Slaughterhouse High Part 2

"Please, no." She was as listless as a sack of tapioca.

Zane drew her off the couch. A corsage of white carnations edged in blue tickled his nose. He snaked a hand beneath her gown, felt hot thigh, a bikini'd rump, hints of a slit.

Maneuvering her troughward, he wondered why no one this s.e.xy had ever come on to him when he was her age.

He had her now though and, the law be d.a.m.ned, he would use her in some undetectable way, her and her companion both, before he was finished.

Zane positioned her atop her date, felled refugees from a wedding cake. The man's lobestub glistened like a dare. Zane pressed his lips to it.

The thrill of it blooded him below. Were time not pressing, he would have slipped off his lobebag and stroked himself to head-heaven.

The trough, which he pushed back into place by the drain, now had sufficient weight to anchor the dog's ardor. But the couple was showing signs of revival.

The medicine cabinet.

He raced for the steps. Hedda stood at the door, Camille topless beside her.

Zane glared at them. "Stay out of the bas.e.m.e.nt," he warned, leaving the door ajar.

"Do you need anything?" Hedda asked.

"I'm fine."

Hallway. A snap of the light. Tired old sink. He clicked the mirror open and swung it aside. Medicines, sleeping pills, laxatives, a generous supply of Tuffskin-in-a-Tub.

Ah.

Chloroform.

Sampler drug-baskets had been the rage among realtors when he and the wives had traded up in houses two years before. Zane s.n.a.t.c.hed the bottle up, shoved a few gauze pads into his back pocket, and returned to the bas.e.m.e.nt.

The couple, still groggy, had begun to shift about in the trough, struggling for the energy to open their eyes. Zane knocked the man out first, then the woman, same pad on both. He had bought himself maybe ten minutes.

Keep focus on the mutt, keep his nerves calm, don't jinx his aim. Those were his goals.

Ready.

Ice Ghoul? He'd give them Ice Ghoul.

The axe seated itself in his hands, palm-wrap behind its blade. He walked about the drain until he faced the wag-tailed, droopy-tongued pup in the dim light, the gray trough stuffed with a heap of prom costumes.

Zane's practice chops in the woods outside of Corundum had been a cakewalk. Flinders flew. His arms sang to the rhythm of exertion, and the scent of tree sap swirled in his nostrils.

Here? Nothing but a ch.o.r.e.

Zane gritted his teeth, raised the sucker, and let fly. Missed the ribcage. Caught a paw instead. Blood bloomed where toes had been. The dog's whine rose to a freakish yelp.

Focus. Focus.

He inhaled on the upswing, then brought it down with a huff, slamming the dog back into the trough, gashing its belly. Out gushed a geyser of crimson, spilling across the concrete.

As the fur blackened around the blow, Zane lifted the axe once more, fine droplets in the air, that same stench that bullied its way down the school hallways when butchery cla.s.s let out.

Again!

A hind leg, sliced, dangled awry. Those eyes, the panicked yelps; he should have chloroformed the d.a.m.ned dog.

Finish him, why don't you?

The next blow struck an artery. Blood fountained up and out, drenching Zane's pantleg. It splashed hot, then went cold and clingy. Such life there was in the mutt, struggling out of the carnage as if to undo it.

Zane caught its eyes, held them as he brought the blade straight down between them, burying it so that the skull collapsed and fella"a bleached steerhead in the deserta"to the cement floor.

Zane's heart was pounding.

He laughed and cried with joy.

Through the cellar door, he heard a doorbell chime.

Let the b.i.t.c.hes get it.

Despite an overpowering need to be chosen as the school's designated slasher, Zane had always preferred violence at one remove.

The televised electrocutions on Notorious were just his speed. Indeed, he often used the show's soundtrack, its screams tracking the rise and fall of electricity through the victims, to draw the most amazing artwork from his students.

Now, he wasn't so sure.

This dog weren't no cord of wood. This had been life itself, and no more direct contact with life had Zane Fronemeyer had than in ending it.

First step, doggiedom.

Next, the homeless.

But could he endure their eyes? d.a.m.ned straight he could!

Zane planted himself on the couch and sat forward, the axe angled like a leaf rake between his jittery knees.

Come on, come on, he thought, I didn't give you that much chloroform. Open your frigging eyes so I can finish you off and be on my way.

The cellar door unlatched.

Zane looked up in annoyance.

Dexter Poindexter averted his gaze from the mirror. He was a shy guy. Too shy for his own good, some people said.

That's what Mommy and Daddy told him, though Daddy Owen, the spouse they had divorced the year before, disagreed.

Dex fluffed the wide ends of his bone-white bowtie, nice smooth ripples. Its color and satin sheen matched his lobebag, a tight garter band right around the base of the ear and a generous splay below.

He sincerely hoped these things were dry-cleaned between rentals. It grossed Dex out to think of some other guy's lovelobe in this same bag. Maybe many guys, though styles changed often enough that it wasn't likely.

Dex shrugged into the coat, b.u.t.toned a b.u.t.ton at his waist, and shot the sleeves.

His tux looked sharp.

Tweed would whistle at it. Her eyes would go wide. Of course, Dex would be busy admiring what a knockout she was in her gown, which she had described again and again these past few weeks in great detail.

It was fortunate they were in the dance band. Running through one chart after another would take their minds off the general terror.

As soph.o.m.ores and juniors, he and Tweed had played senior proms, learning first hand what it was like to see the murdered couple carried into the gym, laid out beside the centerpiece, danced around, and at midnight torn apart.

That reminded him.

He went to the dresser and lifted the cleaver, its blade no longer than his index finger and not much wider. His church groupa"all church groups across the nation did thisa"had given him and Tweed practice. An expendable sheepdog. Dex had gotten a cross-section of tufted ear and only been nicked once.

Of course, tonight there would be more kids diving in to futter the couple. And their state of mind would be way more agitated.

That was for sure.

Dex's right leg twitched.

You had to be brave, cram in there, push and shove and lunge, praying that some doofus did not, by design or accident, clip your lobes, or slice off your fingers, or slash your face.

Dex raised his suitcoat's right flap.

These tuxes, the more expensive ones anyway, had a special pair of loops. On the right loop, he secured the handle of his cleaver. On the left, his Futterware container.

The cuffs caught his attention, as wide as high collars, and as flappy.

Cufflinks.

As stern as Dex's father was, he always had his son's welfare at heart. Dex removed the lid from the white box on his bureau. On top of a layer of cotton waited the gold-skull cufflinks his father had worn, and Dex's grampa before him.

Signs of love.

Mommy and Daddy had that ferocious look st.i.tched to their faces. Harsh words spilled in profusion from their mouths. They were quick with the whip and Christlike in their savagery.

But they were proud of him, pleased in his choice of Tweed as a girlfriend, and bursting with joy that tonight was Dex's prom night.

He would brave the slasher, cut his way through the brambles, and emerge triumphant and ready to take his place as a useful citizen.

What more could he ask of life than that?

Dex poked a cufflink through a stiff ironed hole and snapped it into place.

The princ.i.p.al of Corundum High was taking his sweet time getting ready.

He wasn't showering.

He wasn't dressing.

Nor was he busy thinking mean thoughts about the little s.h.i.ts who would get their comeuppance tonight.

In point of fact, Peyton "Futzy" b.u.t.tweiler was on his hands and knees in the playroom, being whipped senseless by his lacklove wives.

"I'm sorry," sniveled Futzy.

Torment sneered. "Far as I'm concerned, you're not nearly sorry enough. He isn't, is he, Trusk? Lay into the f.u.c.ker!"

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 b.u.t.tweiler'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 s.h.i.t-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 d.a.m.ned one of them. No breakfast for old Futzy-Wutzy till he gets these walls spanking clean."

"His wounds are closing," observed Trusk.

"Well, f.u.c.k," said Torment, "we can't have that now, can we? Open 'em back up. Make new ones. Real fierce and frenzied, Trusk. Slice the sc.u.mwipe 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.

"f.u.c.k his sorry a.s.s!"

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 b.i.t.c.hes he had taken in to punish him after Kitty's death.

A marital m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.t, that's what he was.

Do it. Do it!

He dared not say it aloud, lest they withhold his punishment entirely.