by Edward Lee
“Don’t forget your little sockie,” he said, and handed her the sock.
“I’ll sock you!” She snatched the sock away.
Rick grinned. “Wow, you’re feisty tonight. I like that in a woman.”
Joyce simply glared at him. “Just shut up and get in the truck! You putz around worse than a ninety-year-old woman!”
Rick laughed to himself. Yeah, she’s a piece of work, all right. Too bad I love her. He got back in the truck, was about to start it, but—
Joyce screamed.
The abruptness of the scream left Rick very close to wetting his pants. Suddenly, Joyce was kicking away at something, and she jumped over right into Rick’s lap.
“What the hell’s wrong?”
“That!” Joyce replied and kept squealing. She was pointing down into the footwell where she’d dropped her boot. “There was something in it! Something alive!”
“What, in your boot?”
“Yes yes yes! Something crawled inside my boot! It’s a rat I think!” She was hugging him now, grossed out and terrified.
Rick kind of…liked it.
“Relax, baby. There’s nothing in the world gonna hurt you while I’m here.”
Her hysterics continued. “Please please please, Rick, kill it! I’m so scared of rats!”
Rick grinned. Looks like all I gotta do to be a hero tonight is squash a rodent. Out here, with all the marsh rats? He’d stepped on plenty. “Calm down, honey, I’m here.” He turned on the dome light. But he didn’t see any signs of a rat in the footwell, didn’t hear anything either.
“Are you sure? If there was a rat in here, we’d hear it scuttling around.”
“I’m SURE!” she barked. “When I put my foot in the boot, I could feel it with my toes—it was moving, Rick! And I could hear it too, a little clicking sound like its teeth clicking together!”
Rick looked around, then stroked his nightstick under the seat. “Honey, I don’t think it’s—”
She tugged desperately on his sleeve. “Maybe,” she whispered, “maybe…it’s still in the boot.”
Rick picked up the boot.
Feels…kind of heavy…
And something was moving inside.
He raised his nightstick, ready to ram its butt-end down on the rat. But when he upended the boot, it was not a rat that fell out and began skittering around on the truck floor.
It was a cockroach.
The size of a rat.
(III)
“Clare? Clare? Are you all right?”
Clare felt dead in the dream now, but she couldn’t be dead—she was still thinking, she was still feeling.
It was the nightmare but…different.
She’d been in the middle of the most sexual dream of her life—and liking it—but then it all changed. The frantic orgy seemed to last for hours and hours, and in it Clare had done things she would never do in real life—the most lascivious things. It was just like the videos she’d watched: desperate sexual abandon, a bacchanal. In the dream, her two suitors were faceless, bereft of identities. But they didn’t need names, they didn’t need faces—they were merely players from Clare’s subconscious; to serve their purpose, they didn’t need to be anyone, they only needed to do, because by doing they fulfilled their function: to uncover something that Clare’s psyche was trying to reveal about her. The dream was so liberating…
But then it changed.
No no no, she thought.
It changed around her, her lovers melting away, the scene dissolving and then reforming into—
no…
—the blaring white lights of the Air Force autopsy suite, the chill of the stainless steel table on the skin of her bare back.
And the warped face of Stuart Winster grinning down at her.
It was the same at first: her total paralysis, the scratch awl tracing thread-thin lines on her belly, and the words she’d never forget…
“Duh-duh-don’t worry, Clare. I wuh-wuh-won’t hurt you till I’m done.”
What a cruel thing for her subconscious mind to do to her: titillate her with the deliciously erotic dream and then drop it right into the middle of the most appalling memory of her life.
He was molesting her now with that hideous birth-deformed hand, and all Clare could do was feel the hatred raging inside of the quivering, immobile container that was her body. Eventually the hand withdrew, in grueling slowness, but the nightmare’s cruelty amplified; it felt like something ten feet long was being pulled out of her. And then—
SPLAT!
“Huh-huh-here’s a present, Clare. I got it just for you.”
Something weighty and wet had been dropped on her lower abdomen. It was hot. She couldn’t imagine what it was and she couldn’t see it because her paralysis prevented her from raising her head. It felt like a pile of hot, slimy meat.
Then the meat began to move.
It floundered there for a moment, drenching her pubis and inner thighs with its slime. Wet slopping sounds could be heard as whatever it was began to seek purchase, to climb…
It was crawling up her belly now.
Stuart Winster drooled through a witless grin. He came around to the front of the table and raised her head so she could see.
It was the frog, the mutated thing she’d seen at the lake today. Only it wasn’t dead now, and its innards weren’t hanging out of its mouth. The grape-sized eyes were looking at her, seeing her. And on its forepaws the size of a baby-hands, it was scuttling forward, climbing ahead, its enslimed, spotted body sliding slowly over Clare’s belly. She could see its awful rimmed mouth partly opened, and its fangs—like white nails. The aberration of nature seemed to be smiling. Then it hitched up a few more inches, its forepaws flat on her breasts
“Froggie’s gonna give Clare a great big kiss!”
As the thing crawled closer, its jaws opened impossibly wide and then they began to close over Clare’s face…
“Clare! Wake up!”
She felt motion, terror, and when her eyes sprang open, she thought she’d been thrown out a high window and had just landed. She opened her mouth to scream as someone grabbed her but then she recognized who it was—
Joyce.
“Calm down, it’s me!”
Clare sucked in a breath as if she’d just emerged from deep underwater. It was dark around her, only the foyer and kitchen lights were on. She jerked upright not on her bed but on the couch. That’s right, I fell asleep here…after watching those videos…
She brought a hand to her chest, and then remembered the awful dream. First, the orgy, then the rape, then—
She winced. That DISGUSTING frog!
“Rick, everything’s okay so go wait in the truck.”
“Huh?”
“Just do as I say!” Joyce yelled. “Go wait in the truck!”
Rick’s here too? Clare thought groggily. And why was Joyce yelling at him? And—
What are either of them doing here in the first place?
“Clare, get this down,” Joyce was saying and pulling at her nightshirt.
“What?” But now she was fully waking up, and that’s when she realized she was practically naked. When she’d brought her hand to her chest, her chest was bare; during her sleep, her nightshirt had somehow gotten pulled all the way up over her breasts. I must have pulled it up myself! she realized with an inner shock, and suddenly she was coruscating with embarrassment. She quickly pulled the long shirt the rest of the way down.
Joyce smiled in the dim light. “Don’t worry. Rick’s a big dumb animal. He didn’t see anything.”
“I—” Jesus. Only now were Clare’s mental bearings resurfacing. “Why are you and Rick here?”
“Well, we were getting worried. Your lights haven’t been on all night, and when you didn’t come in at midnight—”
“What time is it?”
“It’s going on one a.m.”
I’m an hour late for work! The fact infuriated her; one thing she’d always prided herself on
was punctuality. I’ve never been late for work in MY LIFE! What’s wrong with me?
“I’m really sorry, Joyce,” she bumbled. “You and Rick will get double-time for the hour. I don’t know what happened. I’m never late for work.”
“Clare, it’s no big deal. We’re just glad you’re okay. You were probably just really tired and you overslept.”
Clare put her hand to her forehead, remembering. That damn frog! It was enough that she’d dreamed again of Stuart Winster; the inclusion of the freakish ten-pound frog only heightened the dream’s disgust. And it all started out so differently, she recalled now. Watching the videos had clearly been the impetus; her dreams had begun erotically—there’d been nothing horrific about them at all. In fact, they’d excited her.
Then it was all ruined by the rest.
“I had the worst dream,” was all she could say and finally got up off the couch. The first thing she noticed was Joyce: one foot was bare, the other booted.
“How come you’re only wearing one boot?”
“We’ll show you when we get back to the office,” Joyce said, a sudden edge to her voice. Had something happened on the site? “You won’t believe what we found.”
Before Clare could question further, the front door clicked open; Rick stuck his head in. “Everything all right?”
“Yes!” Joyce cracked. “Wait in the truck!”
Rick nodded sheepishly and went back outside.
“And you really should lock your door when you’re asleep, Clare,” Joyce said next. “We just walked right in.”
Clare was dismayed. There was another thing she never did. “I left my door unlocked?”
Joyce nodded.
“I must be getting absent-minded, either that or just plain irresponsible. I’m really setting a terrific example as the new security manager—I leave my front door open and I’m late for my second shift.”
Joyce laughed. “Forget about it. Go get ready, I’ll wait for you here.” She paused, then came closer to Clare and pulled something out of her pocket.
What’s that she’s got? Clare wondered.
Now Joyce was whispering. “And don’t worry, Rick didn’t see this either.”
What was placed into Clare’s hand was the creepy green vibrator. Clare’s tongue seemed to sink into her stomach.
“I took it out of your hand before he could see.”
Clare’s embarrassment rooted her to the floor. Her mouth opened but her voice froze.
“Oh, you’re priceless! You should see your face!” Joyce said. “Don’t worry, I’m not gonna tell anyone.”
God, I hope not, Clare thought. She looked at the vibrator and its eerie clear-green rubber. The veins fashioned into its shaft were repulsive. “You mean I was…using it, on the…”
“On the couch, in your sleep. I’ve heard of sleepwalking but I don’t even want to think what this would be called. That’s a nice one, though.”
The comment confused Clare. “Huh?”
Joyce rolled her eyes. “Clare, you act like you’re the only woman in the world who owns a vibrator.”
“It’s not mine,” Clare was quick to say.
Joyce was just as quick to frown. “All women have vibrators, Clare. Show me a woman who says she’s never used a vibrator and I’ll show you a liar.”
What could she say, especially as she stood there with one in her hand? She felt inclined to explain everything, that the vibrator was Grace Fletcher’s and that she’d been watching the sexual videotapes, etc., but— Why bother? It doesn’t matter anyway. Explaining it all would be too complicated.
“Let’s be real,” Joyce went on. “Sometimes men can’t quite do the trick, that’s why we’ve got mama’s little helper. I don’t know what you’re acting all embarrassed about; I must have over a dozen different kinds by now. And I’ve got one just like that too, only it’s red.” A mischievous grin tinted her face. “Those veins are wild, huh?”
The simple reference to them made her stomach flip. The thing looked ghastly to her, particularly the veins. “I don’t know if I’d call them ‘wild,’ Joyce. I can’t believe I was…using this and don’t remember. How can you—” Clare couldn’t quite form the words. “—in your sleep?”
“You’ll learn quick, the sun down here can do weird things to you; it takes a while to get adjusted. You can get a minor case of heat exhaustion without even knowing it. You get dehydrated, sodium-depleted, and it screws up your sleep cycle. Add all that to the fact that you were a little rundown already, plus you had the incident last night with the crazy girl in the woods—it all jumps up at once and kicks you in the butt. Gives ya weird dreams, makes you do funny things. Just drink a lot of water tonight and you’ll be fine. I’ll even work your shift for you if you’re not feeling well.”
It was a generous offer but one Clare couldn’t accept. She had an example to set and so far she was doing less than a bang-up job. All the while, Joyce was proving herself to be a quality person and friend. I WILL make it up to her, Clare vowed. Besides, she actually felt pretty good now.
“Thanks, Joyce, you’re a gem. But I’ll be fine. Give me two minutes to take a shower and get dressed.”
“Sure, I’ll wait out here.”
Clare was in the shower a few seconds later, the incriminating vibrator tossed aside. What a screw-up I am, she scolded herself. But at least everything was all right. The cool shower revived her further, washing away the perspiration of the nightmare. The afterimage of the mutant frog crawling up her stomach made her shiver; she sudsed herself up a second time, as if to clean off its slime.
Just a dream, just a dream, she told herself. An absolutely awful dream, yes, but it was over now. She didn’t even want to ponder the psychology of it all. I was masturbating in my sleep, I was sexually excited…but why would I be doing this during a nightmare that was totally disgusting? The initial part of the dream—the orgy—had been very stimulating, but then it all collapsed into the nightmare of Stuart Winster’s rape, and then that monstrous frog molesting her. Even now, wide awake and energized by the shower, aspects of the nightmare haunted her, like lingering images of a car-wreck or a death. Was there something in her subconscious mind that found such horrors stimulating?
No, it couldn’t be. That would make no sense at all. My metabolism was out of joint, she deduced, squeaking off the shower spray. She dried off fast, pulled on her uniform and strapped on her gunbelt. It’s like Joyce said, a combination of fatigue, too much sun, and too much commotion. I’ll be fine now.
Joyce was waiting for her out in the living room. They left the cottage and this time Clare made a point to lock her door. Then she got in her Blazer and followed Joyce and Rick back to the clinic.
Clare had no idea that while she’d been showering, she was being watched through a crack in the bathroom window.
— | — | —
Chapter Nine
(I)
Voices.
Through the wall.
He put his ear to the wall and listened.
The one’s mad…
“I’m just saying that we’ve got to be more careful. You don’t seem too concerned.”
“What’s to be concerned about?”
“The fuck? There’s people here now, there’s a full security staff. And you’ve got that freak walkin’ around at night.”
That freak, he thought.
Does he mean me?
“He’s only exposed for a very short period of time. The drainage pipes provide excellent cover. They’re five feet high, for God’s sake. No one’s going to see him down there.”
“Yeah, well he’s not down there all the time.”
“Of course not, we need him for procurments and disposal, things like that.”
“Procurements? Yeah, he did a great job with that girl who went psycho in the woods, and don’t tell me about disposal. He’s supposed to be dumping that crap, not leaving it in the woods. I’ve found two buckets of the stuff already.”
“The purpose is to assign him a schedule of tasks—it’s a training endeavor. It’s beside the point that he occasionally forgets where he leaves things after he sets them down for a moment.”
“Yeah? Well what if he does that with a body?”
He wasn’t quite sure what they were talking about. All he knew was that something sounded wrong.
“Get rid of the freak. We’re risking too much keeping it around…”
Freak.
He thought he knew what that meant.
Is he talking about me?
He was getting upset now. He could feel his heart beating faster. Suddenly he was anxious, pacing around.
I’m not a freak.
He would have to take the tunnel back to the basement now, and he’d have to get Mrs. Grable. He’d already gotten rid of the pretty girl on Table 2—and he needed someone to…to do something to. He wasn’t allowed to hurt Mrs. Grable much—even though he’d like to hurt her a lot, really bite her and punch her a lot. But that wasn’t allowed, not with her.
He was allowed to do it to her, though.
And he was going to do it to her real hard tonight.
It was the only way to calm him down, the only way to make him not upset anymore.
I’m not a freak, damn it!
There was nothing wrong with him, and he didn’t like it when people said there was. He was just as smart as anyone.
And it’s not my fault my hand’s like this…
(II)
The mystery of Joyce’s missing boot was solved…when Rick turned it upside-down over the small sink in the break room.
“Un…believable,” Clare droned.
“You ever seen anything like that?” Rick asked.
“Thank God—no.”
Fortunately the cockroach was dead. Unfortunately it was eight or nine inches long and must’ve weighed a full pound.
“I flipped it back into the boot after I butted it to death with my billy club,” Rick recounted. “Brought it back here ’cos we thought you’d want to see it. Bet I hit it four times, full force, before its shell even cracked, and it took ten more whacks to kill it.”