . .
. . . owning their pets again . . .
. . . yes, owning and ruling the pets . . .
. . . the pets . . .
. . . again . . .
Clyde worked his mouth to tell them, warn them, let them know what was happening, what would happen . . . but all that came out was blood . . .
BAD BLOOD
For Pat Buchanan
The doctor’s waiting room was very quiet even though five other people besides Peter were waiting in their chairs. The only sounds were the slight crackle of the pages of old magazines as waiting patients turned them slowly, and the syrupy pop song playing very softly over the speaker in the ceiling.
Peter decided the singer — a male with one of those high voices — was probably just another faggot, just like all the others. The movie stars, the TV stars, the singers and the writers and the painters . . . all of them, nothing but a bunch of filthy, immoral faggots. The worst part of it was that they were slowly — ever so slowly but surely — spreading . . . imposing themselves on everyone else, on normal people, on children . . . spreading like a disease . . . just like the disease they had created.
Oh, well. It was very clean in here. Peter could smell the cleanness. And it was bright, with no shadows or dark corners. That was where they liked to hang out, the perverts and the faggots.
That was where Peter always found them.
But not here. He was clean and safe here. He leaned back in his chair and looked around slowly. He was the only one not reading a magazine. A tiny old lady looked up from her reading and smiled at him slightly. Peter smiled back and nodded. He hoped she didn’t say anything. He tried not to speak if he could avoid it because of his stutter.
Behind the receptionist’s window, the phone purred; she picked it up and spoke softly.
Yes, it was very nice here. Peter leaned his head back and looked up at the ceiling tiles. They had tiny holes in them and the holes were scattered over the tiles randomly, as if they’d been spilled there by accident.
As Peter stared up at them, he closed first his right eye, then opened it and closed his left . . . back and forth . . . left, right . . . left, right . . .
Yes, he could see patterns in those dots. Peter could see patterns in most things, patterns that other people could not see. Maybe he had a bad stutter, maybe he wasn’t as smart as most, maybe he’d had very little education and was just a lowly janitor who cleaned a couple restaurants for a living . . . but he could see the patterns.
And the pattern he saw above him there was a penis. A thick, erect penis that curved upward slightly. And the erect penis was sticking through something . . . a perfectly round circle.
A smile grew slowly on Peter’s face as he looked up at the pattern. He was smiling because he’d seen that very penis before.
And he’d taken care of it. Like any good janitor, he’d cleaned it up . . .
It had been the first of the dark places he’d ever gone to when he started, oh . . . how long ago had that been? He couldn’t remember. A long time. Yes, that was where he’d seen that particular erect penis sticking through the hole, throbbing and glistening. But the dark places — the faggot holes, he called them — were not the first places he’d gone to. First, there had been the clinics.
He’d started back when it became clear to him
— when the patterns showed him — that the semen-slurping, butt-fucking, rectum-licking faggots were spreading their disease — and their diseased ways — over the country, over the world . . . a disease that was meant to punish them for their sick behavior, their disgusting “lifestyle,” as the cock-suckers liked to call it . . . a disease they had chosen to ignore in favor of going on with their foul acts in hidden places.
If the disease couldn’t stop them, then Peter decided he would do what he could. He was, after all, a janitor. It was his job to clean things up.
He himself had never had a sexual relationship. A normal one, of course, with a woman — he would never consider doing what those creatures did in their dark, smelly places. Peter had never really felt the need for such a relationship . . . and besides, he didn’t think women were to be trusted. He’d learned that from a very wicked, deceitful woman . . . his mother . . .
Once he’d made his decision, he made a few preparations. He bought a couple of razor-sharp skinner’s knives; they were all he’d really need, he figured. Then he went through the phonebook looking for AIDS clinics and other places that treated the faggots as if they were just normal sick people. New York City was filled with faggots, so it followed that it would be filled with those places. It was. He made a list of those places, visited them, then picked one.
He found a bench nearby and waited, pretending to read a paper, until he saw one of them come out. A tall, skinny, frail looking fellow — a classic faggot — and, with the knife hidden under his jacket, he followed that man to a ratty, dark little apartment building — dark, just the way the butt-fuckers liked it — and burst into the apartment behind him, before the queer could close and lock the door.
Peter was a small, wiry man and he moved very quickly. He’d done a lot of heavy lifting in his work and was in good shape. It was no trouble at all to open up the sperm-breathed pervert before he could make a sound. He quickly wiped the blood off himself, put the knife back in its hiding place and left as if nothing at all had happened.
As he walked down the stairs in that dingy apartment building, Peter had thought. One down . . . a lot to go. Peter liked to think. He never stuttered that way.
So, he had kept it up. Day after day, moving from one clinic to another. From one patient to another.
New York was a very big and busy city. The killings made the papers, but only in little articles. Peter was happy to see that the city was too big and too busy to concern itself with the deaths of a few unnatural, disease-spreading dick-lovers.
But then, quite by accident, Peter discovered something else that made his work much easier, made it move much faster: Times Square.
Oh, yes, they congregated there like churchgoers, all those sodomites and scrotum-lickers. It was their church, he found. As he walked through Times Square that first night, all the garish lights flashing in the darkness that they loved so much, knife concealed beneath his jacket, he saw them all around him, everywhere.
But there was something strange here in this busy, nocturnal carnival . . . something odd about the patterns.
Most of the signs showed pictures of women. They were naked, of course, which was sick and immoral . . . but at least it was normal. And yet, Peter spotted some of them going into these places, their long coats buttoned all the way up, their hands stuffed in the pockets. They looked more normal than many of the others — the swishy faggots with the wild hairstyles and the queer clothes, the earrings, the extravagant hand gestures and the facial makeup — but somehow, Peter knew that they were faggots. So . . . what would they want with naked women?
He followed one in. At first, all it seemed to be was a dirty bookstore filled with the filthiest, most disgusting books and magazines and pictures Peter had ever seen. His skin crawled. He wanted to take a shower immediately. He couldn’t have felt more soiled if he’d messed his own pants. But he followed the wandering faggot as he browsed over a few of the shelves, then went to the counter and muttered, “Five dollars in tokens, please.”
The cashier took the bill and gave him the gold-colored tokens.
Then the faggot crossed the store to a black-curtained doorway with a sign over it that read:
.25¢ VIDEOS
He disappeared through the black curtain as Peter watched. Thinking he might be on to something — seeing a possibly interesting twist in the pattern — Peter went to the cashier, got five dollars in tokens, then steeled himself and went through the curtain.
He looked down a long, dark, narrow staircase, started down slowly and noticed that the air became more and more thick and moist and filled with the smells of sweaty bodies. There was a lot of noise below: loud music, murmuring voices, footsteps, and constant moaning and panting and cries of “Oh, yes, fuck me, fuck me!” and “Harder, do it harder, baby!”
When he reached the bottom of the stairs, he turned left and saw them. He couldn’t count how many there were, all pressed together in a narrow corridor lined with doors like the doors of bathroom stalls, but made of smooth, paneled wood. At the other end of that narrow, man-clogged corridor was a red EXIT sign, but Peter would never be able to get through that crowd . . . not without touching them . . . not without letting them rub up against him . . .
He immediately spun around and started back up the stairs. But there were three very big men on their way down, clogging the stairway.
Peter’s eyes widened and he began to perspire a great deal. He turned and headed into the sea of men who were wandering in front of the doors. His lips quivered with disgust as he felt them against him on his way through.
He noticed one of the doors open and, immediately, one of the men in the crowd ducked into the booth. It happened again and again as he made his way slowly through the crowd.
Then, he felt the hand, warm and firm, on his behind, squeezing, its fingers wriggling between his legs.
Peter jerked forward and spun around, but none of the eyes in the group met his — or one another’s, for that matter — so it was impossible to know who had done it. He turned around and started pushing his way through. Until the next hand.
This one covered his crotch. It squeezed, it felt, ever so gently, then harder, teasing . . .
He had to clench his teeth to keep from screaming and his eyes were stretched so wide that he thought they might pop out of their sockets. So when another of the doors opened, Peter threw himself into the booth, slammed the door behind him and locked it.
Spinning around, he turned his back to the closed door and covered his sweaty face with both hands, trying to catch his breath. Everything was so loud . . . the movement outside the booth . . . the rock music playing over hidden speakers . . . all the moaning and profanity coming from the booths.
Finally, he pulled his hands away and saw the dead screen before him. He saw the slot beside it for the tokens. Not sure what else to do, he took a token from his jacket pocket — taking a moment to feel the knife beneath his jacket, just to make sure it was still there — and dropped it into the slot.
Suddenly a man and woman were doing unnatural things to one another on the screen and the sound was so loud it immediately gave him a headache. That was where all the moaning was coming from. There was a square, red-lit button beneath the screen and he hit it. Again and again and again.
They flashed before him: men with women . . . women with women . . . men with men . . . amputees . . . dwarves . . .
He turned his head away from the screen, sickened, and saw the hole to his right. When he looked to his left, he saw another, directly lined up with the one on the right. The holes were built into the booths. He leaned down and could see through booth after booth . . . until he saw the back of a head bobbing up and down.
Peter stood up straight and scrubbed a hand over his sweaty face, muttering to himself, “Guh-g-g-guh-gotta g-g-gggget outta he-he-he-here.”
Then, from the booth to his right, he heard the door slam. He looked down at the hole and saw an eye peering up at him. The eye disappeared in
an instant.
His head was throbbing and his stomach felt sick, but he was going to have to go back out there in that crowd of perverted animals.
But before he could do that, he caught some movement in the very corner of his eye.
He looked down.
And there it was — an erect penis. It was enormous, long and thick, and it twitched and throbbed ever so slightly.
Peter didn’t even have to think about it. It just fit into the pattern: the music, the loud moaning, the movement, all that pulsing noise and, best of all, the concealing darkness of this basement of sickness.
He reached into his pocket, unsheathed the skinner’s knife that he sharpened twice a day, lifted it up and brought it down hard.
It sliced through the penis with very little resistance.
The penis did a cartwheel on its way down and hit the floor with a thunk.
Blood began to spurt again and again and again, all over Peter’s hand, all over the walls of the booth, and, somewhere in all that noise, Peter heard the man scream. He would have to leave quickly.
He put the knife away, left the booth with the video screen still playing and pushed his way through the crowd, confidently this time, hands in his jacket pockets, until he got to the exit.
And that was how it had begun.
He developed a system. He went to work at his first job in the morning, spent the afternoons outside the clinics choosing the right men as they left and following them home, then went to his second job at night, then to the video parlors. They were all over the place, not just Times Square, so it was easy. Like shooting fish in a barrel.
But this was more productive. He was, after all, helping everyone . . . doing the world a favor.