WOMAN EATS OWN CHILD
U.S. WILL REDUCE
MISSILE ARSENAL
BY DROPPING TITAN
TWO SISTERS FOUND
STRANGLED IN PARK
The butchered bodies of two missing little sisters who “never stayed out after dark” were found today partly nude and apparently strangled and sexually molested in Central Park on the periphery of the Sheep Meadow.
GI’S FLUSH ENEMY FORCE
IN FIRST BATTLE OF BIG DRIVE
NEGRO Gl SMOTHERS MINE WITH OWN BODY;
WILL RECEIVE COUNTRY’S HIGHEST AWARD
HONOR STUDENT
SLAIN IN B’KLYN
SLAIN STUDENT “A PERFECT GUY”
“I wouldn’t have minded if it were in the war,” his mother said in a radio interview, “but to have it in the street this way seems such a waste.”
BRIDE KILLED ON WEDDING BED
BOY KILLS FATHER
AND FATHER’S FIANCEE
GRANDMOTHER IS ALSO SHOT
CHEMIST KILLS DAUGHTER, SELF
A Columbia Heights chemist apparently killed himself last night after strangling his daughter to death and pouring nitric acid on her boyfriend during an argument over the youngsters’ romance.
NEW BLOWS SEEK
TO SHORTEN WAR
BORDER VILLAGE LEVELED
IN PRECISION RAID
AIR EMERGENCY CALLED
POLLUTION BURIES CITY
People with weak hearts or lung trouble were cautioned by the Mayor not to leave their homes except for an emergency during the current crisis. Deaths attributed to the poisonous air are at nine.
A-TEST IN BIG CAVE
MAY HIDE EFFECTS
BROOKLYN POLICE
PRESS KILLER HUNT
GO ON 12-HOUR SHIFTS AFTER
FIFTH WOMAN IS SLAIN
The police went on 12-hour shifts in an intensive manhunt for a sadistic killer blamed for five rape-stabbings of cripples in the Brooklyn area during the last three months.
The latest victim, Miss Rose Pimpsel, 79 years old, was found last night in her home near the downtown area, extremities grotesquely mutilated.
I saw Curtis Parks or some guy who looked like him going into a church basement. Called his name. He didn’t turn around. Ran after him. Someone running behind me, the sound of his steps in my head. Followed him into a dark room.
“No smoking,” some guy at the door whispered. “Not even straight cigarettes. Whose friend are you?”
“Professor Parks’.”
“Whose?”
I got a seat in the last row. The projector just behind me, to my right. The inside of a garbage can on the screen, a maggot crawling across a piece of meat. Eating its way into the meat. The cover of the can blacks out the scene, THE END.
The lights went on. Clapping. A girl with long hair sitting next to me, yawning. I stood up to look for Parks, didn’t see him. In the first row, one of the men who had been following me. The lights out.
“Quiet,” she said. “It’s beginning.”
The heat of the projector on my neck, it begins.
AIR, BREASTS, WATER
A shot of a breast. The nipple of a breast. A mouth. The breast again, a hand covering it. (A nipple peeking between two fingers.) A boy of about ten diving into the waves (at Coney Island). A shot of a crowded beach. A couple sunbathing, the boy’s head on the girl’s stomach. The figures together make a cross. A shot of a cross on a church. A shot of a cross on a chain around a girl’s neck, the cross between her breasts. A shot of the girl’s mouth, open, closed, open. She sticks out her tongue. A shot of a cow’s tongue in a butcher’s window. A shot of the boy diving into the waves, a breaker washes over him. A shot of a middle-aged woman, her head in her hands, sobbing. A shot of a sign: NO PARKING ANYTIME. Another sign: NO SMOKING. A hand-written sign: NO PETTING. Another: NO FUCKING ANYTIME. A shot of an old man on a bench, asleep. He wakes up with a start, looks around. A shot of the front of Israel Zion Hospital. (Someone laughs.) A shot of a billboard: YOU’RE IN THE PEPSI GENERATION. The ocean. A shot of waves breaking, of a boy jumping up and down in the waves. The same boy doing a dead man’s float. The couple on the blanket, arms and legs entwined, kissing. A sign: NO BALL PLAYING ALLOWED. Waves breaking against the rocks. A shot of a stormy sky. Droplets of rain falling on the surface of the water. Rain. People on the beach running for shelter. A shot of what looks like a tidal wave. A hand sticking out of the water. A hunter with a gun shooting at something in the sky. A clip from a war movie: the explosion of a bomb in the ocean. A lion (like the MGM lion) roaring silently. A shot of an elegant double bed with a canopy over it. A shot of a couch — the couple we had seen on the beach lying back to back on it. A shot of a well-curved leg, a stocking being taken off. Very slowly. The action reverses itself — the stocking is on again. Then again very slowly, even, it seems, more slowly than before, a pair of hands take the stocking off. Before it is completely off, the stocking is on again. A shot of a penis. Then an eye. A close-up of a kiss. The man, sleeping on the bench, lurches in his sleep, seems about to fall off. A soundless scream. A mouth. A clip of a gunfight from another movie. One man is hit, falls, shoots as he goes down. The other falls. A shot of something that turns out to be the nipple of a breast. A close-up of a breast. A light seems to be coming from it. Flame. In the flame it says: NOT THE END.
There is applause, six or seven people clapping. A few hisses. We sit in the dark. A voice in front of me saying something about breasts. The lights go on. The one who was Parks is gone.
Mrs. Parks calling me. “When are you coming back?” she wanted to know. I said I had to prove myself first, but that I would return. Not to worry. As soon as the fucking war is over. “It’s indelicate,” she said, “to talk of war in mixed company. Have you no shame?”
He was holding her from behind. “Hit her in the face,” he said. I pulled her away from him, knocking her into a wall. Went for him. He stumbled back, scared of me. I pointed a finger at him and he disappeared.
“Are you all right?” I said to her. She was sitting at the base of the wall. “He won’t bother you again.” She made no sound. I shook her. “Are you all right?” I was shaking her. Her head rolled from her shoulders, cracking open on the sidewalk. Her body limp like cloth, her flesh surgical rubber. I held her against me like one of Phyllis’ broken dolls.
I’m not afraid to do what I have to do. I’m not afraid of it.
A blond man in a light-gray suit stopped me, asked if I had a cigarette. I gave him the pack, which had one left.
“It’s a most generous gesture to give a stranger your last cigarette. I must say I’m touched.”
He was standing in my way, looking at the cigarette in his hand. “I’d like to reward such unstinting generosity. Come with me to my place, I’ll give you ten dollars.”
He looked familiar. I asked him if he had been following me.
“I would certainly like to follow you, if that’s what you want. I would have no objection to following. Fifteen dollars, which is what I used to pay my analyst for a session. That’s absolutely my best offer.”
“What are you?”
“You won’t have to do anything. Just keep me company for an hour. Twenty dollars.”
“You’re a liar. You’ve been following me, haven’t you?”
“I’d like to,” he said. “I’d genuinely like to have the pleasure of your company. I’m being totally honest and above-board with you.” His hand flew toward my shoulder.
I brought my fist into his stomach, the knife like a rock in my hand. He bent forward. I hit him in the side of the head. Four times. Four times I hit him, twice in the head and twice in the neck, until he went down. He was smiling, drool on his lip. Pants bulging. A big smile on his face as he went down.