Seeds Of Fear

by Gelb, Jeff

  "I have to tell you," she said on a visit, "you've really surprised me. I never thought you'd be so good about everything. It's made something that would be difficult at best so much easier and more pleasant for all of us involved. Gayle is bowled over about the way you've behaved. She never thought you were such a good guy, even though I told her you were."

  He fought to hold his temper. "Well, you've had nearly twenty years to know me. Gayle and I don't really know each other." He kept his voice modulated and calm, but inside he was picturing the blond bimbo bitch with her boyish tits and shaved pussy; he could imagine her talking her baby-talk bullshit to his ex-wife.

  The day after the papers came from the lawyer, announcing it was an uncontested divorce and that they were no longer man and wife, Karen began to

  have problems. The first thing was the car. She was driving down Main and tapped the brakes at a stoplight, went right through and smacked a produce truck hard on the bumper, crushing the Buick's front grille.

  "I don't know what happened!" she told the investigating officer. "I didn't have any brakes at all. My God, if a child or somebody had been crossing the street, I would have hit them!"

  A couple of weeks later the insurance company informed a startled Karen that she hadn't been covered with comprehensive when the mishap had occurred.

  "According to our records, you let your car insurance lapse two months ago." Karen phoned her ex-husband, who was shocked and chagrined.

  "Jesus, honey, I'm sorry. I don't know how it happened." He checked their stubs and the master file under Auto Insurance. Sure enough—somehow—a few weeks ago he'd managed to make out the check and all, but he'd apparently misplaced the envelope. Yes, sad to say, it seems he had let their insurance run out.

  Then there was the Turkish rug. George had bought it for Gayle and Karen at a local flea market, saying he hoped it would brighten up their apartment, which was still sparsely furnished. The women were thrilled by his kindness, but within hours of setting it up in their living room, Karen's eyes started watering profusely and her breathing became labored.

  "Jesus, Karen, what's wrong?" Gayle had asked, rushing to her lover's side. By that time, Karen was gasping for air and pointing at the rug. "Allergic . . . reaction . . . something in the rug."

  Gayle called 911 and the ambulance workers fed Karen oxygen as they rushed her to the hospital, where she was diagnosed with an acute allergic reaction to chemicals in the rug. Somehow, at some point, someone had dumped a shitload of cleaning solvent on the rug, and Karen's allergies had kicked in mightily, nearly fatally.

  George removed the rug and later told the women he had cut it into small pieces and burned them in his backyard barbecue. Again he apologized profusely, and again his former wife forgave him. After all, she said, it was hardly his fault if some jerk had done that to a beautiful rug. How, she asked, was he to know?

  After Karen was released from the hospital, George encouraged her and Gayle to stay at his house until the last of the rug's smell had dissipated. Besides, he reminded them, he was going out of town for a few days for a regional book-signing tour. They accepted his offer gratefully, which appeared to make him extremely relieved after his rug faux pas.

  But tragedy struck again. Later they recounted to George how, during the second night they were house-sitting, they had thrown popcorn into the air popper and had let it warm up, while they warmed up each other with a double-headed dildo—a part of the story with which they delighted in torturing George. They explained how the smell and sound of popping corn had fueled their passions so that they had initially failed to notice the cord to the air popper sparking, then starting a kitchen fire that quickly raged out of control among the piles of George's old newspapers. Worse still, the windows were all stuck shut because George had painted the exterior of the house days before, and was none too fussy about where the paint stopped and the windows began. The house went up like a matchstick in a volcano, and by the time the women were aware of the blaze, their path to the front door was already blocked by hellish flames. Karen doubled over in cough spasms while Gayle, just short of panicking, picked up George's favorite lamp and threw it through a side window, then pushed Karen through and followed, tumbling to the ground outside just as the house blew itself up, a noise that shattered windows for blocks around.

  Both women ended up back in the hospital, suffering second-degree burns along with multitudes of cuts from flying glass and wooden shards.

  George soon arrived, in near hysteria, at the hospital, where he kept vigil in the waiting room to the Burn Unit. When she could talk, Karen apologized for the loss of his—once their—house.

  "I just don't understand it," George said. "I just bought that air popper less than a month ago." He clucked his tongue and shook his head. "You just can't buy quality anymore." He smiled at her bandaged face. "I'm just glad you're alive." As an afterthought, he added, "Oh, and Gayle too, of course."

  He relocated to a tiny condo on the other side of town, and saw less of Karen and Gayle while they healed. One day he noticed he was more glum than usual, and realized it was because it was the anniversary of their divorce. One year ago, she'd left him for that brainless bimbo bitch, God knows why. What he'd ever seen in Gayle, he could no longer recall.

  Just then the phone rang. "George?" It was her, he realized, his stomach turning. "Karen and I were just talking about how it's a special day for all of us—you know what I mean. And we wondered whether you might want to spend it together."

  Before he could spit the word "no" down the phone line, Karen got on the phone. In the same cultured tone she'd used when she'd first agreed to meet Gayle, she said, "George, Gayle and I have been thinking. It's been a strange year for us all and, well, we were wondering if it's not too late to take you up on your offer."

  "What offer?"

  "Well, we were just reminiscing, and I remembered how mad I got that time you wanted to do a menage a trois with me and Gayle. And, well, I know you haven't been seeing anyone, and, oh, George, I feel so bad about the house, and the divorce, and everything. How'd you like to . .. have us both for dinner tonight?"

  She laughed at her own joke when George considered the offer. No fucking way would he—but wait a minute. Yes. This could work nicely after all. "Sure," he answered, putting as big a smile in his voice as he could fake. "Come on over at seven. I'll make your favorite meal: blackened redfish."

  As he marinated the fish with poison, he reflected on what a lousy year it had been. All of his acts of revenge had failed to achieve their common goal: to pay back Karen for her betrayal of their marriage. Slitting the brake lines, adding the chemicals to the rug, even fraying all the wiring around the house in hopes they would start a fatal fire in his absence. It was a bit desperate, he admitted, but no less than both of them deserved. The sluts.

  Well, tonight's plan was foolproof. True, he'd probably have to leave town before their bodies were discovered, but with Karen out of his life, there was nothing for him here anyway. He'd take the royalties he'd made off his books and live well in Mexico, or South America, or one of those places he never tired of reading about in the travel sections of the newspapers he loved.

  Yes, he nodded to the empty room, he'd teach these twats a final lesson and then skip town. He was ready for a big change.

  He answered the doorbell and was momentarily stunned by Karen and Gayle, who were dressed to thrill, Karen in a skintight minidress that showed off her lean legs to best advantage, and Gayle in even less than Karen. She wore jeans that were cut off so that the bottom of her rump was displayed, and a sleeveless T-shirt that showed much more of her breasts than it concealed. George felt his dick stiffen involuntarily as they both kissed him on opposite cheeks, giggling as they let themselves in.

  "This will be fun," Karen whispered as she brushed her hand against the bulge in his pants.

  "I have wine," Gayle said cheerily. "Want some now?"

  "Sure." He shrugged. No reason he had to rush thin
gs. He had to admit, he'd had no initial desire to touch either one of them. But their scars had healed nicely—the visible ones, anyway—and he was undeniably horny after a year without sex. After his experience with Gayle, the idea of paying for sex had been abhorrent to him.

  Karen handed him a glass of Cabernet and asked, "Honey, where's that video you shot of me and Gayle? Let's all watch it. It'll put us in the mood." To accentuate her point, she grabbed at his crotch, giving it a healthy squeeze. "I can see you're in the mood already!"

  He laughed and downed the wine. He was touched that Karen remembered that Cabernet was his favorite choice. He pulled the tape out of a bookshelf case and popped it into the VCR. He hadn't watched this tape in over a year; it pained him too much to view it.

  In moments he was riveted. He'd forgotten how erotic it was to watch the two of them together, especially through his own eyes, as seen through his camcorder angles. He was especially fond of close-up shots of the most private parts of their bodies, he noted with mild embarrassment.

  "You like to watch, don't you?" Karen said as she poured him more wine. He shrugged and guzzled it down, waving the real-life Karen aside so he could better see her image on the twenty-seven-inch monitor. But the picture seemed out-of-focus, fuzzy around the edges. Cursing, he stood up to fiddle with the TV controls and fell flat on his face on the condo's threadbare carpeting.

  He grunted, tried to raise himself up and failed, hitting his cheek on something sharp. It was the metal toe of Gayle's cowboy boot, resting next to his face. He was momentarily angry at Gayle and then at himself for his failure to hold his liquor.

  Karen crouched next to him, lifting one of his eyelids. "You won't be able to watch much longer, I'm afraid." He tried to speak and spittle drooled out the corner of his mouth.

  "No, don't bother talking. Just watch and listen." Karen poured the rest of the wine over his body. "It's poison, of course. Hopefully it won't hurt too much; I understand it deadens the nerves as it destroys them." She turned to Gayle. "Better get the videotape."

  George blinked; even through the drugged haze, he was beginning to comprehend what was happening.

  "I know you think I'm a bimbo," Gayle addressed his prostrate form. "Karen told me so. But it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that you were trying to kill us. Although why you would burn down your own house to do it, I can't understand. You are one sick piece of shit, George. And by the way, all those times you paid me to sleep with you? I never thought you were sexy in the slightest, you fat fucking pig." She used her metal heel to kick him in the balls, but he merely blinked faster for a moment, feeling no pain any longer. Feeling not much of anything, for that matter.

  Karen moved in closer to see whether George was still conscious, since his loud breathing was becoming noticeably slower. "Can you hear me, George? After the house burned down, Gayle had her suspicions—I must admit I still thought you were innocent, gullible me—so we hired a private eye."

  Gayle chimed in: "From money you'd paid me to fuck you."

  Karen ignored the interruption. "He found out you hadn't gone out of town the night the house burned down. You weren't on any book-signing tour, George. You were at the same hotel you used to meet Gayle at, until you heard the TV newscast about the fire." She shuddered. "Gayle's right, you are a sick fuck, George. And we're not going to let you try to ruin our lives anymore—or anyone else's, with those sick books of yours."

  She bent lower still and whispered in his ear. "No one saw us come in, George. We made certain of that. After you die, we'll wipe off all our fingerprints. Your death is going to make all the papers, George." She laughed. "Finally, George makes the headlines and he won't be around to read them!"

  On impulse, she rose, reached for a newspaper, crumpled the front page, and stuffed it in his mouth. "Read that, George." She got up, looked around. "We'd better clean up and get out of here."

  Gayle shook her head. "That wouldn't be polite. Eating and running, that is. Speaking of eating . . ." She glanced over at the oven, opened the door, and sniffed inside. "Mmm. Your husband is—was—quite a good cook." She looked at the food, then at Karen. "Shall we?"

  Karen hesitated. George was definitely having trouble breathing now, between the poison and the newspaper stuffed down his throat. She shuddered and turned away. Gayle came to her side. "Don't pity him. He deserves all this and more. Just think of how many times he tried to kill us."

  Karen shook a bit in her lover's arms. "You're right," she said, her voice low. She turned away from George and toward the kitchen. "Oh hell, why not? I always loved George's blackened redfish."

  George's vision focused one last time as he watched them take their first bites of fish. He smiled as best he could, shuddered, and expired.

  "Did you see that?" Gayle asked as she stuffed more of the fish into her mouth. "It almost looked like he smiled for a second there." She shrugged. "This is delicious."

  "Mmm," Karen agreed. "Pass the water, will you? This is very good, but it's even spicier than usual."

  LULLABY & GOODNIGHT

  Wayne Allen Sallee

  Chicago is a political town, and that was why Patrolman Nicholas Raymond Rexer was confined to the T. D. Slatton Psychiatric Unit, pending the review of his actions by Internal Affairs and other lawsuits against him, the force, and the city. A political town where a man can be wrongly convicted and the DA's office in Cook County gets by with the adage "He might not've been guilty, but he probably done something just as bad."

  And so it was that the events of April fell into August like lace over a corpse, and Nick Rexer sat in what could have passed for an efficiency apartment down in the South Loop, clutching exercise balls in his right hand, keeping his trigger-grip in good condition (because he knew he'd be back on the force; this was Chicago, after all). He was confined to the seventh-floor wing of the CPD's unofficial Disneyland North on West Belle Plaine Avenue.

  The expatriate patrolman spent his days watching out the window for rodents to be run down by rush-hour motorists on Damen Avenue, exercising his trigger-grip, and reliving his vision of what had occurred down that alleyway off that near north side street four months previous.

  He remembered it all so clearly, even to the very end:

  A dull, beet-colored light in the alley behind Mohawk Street washed over the two cops' faces like blood clots bathing the brain. An April wind came off the lake, but all they smelled was oil and garbage. Stelfreeze and Rexer had been standing there five minutes, watching one of their own go through the back door of a house of prostitution. They had gone to make sure that Bill Valent wasn't accepting payoffs.

  It was much worse than that.

  They moved forward towards the second-floor landing. Both were out of uniform. The harsh glow from behind slatted blinds was brighter than a softer light from a third-story window. A blue light wavered, and Rexer realized it was most likely a television.

  With the muted sounds of evening around them, Stelfreeze said to the darkness, "Well, here we are." The way he announced it, Rexer thought of a car pulled over into a lovers' lane, and that the two were on a first date, the lights of the city laid out below them. This is how it is with cops partnered for fifteen years.

  Stelfreeze stared at the darkness that loomed above them, his lips bloodless, cleft chin thrust out in acceptance of what they were about to do. He knew stories about this place, tales he had not shared with Rexer until later. Only because he had never expected to be looking for, or after, one of their own here.

  His partner was absently running his long fingers through his Grouchoesque mustache as he also looked at the sky. Only, Stelfreeze was not staring at the April darkness, bruised black and purple, the light from the nearest stars barely making it through the pollution. The abyss Stelfreeze was aware of was a call girl with a unique angle, a whore who used the name Lullaby & Goodnight. The usage of dual names being the darkest sky of all.

  She was a woman with a young girl's mind, who never spoke yet mewled
at all the proper moments. Her real name was Celandine Tomei, and her mama charged upwards of fifteen yards for the ultimate in one-night stands. The highest-salaried men allegedly descended on this dilapidated two-flat on North Mohawk, the turks of the town come to kill or mutilate the prostitute as she orgasmed in her abnormal and childlike way.

  And then to return the following month to repeat the act. Mama Tomei took Visa, MasterCard, Amex, and Diner's Club for the act itself. Other than living expenses, the funds received went towards plastic surgery and bone reconstruction. There were certainly no advertising costs, hence Rexer's ignorance of what the two cops would encounter here.

  Stelfreeze knew too many people in the television industry, thanks to his sister marrying a sportscaster for the station that considered its biggest competitor to be MTV, not CNN. And sometimes Stelfreeze heard stories they kept off the air and held close to their disgusting hearts.

  Stories about the ultimate one-night stand.

  He thought long and hard on that; much of it coming out somewhat abstractly in his later Internal Affairs deposition. He realized that suicide came in a weak second to what was allegedly experienced here.

  The porch was enclosed on two sides; Stelfreeze saw a swing near the north end of the landing, a strip of curled flypaper matted to the wire mesh behind it. Magazines were strewn across the well-swept flooring, the wooden boards the typical Polish gray on gray with whitened sawdust in the cracks. He wondered if they were skin magazines or, from what he had heard of the expected clientele, recent copies of U.S. News & World Report.

  And if their cop friend was really here accepting payoffs, Stelfreeze envisioned Valent walking up these steps with his pockets stuffed with racing forms. In for a penny and all.