Читаем In Laymon's Terms полностью

“Yes!” She wiped her eyes, face brightening. “We’ll cut off the dog’s leg,” she said. “And boil it. Then we’ll feed it to my father.”

He blinked. “What?”

“Unless you want your father to eat it.”

“N-n-no!” he said, and his voice sounded to himself like a bad Jimmy Stewart impression.

“Come on, then.” She was assertive and in control, her voice and manner imbued with businesslike precision, her tears gone.

He didn’t know what was going on. He felt stunned, as though he were sleepwalking through water, and when she moved over to the passenger side of the car, he opened the driver’s door and got in.

“Hurry up. We don’t have any time to lose.”

They drove back to his place, and he got his gloves and a hacksaw out of the garage and walked out to the garbage cans, where he sawed off one of the stiff fetally-crossed dog legs.

He tossed the severed limb into the trunk along with the saw and gloves, and in silence the two of them retraced the route back to Joanne’s.

They boiled the leg in a Vision Ware pot, and sat in the kitchen talking about Woody Allen. Ron was struck by the morbid absurdity of it all, but Woody’s films were one of the interests they had in common, and perhaps it was best at this time to build on the things they shared. God knows, he didn’t want to talk or think about what was boiling on the stove, and their trivial conversation served to, if not take his mind off the grotesquerie, at least temporarily divert his thoughts to other, healthier, more normal avenues.

Joanne had turned on a timer, and when the bell rang, startling them both, she got out of her chair and walked over to the stove. He accompanied her. There was fur floating in the water, what looked like hair soup in the pot, and from this disgusting mess she fished out a bare, muscled dog leg.

“All right.” She grimaced. “Let’s take it to Daddy.”

She led the way out of the kitchen and down a short hall to what appeared to be the closed door of the master bedroom.

She knocked. “Daddy?”

Ron heard no response.

Joanne smiled. “He said it’s okay. Come on in.” She pushed open the door, but the room contained no bed, no dresser, no furniture at all save for a single white table. On top of the table was an oversized urn.

Joanne walked across the room holding the boiled leg and opened the urn’s lid. She looked inside. “Daddy? I have something for you.”

She dropped the leg in, and damn if Ron didn’t hear the sound of chewing coming from within the ceramic vessel.

She looked down and nodded, as though listening to a voice. “Oranges,” she said, and for the first time since he had initially told her his story, there was a tremor in her voice. “A hunchback.”

The chewing sound stopped. There was a faint high-pitched whistle, and then an almost imperceptible puff of ash blew up from the urn and settled on the white table top.

Joanne licked her index finger again, swallowing the collected ash.

“Let’s take a walk,” she said.

Ron looked at her dumbly. “What?”

“Walk with me. Just around the block.”

“It’s six o’clock in the morning, a hunchback traded a dead dog for my bag of oranges, we cooked the dog’s leg and fed it to your father’s ashes and now you want to go for a walk?”

“Please?”

Common sense was telling him to run like hell. Jo might not have been fat or ugly or a guy, but this sure as Christ wasn’t a normal situation, and the smartest thing he could do was to get out of here and not look back, write off this whole wretched affair as a loss. And yet...

And yet he didn’t want to. Despite the weirdness, despite the craziness, he liked Joanne, and for the first time in a very long while he’d actually met someone with whom he could see himself having a future.

Yeah. As she fed dead pet parts to her father’s ashes.

Everything was happening too fast. His brain had no time to sort out a proper course of action or even to sift through these recent events to determine what was tolerable and what was completely unacceptable.

“Please?” she repeated, and there was a lost sort of plaintiveness to the request that made him nod his head.

“Okay,” he said reluctantly.

Joanne looked at her watch. “We’d better get going. It’ll be light soon.”

She put the lid back on the urn, said goodbye to her father and closed the bedroom door behind them as they headed down the hall toward the front of the house.

It’ll be light soon? What did that mean?

They walked outside, and for the first time that morning, she touched him, taking his hand. Her fingers were soft, the pressure of her palm gentle, and he was suddenly glad he’d decided to stay.

They went up the street, past one dark house after another. Someone somewhere must have been up because he smelled brewing coffee. From the next street over came the sound of a car starting.

Перейти на страницу:

Похожие книги

Звездная месть
Звездная месть

Лихим 90-м посвящается...Фантастический роман-эпопея в пяти томах «Звёздная месть» (1990—1995), написанный в жанре «патриотической фантастики» — грандиозное эпическое полотно (полный текст 2500 страниц, общий тираж — свыше 10 миллионов экземпляров). События разворачиваются в ХХV-ХХХ веках будущего. Вместе с апогеем развития цивилизации наступает апогей её вырождения. Могущество Земной Цивилизации неизмеримо. Степень её духовной деградации ещё выше. Сверхкрутой сюжет, нетрадиционные повороты событий, десятки измерений, сотни пространств, три Вселенные, всепланетные и всепространственные войны. Герой романа, космодесантник, прошедший через все круги ада, после мучительных размышлений приходит к выводу – для спасения цивилизации необходимо свержение правящего на Земле режима. Он свергает его, захватывает власть во всей Звездной Федерации. А когда приходит победа в нашу Вселенную вторгаются полчища из иных миров (правители Земной Федерации готовили их вторжение). По необычности сюжета (фактически запретного для других авторов), накалу страстей, фантазии, философичности и психологизму "Звёздная Месть" не имеет ничего равного в отечественной и мировой литературе. Роман-эпопея состоит из пяти самостоятельных романов: "Ангел Возмездия", "Бунт Вурдалаков" ("вурдалаки" – биохимеры, которыми земляне населили "закрытые" миры), "Погружение во Мрак", "Вторжение из Ада" ("ад" – Иная Вселенная), "Меч Вседержителя". Также представлены популярные в среде читателей романы «Бойня» и «Сатанинское зелье».

Юрий Дмитриевич Петухов

Фантастика / Боевая фантастика / Научная Фантастика / Ужасы / Ужасы и мистика