Torment sneered. “Far as I’m concerned, you’re not nearly sorry enough. He isn’t, is he, Trusk? Lay into the fucker!”
And Trusk, the heftier wife, did as she was told.
Frayed and beaded whip-ends sizzled through the air and snapped away, interwoven with the high smack of Torment’s bullwhip, crosswise upon naughty little Futzy Buttweiler’s back.
Bloodspray spattered the walls, an abstract mural in progress.
Futzy’s much deserved flaying fired up his brain. But his dead daughter’s image burned as bright as ever.
“Harder,” he pleaded. “Harder!”
“You miserable little shit-smoocher,” said Torment. “Don’t you dare order me and Trusk about. We’re not a couple of high school tramps. You see all those blood flecks on the wall?” She bunched up twists of Futzy’s sweat-slicked hair and yanked his head back. “Tomorrow, first thing, you’re going to lick ’em all off, every damned one of them. No breakfast for old Futzy-Wutzy till he gets these walls spanking clean.”
“His wounds are closing,” observed Trusk.
“Well, fuck,” said Torment, “we can’t have that now, can we? Open ’em back up. Make new ones. Real fierce and frenzied, Trusk. Slice the scumwipe some indelible memories. Volley!”
With that, Trusk and Torment redoubled their effort. Grunting into their swings, they so minced the skin covering Futzy’s shoulders and ribs, that wide expanses of bone peered through. Seas of red rushed in, to be parted by renewed whipsmacks.
“ Fuck his sorry ass!”
Futzy wept.
Kitty’s young face shone bright and smiling. Her senior picture.
But around the edges of her smile peered an accusatory look, a look of shame and disgust at her father’s inaction at her senior prom.
She was right to scorn him.
Do it, he thought to the two bitches he had taken in to punish him after Kitty’s death.
A marital masochist, that’s what he was.
Do it. Do it!
He dared not say it aloud, lest they withhold his punishment entirely.
“Now,” said lean and mean Torment, the brains of the duo. “Give off. Man the machine.”
Trusk’s whip handle clattered to the floor.
Futzy braced himself for the pain.
Spang went the release mechanism and hush-hush-hush the grains of salt from the funnel above. They pinged and stippled against his skin, finding their way, much of them, into the V’s of his wounds.
Salt knifed into him everywhere. Pain waved through his body like the unending misery twenty years before, the thoughts he could not shut off no matter how hard he tried.
Futzy passed out, the harsh words of his wives ringing in his ears, longing for death but knowing it would not yet be his.
The blue clunker pulled up to the curb and parked two blocks from Zane Fronemeyer’s house.
A quiet walk past manicured lawns, no faces peering out. The doorbell chimed. Zane would be in the basement. But if not, if he was finished already, knifing three of them wouldn’t pose too great a problem.
All planned, all smooth.
Familiar heads appeared at the decorative window in the door: Hedda and Camille, taste of sex on the lips, a threeway suckle on left lobes until they had gone giddily into simultaneous oral orgasm.
The deadbolt snapped and the door swung open.
Surprise lit their faces.
“Hello, you two.” Casual. Not too loud.
“Zane’s home,” said Hedda. “Are you sure—”
“It’s all right. If he comes upstairs, I’ll offer an excuse. I have a few things I wanted to give you. Is it all right if I come in?”
Better be.
Discretion cautioned against the ruckus of forced entry.
Empty boxes in the clutched paper bag hid the shape of the knife.
Camille fretted. “Well I don’t—”
“Sure,” said Hedda.
Snap judgment.
That and her sex drive, a burning focus on whatever flesh happened to be at hand, were Hedda’s most alluring traits.
The door settled snug in its frame as Hedda surged forward into a kiss.
Camille went nonlinear: “Hedda, what are you doing? Zane could pop up any minute!”
Hedda’s hunger was palpable. “Take us away,” she urged. “Tonight.”
“Soon. I promise.”
“Zane’s a prize bore,” said Hedda, her eyes hard and fiery. Amazing how such an attractive woman now held no interest at all, had become so guiltlessly killable.
“We don’t like him,” Camille offered.
“The three of us will be dynamite together. It’ll happen soon, not much longer. But for now, I’ve got to go. I only wanted to drop these gifts off.”
Beyond the art teacher’s fluxed mother, the vestibule arched into the family room, where heavy curtains shut out the night.
As they approached the couch, they passed an end table that held a thick packet with Corundum High’s clocktower logo in its upper left corner and “Z. Fronemeyer” scrawled across it in loopy ballpoint.
“What’s the occasion?” asked Camille.
“Nothing special. I just wanted to express my love for you both. Hedda, sit here. Camille, beside her. That’s it.”
The bagtop uncrumpled. No footsteps clumped up the cellar stairs. A free shot at Fronemeyer’s wives.
Inside the bag, the duct-taped boxes split on a hinge to yield the knife handle.
“Close your eyes and open your hands.”
“Oh come on!” Blond-haired Hedda gave a practiced flick to her head that tossed just so her shoulder-length shag-cut. But she grinned.
“Humor me. Please.”
They did.
The razored edge opened Hedda’s throat to the bone, savage and deep, no need to grip a hank of hair. Just as well, since Camille’s eyes sprang open at the sudden gesture. Her mouth sucked in air for a scream.
Clamp that mouth.
Press her back into the couch, off-balance.
Putty.
Once more the knife blade. Its swift passage reflected in Camille’s eyes. She pitched right, dying, as the weapon was wiped clean on an end-cushion.
Doing Zane in was the goal, which wasn’t yet a sure thing. No time to savor his wives’ death throes. These two were mere pawns.
Kill Zane.
Then tackle the packet.
Game plans were always easier when you knew what your enemy had in mind. Besides, a map of the school’s secret backways would be a welcomed refresher.
The kitchen flashed by in bright fluorescent light. Racing heartbeats erased all detail.
Stay calm. Set things right.
An image of the Lion of God slaughtering the moneychangers flared up. Some sanitized filmstrip from Bible school long ago.
Love owed, love denied.
These moved the world.
The knob felt cool. The flimsy cellar door, flung back, gave onto blue-painted steps.
Exasperation: “Hedda, for the last time—”
“It’s me, Zane.” Conceal the knife behind a pantleg. In the subdued light on the stairs, it would look perhaps like an injured arm.
Zane puzzled out his lover’s name. His voice turned surprised and annoyed. Halfway down, Zane became visible, the washing machine behind him.
He rose from the couch, holding a bloody axe. The trough was dimly lit, but a bare lightbulb above the dryer caught glistens of gore threading into the drain. “But we were going to meet at your place after I… what kind of a… hey wait, what do you think you’re—”
The axe looked tricky, a sharp thing that might fall in a scuffle. Go for the bold move, came the thought. A left-handed grip on the axe handle. Done!
Zane clenched tighter to counter.
The knife flew up and over. It caught on something hard in his chest, then slipped past to stab deep.
A Greek mask frowned upon his face: a bunched brow, anguished eyes, lips fizzling like a limp balloon, all of it in motion. Flares of life flashing by tried to stick and hold. But something vital had been skewered.
Zane collapsed, a house of cards falling inward. The axehead hung abruptly left, his fingers releasing their grip on the handle. The axe clattered to the floor. Then Zane, drifting downward, took to the tattered couch.