“I think the question is, who are you?” Patty asked, glancing down at the pieces of glass shimmering in the bath of champagne. A cold block of ice filled her stomach, forming a tight knot of nervousness and anger.
“My name is Sally.” The woman’s voice was a little less harsh this time, showing a hint of concern. “Are you okay, hon? What are you doing here?”
“I live here with Roger. What are you doing here?”
“I’m sorry. You must be confused,” the woman said. “This is my house.”
Suddenly Patty realized who this woman was, who this woman had to be. The whore! The goddamned whore who had seduced her husband! Patty looked at the broken bottle and the spilled champagne pooling on the linoleum; the rage she had been suppressing for a lifetime boiled over, melting the block of ice in her gut. The nervous panic burned away, replaced by anger and bitterness.
Patty turned to the wooden block on the counter and selected the largest knife. Then she turned and took a step toward the woman, kicking the base of the broken champagne bottle across the kitchen with a loud thump.
“No, wait a minute,” the woman cried out as she backed into the dining room, raising her hands. “What are you doing?”
As Patty moved forward, she remembered the events of a day much like this one many, many years ago, when she came home early from work to surprise Roger but he surprised her instead: Roger and that woman from down the street, doing terrible things on the kitchen floor like animals in heat. Patty remembered her anger and confusion...and the endless river of blood splattering everywhere.
Now Patty was home again and those horrible sights rose before her eyes, overwhelming her, sending her back to that terrible day. She saw every little detail and she had to do something to make the two heathens stop. She had to stop them again!
The woman named Sally, now backed into a corner, said: “Please don’t hurt me! Please listen!”
But Patty couldn’t listen. She just wanted to make Roger and the awful woman pay for what they were doing. The terrible whore! The whore-husband! It was all too awful and Patty just wanted Roger to come to his senses, to understand what his love meant to her.
Patty accepted that everyone made mistakes, so she just had to help Roger understand the mistake he was making. Forgiveness was love, love was forgiveness, and she loved him so goddamned much. Why couldn’t he just understand that?
Patty raised the knife above her head and prepared to show her husband how much she loved him—and she would keep showing him as long as it took for him to understand that her love was endless and eternal.
She would love him again and again, and she would never, ever stop.
Ryan Harding
WAS FIRST EXPOSED to Richard Laymon through the book Flesh, and I can remember the exact moment when he hooked me. A frustrated horror movie fan had a nude picture of a woman who’d gotten the best of him. As he replayed the conversation in his head, he took a pair of scissors and mock-stabbed her picture between the legs. Such a mean streak of humor offered a lot to someone like me. It was like handing a serial killer a copy of The Collector.
Along with the black humor, wanton violence, and unpredictable character deaths (remember Endless Night?), I particularly admired Laymon’s narrative techniques. The aforementioned Endless Night, for instance, where Simon’s half of the story is told through a tape recorder, and most notably Island, to which “Development” owes a great deal.
I got to meet Richard Laymon and his family at the 1999 World Horror Convention, and again in 2000. He was incredibly friendly, sincere, and approachable. I clearly remember how shocked I was on February 14, 2001 to hear he had passed away. I sat there for maybe an hour, trying to compose an email of condolences that was all of two paragraphs. Despite getting to meet him, I never really got to tell him how his work influenced me (I hope it was apparent to some degree), but I hope “Development” corrects that oversight. His wife and daughter are still good friends, thankfully, and the last WHC was like a family reunion. I wish he was still around for these conventions...and for all of us.
Ryan Harding
AUGUST 20
I’ve never kept a journal before, but there’s too much going on now that I can’t talk about with anyone else. I feel like I have to keep a record. I guess this is also a precaution, too.
I’m Alex. I’ll be a senior at Bernardo High School in a couple weeks. Check the honor roll, I’m there. I play on the tennis team, which I don’t recommend if you’re hoping to attract the opposite sex. I was lucky if my parents or my sister even came to the damn games, much less Lissa Hindley.
I don’t know where to begin exactly, but I guess I’ll start with my job. I develop film at a store I won’t name, because I’d hate to lose your business. Once you hear about the Binders, you probably won’t want to bring your film to me.
I took the job to save up for a car. It only paid minimum wage, and when I first started, I had every intention of leaving when something better came along. I just expected lots of snapshots from birthday parties, weddings, and Disney World, but you wouldn’t believe the pictures people drop off. I guess everyone thinks I wear a blindfold when I develop film. I’ve seen some unbelievably hot slutcakes bare-assed naked or in bone-stiffening states of undress. We’re talking lingerie, swimsuits, nightgowns, and half of one or the other. They pose for their boyfriends and husbands, who don’t have sense enough to develop film themselves or learn how. I bet some of the pictures were sent to amateur photo contests in skinmags like Gallery and Buxxxom. Some had a good chance of winning, although I’ve had the misfortune to see many who could have soured a rapist’s sex drive faster than a chemical castration.
I saved them in the Binders anyway.
I get some fetish pictures, too. There’s a surprising number of guys who go around secretly taking pictures of women’s feet. It became a game for me to see if I could guess who took what pictures, judging by the individual requirements. “Darrin McDonel,” for instance, had to have open-toed sandals and toenails painted red. “Harold Bennett” was into red high heels and pallid skin. “Jamey Fiala” only photographed women in black high heels with those thin interlaced straps.
“John Futch” was bolder. He went for those up-the-skirt pictures you can see all over the Internet. I didn’t realize so many women in Bernardo were into thongs (and thongs were into them).
I saved all these pictures in the Binders. It didn’t matter if customers paid for doubles or not, some of their photos were duplicated and added to my Binder. It filled up fast. So did the second, and I’m running out of room on the third. Customers have to write their address on the film envelope, and halfway through the second binder I started keeping track of who submitted each picture.
Sometimes I visit their homes at night, and look in the windows. Just anywhere a woman who posed for some of the pictures might live. I don’t know why. I can see more in the pictures. But I do it anyway. Not often, just sometimes. I’ve never been caught. I wish I knew the addresses for some of Futch’s up-the-skirt subjects.
It’s not always the women from these photographs I watch. Remember I mentioned Lissa Hindley? I’ve known her since sixth grade. I’ve had a hard-on with her name on it for seven years now, which she has only experienced vicariously through her yearbook photos. She knows I exist, but I don’t think she cares. The closest we’ve ever been was a lab group for biology. We dissected earthworms, dogfish sharks, and fetal pigs together, but strangely enough, she went to Homecoming with someone else in spite of our intimate bond. That’s okay, though. If her blinds are agreeable, I have my own private “homecoming” with her on Elvin Avenue three or four times a week during the school year, and more in the summer. This has been going on much longer than the other nighttime visits.