In Laymon's Terms

“No more pussyfooting around.”

He shoved the metal contacts into David’s neck and pressed the button.

The animal barked. David tensed and fell to the floor in spasms. He floundered a little before going limp.

Henry dragged David next to the stray and wrapped a chain around his neck. He dug into his pocket and pulled out a couple of plastic ties to bind David’s hands and feet.

He looked over at the stray; it was at the end of its chain trying to keep as far from them as possible.

“Time for some manhandling.” He closed the door, knelt down and dragged the stray into position.

David began to come out of his stupor as Henry settled into a silken rhythm. He turned on his side and moaned at Henry.

“Shut up.” Henry leaned over and slid the contacts against David’s testicles.

The rear of the van echoed the crackle of one hundred thousand volts of electricity. David banged his head against the floor and went into spasms again.

Henry held the stun gun before him and drooled over it like a prospector finding a boulder of gold. The specs on the device stated that it was powerful enough to bring down a five hundred pound man.

What kind of effect would it have on something a little more fragile?

He teased the animal’s erect nipples with the metal contacts of the stun gun. The specs also stated that the electricity wouldn’t loop back to the user. It was time to test that theory.

The animal barked. For a split second all its muscles contracted. As the electricity dissipated it fell to the floor head first, its limbs splayed out as Henry collapsed on top of it in pure pleasure.

A few moments later Henry pushed himself up. “God damn! That was incredible.” He cupped his red, deflated penis.

He looked over at David, then back to the rolling hills and valleys of the animal’s sleek body.

Henry stroked the stock of the stun gun with his thumb. At one hundred thousand volts of electricity per shock, he hoped the batteries would outlive both David and the stray.

He slid back into the animal. It didn’t matter if the stray was still weak, the stun gun would ignite its muscles again and send him to heaven.

“Don’t fail me.” He pressed the contacts against the animal’s flank, closed his eyes and pressed the button.

Ron R. Clinton

Y INFANT SON DIED seven years ago.

When grief of such unexpected and electrifying power strikes you, it instantly sears many of your casual assumptions: that bad things only happen to other people, that life is ultimately fair and just. One is then left with the chilling and numbing understanding that the world can be—and often is—undependable, hazardous, and filled with sudden pain.

Kind of like a Laymon story, actually.

On March 28^th, 1999, at 5:20pm, much of the burning pleasure in activities I had previously enjoyed was instantly smothered. For the next several years, a dark and deafening emotional maelstrom drowned out any whisper of writing creative fiction.

Until In Laymon’s Terms.

Richard Laymon has contributed much to my life for which I will always be grateful: an expansion of my reading and personal involvement in the horror genre; the acquaintance of individuals who share my macabre leanings; and, of course, countless hours of breathless reading that infused me with chills and thrills and an instinctive understanding of the mechanics of a well-told story.

Dick’s final gift came about through In Laymon’s Terms: the need to honor all that he has given me became the unexpected impetus to write this tale, my first story since my son’s death three years earlier. And, in turn, helped me regain at least a small bit from all that I’d lost.

Hey, Dick, how about reading my son The Halloween Mouse up there? I think he’d like that.

Ron R. Clinton

VENING. WHAT CAN I get for you?”

Gary Bardun looked up from his papers and saw the waitress standing at his table holding a steaming coffeepot, a welcome sight at one a.m. on such a cold evening. He had been driving home late on Highway 1 after an exhausting three-day corporate-security convention down in San Jose, when his headlights had chanced upon an old sign on the side of the highway. Handpainted and faded by the elements, it read simply “DINER...OPEN LATE!” with a red arrow bleached to pink pointing to a narrow road on the left. Chilled and tired, he pulled off the main road and found the nondescript small diner tucked away deep in the woods. A good half-mile off the coastal highway, it sat at the end of a terminally rutted road under a tightly woven canopy of moonlight-frosted fir trees. No signs, no neon, just warm light spilling from two large windows into the night’s biting chill and the words DINER painted haphazardly upon its shadowed frontage, with taloned fir branches obscuring much of the lettering. He was lucky to have stumbled upon it at all.

“Hm? Oh, uh, black. Just black,” he said, absently wagging a finger at the empty cup on the table.

The waitress smiled and carefully poured the hot coffee.