Weller Hall seemed huge and empty. Charles knew that it wasn’t empty. But he saw no one as he eased the door shut and made his way to the staircase. Those few students and professors unlucky enough to be burdened with ‘eight-o’clocks’ were already snug in the classrooms, probably yawning and rubbing their eyes and wishing they were still in bed.
He climbed four creaky stairs, then stopped. He listened. Beyond the sounds of his own rough breathing and heartbeat, he heard a distant voice. Probably Dr Chitwood. Dr Shithead to the students who had to suffer through his mandatory (this being a university of Methodist origin) History of Christianity class. Known as Heist of Christ. Not only mandatory, but boring, and forever scheduled for 8 a.m.
It was one of only three classes taking place in Weller Hall on Monday, Wednesday and Friday at such an ungodly hour. Chitwoods’s room was right at the top of the stairs.
Grinning, Charles pulled out his knife. He pried it open and dug into the smooth, worn wood of the banister. He carved a neat, two-inch slot down the rail’s top. He scraped it clean of splinters. Crouching, he ran his thumb over a grimy stair. He rubbed his thumb against the pale cut on the handrail, darkening it with dirt, camouflaging it.
Using needle-nosed pliers, he snugged an injector blade into the slot.
He straightened up and admired his work.
The edge of the blade protruded just a little bit above the surface of the rail. It was hardly visible at all.
Shivering with excitement, Charles hurried outside. He waited on a bench and watched the entrance to Weller Hall.
This’ll be great, he thought. It was always great.
But he’d never done it on campus before. He began to worry about that. He even considered returning to the stairway and pulling out the blade. He could walk into town and set up the trap somewhere else, somewhere safer.
He didn’t want to do that, though. Too often, the trick ended up wasted on somebody old and ugly. He couldn’t take a chance on that happening. He needed to slit a co-ed, a fresh young woman. One like Lynn.
The minutes dragged by. When people began wandering into the building, Charles feared that he might miss the event. He waited a while longer, fidgeting. Then he rose from the bench, trotted up the concrete steps, and rushed inside.
A few students were wandering the corridor, lingering near doorways, entering classrooms. Nobody on the stairs. He strolled to the far side of the hall. He removed a paperback copy of Finnegan’s Wake from his briefcase, opened the book, leaned back against the wall, and pretended to read.
From here, he had a good view of the stairway.
The book trembled in his hands.
He held his breath when a couple of girls walked past him and turned toward the stairway. They looked like freshmen. They acted like freshmen, the way they talked so loudly and laughed and gestured.
The girl on the razor’s side of the stairs held books to her chest with her left arm. Her right arm swung free. At the first stair, she rested her hand on the banister. It slid up the rail as she began to climb.
Her shiny blonde hair swayed against her back. She wore a sleeveless sweatshirt. Her arms were slender and dusky. Her white shorts were very tight. Charles could see the outline of her panties. Skimpy things.
His heart slammed.
As she stepped from the third stair to the fourth, she jerked her hand off the railing.
Got her!
But she didn’t flinch or cry out. She simply chopped her hand through the air. Some kind of damn gesture to accompany whatever inane point she was making to her friend.
She was almost to the landing before her hand returned to the banister.
Charles sighed. He felt robbed.
It’s not over yet, he told himself.
She’d been so perfect, though. Pretty and blonde and slender like Lynn. A few years younger, but otherwise just right.
I couldn’t have seen the look on her face, anyway, he consoled himself.
From above came a thunder of footfalls.
Charles perked up. Heist of Christ was out, the students stampeding to escape. In seconds, the first of them rounded the landing and rushed down the lower flight. Trembling with excitement, Charles watched those near the banister. A boy in the lead. Luckily, his arm was busy clamping books to his hips. Behind him came a lithe brunette, breasts jiggling the front of her T-shirt. But she carried a book bag by its straps and didn’t bother with the rail.
Coming down behind her was a fat guy in a sweatsuit. But behind him was a real beauty with flowing golden hair, her shoulders bare, her torso hugged by a bright yellow tube top. Her hand was on the banister!
Yes!
‘Ow! Shit!’
The fat guy.
No!
He jerked his hand off the railing and halted so abruptly that the blonde nearly crashed into him. He lifted his hand to his crimson, stunned face. Blood dripped off, streaking the front of his sweatshirt. ‘Fuckin’A! Looka this! Jeeeeez!’
Kids started to crowd around him.
Before long, someone would find the razor.
Releasing a long sigh, Charles closed his book. He tucked it under one arm, picked up his briefcase and strolled up the corridor.
Later that morning, after his seminar in Twentieth Century Irish Literature, Charles sat on a park bench along one of the campus walkways. The bench was fairly well hidden by hedges at both ends and an oak to the rear.
He took two X-Acto blades from his briefcase. Each was about an inch in length, V-shaped, with fine sharp edges. At the blunt end of each blade was a tab that could be slid into one of the several handles which were part of the kit. Charles hadn’t brought the handles with him.
With the blades cupped in one hand, he pretended to read Joyce. He watched the walkway. People kept coming by.
Patience, he told himself.
Before he could find time to plant the blades, a couple roosted on the bench across from him. They had bags from the Burger King a block from campus. Charles waited while they ate and gabbed. He waited while they snuggled and kissed. Finally, they wandered away, the guy with his hand down a back pocket of the girl’s short denim skirt.
He checked the walkway. Clear at last!
Working quickly, he planted one blade upright in a green painted slat beside his right thigh. He scooted away from it, then dug a place for the other blade on a slat of the backrest. After checking again for witnesses, he inserted the blade.
Then he roamed across the walkway and settled down on the bench where the sweethearts had wasted so much of his time. They’d left a fry behind. He brushed it to the ground. He opened Finnegan’s Wake, and waited.
People came by. A lot of people. Alone, in pairs, in small groups. Students, instructors, professors, administrators, ground keepers. Male and female. Slender, lovely girls. Plain girls. Slobs.
Into the afternoon, Charles waited.
Nobody sat on the bench.
Nobody.
Still, Charles waited. Over and over again in his mind, beautiful young women sat down on the bench. Their faces twisted and went scarlet. They leaped up, shrieking. They hurried away, blood from gashed buttocks spreading across the seats of shorts and skirts and jeans, blood from ripped backs staining blouses, T-shirts, flowing down the bare skin of those who wore tube tops or other varieties of low-backed garments.