Only the fatty parts looked real. The smooth, too-soft curves and hills of fat.
He rubbed each cut of meat through its sheer plastic covering. He thought he was close to knowing what they wanted from him — he could see it in the way their color changed when he pressed his living fingers into the meat through the plastic. But he couldn't quite bring himself to trust anything in that cold landscape of cut meats.
The lights were out in the apartment when he finally got back. Again, Jennie had left a mess, but he could hardly blame her for that. But she'd always been so orderly, almost obsessive about it, so he supposed this increasing laxness probably did not bode well.
"Jennie?" he whispered from the bedroom door. She said nothing, but the dim light that slipped beneath the bottom of the shade illuminated her head, the soft blond curls, the face that looked even more beautiful to him the paler it became.
She slept so soundly. He knew she would be in no mood for a meal. He could feel tears on his cheeks, running into the corners of his mouth.
Quietly he slipped out of his clothes and joined her under the covers. She did not stir, even when he pressed his cool body against her nakedness.
He began to kiss her, to taste her, and when she still did not respond he began to nip, to bite. He began to cry, massaging her breasts, probing her pubic area with his fingers, trying to kiss her, love her awake. But she remained cold and dry. The only air stirring in the room seemed to be his own, ragged breath.
Gene knocked on the dark screen door, and waited this time. This time, he knew, required a more definite invitation.
Her pale face appeared in the screen, her dark eyes taking in the bundle by his feet: the dull green blanket, the soft blond hair that still trapped the light, the pale skin with its tinge of silver.
"Is there room?" Gene whispered. "Room for her?"
Again Ruth looked at the bundle. Then her eyes floated up to hold him. "You'll still come? You'll be there when I call?"
Gene pulled his jacket closer, unable to keep warm. "Yes…" he said finally. "I'll be there when you call."
The screen door opened without sound, and the women inside the dark house dragged the bundle across the threshold.
It was two weeks before the next phone call. But he was there to pick up the receiver on the first ring.
"Hello," he said.
"Gene?" Jennie's voice said. "Are you coming over? I need you, Gene. I need you to come over."
THEY'RE COMING FOR YOU
Les Daniels
Mr. Bliss came home from work early one Monday afternoon. It was a big mistake.
He'd had a headache, and his secretary, after offering him various patent medicines, complete with their manufacturers' slogans, had said, "Why don't you take the rest of the day off, Mr. Bliss."
Everyone called him Mr. Bliss. The others in the office were Dave or Dan or Charlie, but he was Mr. Bliss. He liked it that way. Sometimes he thought that even his wife should call him Mr. Bliss.
Instead, she was calling on God.
Her voice came from on high. From upstairs. In the bedroom. She didn't seem to be in pain, but Mr. Bliss could remedy that.
She wasn't alone; someone was grunting in harmony with her cries to the creator. Mr. Bliss was bitter about this.
Without even waiting to hang up his overcoat, he tiptoed into the kitchen and plucked from its magnetic rack one of the Japanese knives his wife had ordered after watching a television commercial. They were designed for cutting things into small pieces, and they were guaranteed for life, however long that happened to be. Mr. Bliss would see to it that his wife had no cause for complaint. He turned away from the rack, paused for a sigh, then went back and selected another knife. The first was for the one who wanted to meet God, and the second for the one who was making those animal noises.
After a moment's reflection he decided to use the back stairs. They were more secretive, somehow, and Mr. Bliss intended to have a big secret just as soon as he could get organized.
He had an erection for the first time in weeks, and his headache was gone.
He moved as quickly and carefully as he could, sliding across the checkerboard linoleum and taking the back stairs two at a time in slow, painful, thigh-straining stretches. He knew there was a step which creaked, couldn't recall which one it was, and knew he would step on it anyway.
That hardly mattered. The groans and wails were reaching a crescendo, and Mr. Bliss suspected that not even a brass band behind him could have distracted the people above him from their business. They were about to achieve something, and he wanted very much to be there before they did.
The bedroom took up the entire top floor of the house. It had been a whim of his to flatter his young bride with as spacious a spawning ground as his salary would allow, the tastefully carpeted stairs led up to it in front as inexorably as the shabby wooden stairs crept up the back.
Mr. Bliss creaked at the appointed spot, cursed quietly, and opened the door.
His wife's eyes, rolled back in her head, were like wet marble. Her lips fluttered as she blew damp hair from her face. The beautiful breasts that had persuaded him to marry her were covered with sweat, and not all of it was hers.
Mr. Bliss didn't even recognize the man; he was nobody. The milkman? A census taker? He was plump, and he needed a haircut. It was all very discouraging. Cuckolding by an Adonis would at least have been understandable, but this was a personal affront.
Mr. Bliss dropped one knife to the floor, grasped the other in both hands, and slammed its point into the pudgy interloper at the spot where spine meets skull.
It worked at once. The man gave one more grunt and toppled over backward, blade grinding against bone as head and handle hit the floor.
Mrs. Bliss was there, baffled and bedraggled, spread-eagled naked against sopping sheets.
Mr. Bliss picked up the other knife.
He pulled her up by the hair and stabbed her in the face. She blubbered blood. Madly but methodically, he shoved the sharp steel into every place where he thought she'd like it least.
Most of his experiments were successful.
She died unhappily.
The last expression she was able to muster was a mixture of pain, reproach, and resignation that thrilled him more than anything she'd shown him since their wedding night.
He wasn't done with her yet. She had never been so submissive.
It was late that night before he put down the knife and put on his clothes.
Mr. Bliss had made a terrible mess. Cleaning up was always a chore, as she had so frequently reminded him, but he was equal to the task. The worst part was that he had stabbed the water bed, but at least the flood had diluted some of the blood.
He buried them in separate sections of the flower garden and showed up late for work. This was an unprecedented event. The quizzical eyebrows of his colleagues got on his nerves.
For some reason he didn't feel like going home that night. He went to a motel instead. He watched television. He saw a movie about someone killing several other people, but it didn't amuse him as much as he'd hoped. He felt that it was in bad taste.
He left the "Do Not Disturb" sign on the doorknob of his room each day; he did not wish to be disturbed. Still, the unmade bed to which he returned each night began to bother him. It reminded him of home.
After a few days Mr. Bliss was ashamed to go to the office.
He was still wearing the same clothes he'd left home in, and he was convinced that his colleagues could smell him. No one had ever longed for the weekend as passionately as he did.
Then he had two days of peace in his motel room, huddling under the covers in the dark and watching people kill each other in a phosphorescent glow, but on Sunday night he looked at his socks and knew he would have to go back to the house.