He wasn't happy about this.
When he opened the front door, it reminded him of his last entrance. He felt that the stage was set. Still, all he had to do was go upstairs and get some clothes. He could be gone in a matter of minutes. He knew where everything was.
He used the front stairs. The carpeting made them quieter, and somehow he felt the need for stealth. Anyway, he didn't like the ones in the back anymore.
Halfway up the stairs, he noticed two paintings of roses that his wife had put there. He took them down. This was his house now, and the pictures had always vaguely annoyed him. Unfortunately, the blank spaces he left on the wall bothered him, too.
He didn't know what to do with the paintings, so he carried them up into the bedroom. There seemed to be no way to get rid of them. He was afraid this might be an omen, and for a second considered the idea of burying them in the garden. This made him laugh, but he didn't like the sound. He decided not to do it again.
Mr. Bliss stood in the middle of the bedroom and looked around critically. He'd made quite a neat job of it. He was just opening a dresser drawer when he heard a thump from below. He stared at his underwear.
A scrape followed the thump, and then the sound of something bumping up the back stairs.
He didn't wonder what it was, not even for an instant. He closed his underwear drawer and turned around. His left eyelid twitched; he could feel it. He was walking without thinking toward the front stairs when he heard the door below them open. Just a little sound, a bolt slipping a latch. Suddenly the inside of his head felt as big as the bedroom.
He knew they were coming for him, one from each side. What could he do? He ran around the room, slamming into each wall and finding it solid. Then he took up a post beside the bed and put a hand over his mouth. A giggle spilled between his fingers, and it made him angry, for this was a proud moment.
They were coming for him.
Whatever became of him (no more job, no more television), he had inspired a miracle. The dead had come back to life to punish him. How many men could say as much? Come clump, come thump, come slithering sounds! This was a triumph.
He stepped back against the wall to get a better view. As both doors opened, his eyes flicked back and forth. His tongue followed, licking his lips. He experienced an ecstasy of terror.
The stranger, of course, had used the back stairs.
He had tried to forget what a mess he had made of them, especially his wife. And now they were even worse.
And yet, as she dragged herself across the floor, there was something in her pale flesh, spotted with purple where the blood had settled, and striped with rust where the blood had spilled, that called to him as it rarely had before. Her skin was clumped with rich brown earth. She needs a bath, he thought, and he began to snort with laughter that would soon be uncontrollable.
Her lover, approaching from the other side, was hardly marked. There had been no wish to punish him, only to make him stop. Still, the single blow of the TV knife had severed his spine, and his head lurched unpleasantly. The odd disappointment Mr. Bliss had felt in the man's flabbiness intensified. After six days in the ground what crawled toward him was positively puffy.
Mr. Bliss tried to choke back his chuckles till his eyes watered and snot shot from his nose. Even as his end approached, he saw their impossible lust for vengeance as his ultimate vindication.
Yet his feet were not as willing to die as he was; they backed over the carpet toward the closet door.
His wife looked up at him, as well as she could. The eyes in her sockets seemed shriveled, like inquisitive prunes. A part of her where he had cut too deeply and too often dropped quietly to the floor.
Her lover shuffled forward on hands and knees, leaving some sort of a trail behind him.
Mr. Bliss pulled the gleaming brass bed around to make a barricade. He stepped back into the closet. The smell of her perfume and of her sex enveloped him. He was buried in her gowns.
His wife reached the bed first and grasped the fresh linen with the few fingers she had left. She hauled herself up. Stains smeared the sheets. This was certainly the time to slam the closet door, but he wanted to watch. He was positively fascinated.
She squirmed on the pillows, arms flailing, then collapsed on her back. There were gurgles. Could she be really dead at last?
No.
It didn't matter. Her lover crawled over the counterpane. Mr. Bliss wanted to go to the bathroom, but the way was blocked.
He cringed when his wife's lover (who was this creeping corpse, anyway?) stretched out fat fingers, but instead of clawing for revenge, they fell on what had been the breasts of the body beneath him. They began to move gently.
Mr. Bliss blushed as the ritual began. He heard sounds that had embarrassed him even when the meat was live: liquid lurchings, ghastly groans, and supernatural screams.
He shut himself in the closet. What was at work on the bed did not even deign to notice him. He was buried in silk and polyester.
It was worse than he had feared. It was unbearable.
They hadn't come for him at all.
They had come for each other.
SUZIE SUCKS
Jeff Gelb
Mike Crawford pissed about four bottles of beer into the urinals of the Red Cedar Grille. He looked around the drably-lit bathroom and noticed the lipstick scrawled above one of the mirrors. "Suzie Sucks," it read, and underneath it was a phone number. At first Mike grinned, wondering whether «Suzie» knew her name was becoming famous at one of downtown's better watering holes. Then he nearly pissed on his shoe as he jerked in surprise. The phone number listed beneath her name was his own.
He zipped himself up, rushing over to the scribbled message to stare in disbelief. How had his phone number — and worse, his girlfriend's name — come to be displayed there?
Furiously, Mike cleaned off the message as best he could with a paper towel. Shaking with anger, he re-entered the bar, where he cornered his co-worker and drinking buddy, Joey Clark. Mike slapped Clark hard across the small of his back, spilling his drink.
"Where's the lipstick, Dick-breath?" Mike yelled.
"What's with you?" Clark asked, wiping margarita stains from his shirt collar.
"Don't play dumb, asswipe. I saw the message in the men's room."
"I think you've had your fill, buddy boy. Time to go home to your girlfriend." Clark said the word «girlfriend» as if it were something dirty.
"You don't like Susan?" Mike snapped.
"I don't even know her — how could I like her? How could you, for that matter? You've hardly known her a week and she's already moved into your place. You ask me, she's digging for gold — yours."
Mike grabbed Clark's still-moist shirt collar. "Fuck your opinions," Mike growled. "And your lipstick." He shoved his friend roughly against the edge of the bar and walked out.
The apartment was dark as Mike entered, and the phone was ringing. He ran to answer it but the answering machine picked up the call. He heard a strange man's voice.
"Suzie? This is Dick Downes, 555-4330. I saw your message and I thought maybe we could go out sometime. Give me a call."
Mike stood in the darkened living room of his suburban condo, his hands clenched into tight fists.
"That asshole Clark," he snarled, stomping over to the answering machine and rewinding it. The machine recycled itself and started playing earlier messages.
"Hey, Suzie, baby, I got ten inches waitin' for ya. How's $50 sound? Call me. Bill — 555-4545."
"Hello? Hello? Is this Suzie, the one from the restaurant rest room? This is Henry. I'd like to speak with you sometime. My number's 555-2187."