Slaughterhouse High

Gerber stood before the steam-coated mirror, savagely brushing his teeth. His left hand sawed vigorous and wild across his jaw. The fingers of his right hand stilted against the counter, bamboo shoots white with tension.

When he emerged, the Bleaks were watching TV in their bedroom at the end of the hall. Missus Bleak chirped, "Water okay, Gerber?" and he said "Yes'm, it was," a hand concealing his left lobe, a towel tucked about his waist.

Gerber went into his room, where Mister and Missus Bleak's grown son had lived. Blue-black janitor duds lay like a dead flat man on the bed, undies and socks beside them. Off days, he wore Salvation Army crap, clothes that felt more like him than these did. Deceptive comfort for the normals. Put Gerber in somebody else's house, somebody else's uniform. Peg him. Make him safe for mobocracy.

But when he wore thrift store hand-me-downs, his thoughts came more easily. And when he wore nothing at all, they tumbled about in his head, wild, nasty, and free. Lull the bastards. Put him in safe togs, slip a denim lobebag over his lefty.

But a game had two players, he thought. One day, one night, he would break a few rules and loose the demon again.

Maybe tonight. Prom night. A night of beauty and savagery. It would be easy to throw a wrench or two into the cogs. All it would take was simply to give in. To act, once more, upon those suppressed urges.

Gerber pictured Missus Bleak coming through the door. Like a pork-bomb, she flew straight apart, warming the air with outflung spews of gore as her pudgy face exploded.

Somehow, it made this more like home.

More inviting.

Shiverful, spineful.

*****

Mia Jenner gave her younger husband Bonn a look, then tossed barbs at Pelf, who sat cozy in his favorite armchair, pooled in lamplight.

"I can't believe you're doing that," she scolded. "Really, Pelf."

The older man peered over his glasses, one finger stuck in the library book. "Doing what?"

Exasperated eyes. "Reading."

"I read every night."

Bonn chimed in. "This is Fido's prom night. He'll be down soon in his tuxedo. Bowser will be showing up in his tuxedo. Look at you, sitting there in your robe and slippers."

"Like this was any old weekend," added Mia, snaking an arm around Bonn's waist.

"To hell with Bowser McPhee." Pelf's familiar grin slung above his jowls. "I luxuriate on Saturday nights: a soothing bath, a good book, a tumble in the hay and a perfect lobesuck with you two fine folks." He brushed aside the world. "People make too much of prom night. Let Fido and Bowser have fun, let blood be spilt, but for gosh sakes, let lovable old Pelf read his thriller."

Mia turned to Bonn. "He's begging for it."

"I think so too." Bonn eyed the instruments of pleasure on the coffee table.

"Isn't he begging for it?" asked Mia.

Bonn reached to retrieve.

A pair of stiff riding crops stuck out from between his fingers like black leather drumsticks. "Yes honeybunch, no question."

He handed Mia her weapon of choice.

"I'm not begging for it," Pelf insisted, grinning as he closed his book.

He probed deep into the cushion crack and coaxed out a hand-tooled, vegetable-tanned, sharkskin beauty, the riding crop his spouses had given him on his fiftieth birthday. Despite eleven years of wear, the thing had staying power and a humming thwack that sang of quality. It shone with crusted weltflow. Pelf gripped its handle and hunched forward.

Bonn said, "Let's get him," and charged in.

Mia followed, raising her lustiest yowl to the rafters. Her crop whistled down hard on Pelf's terryclothed buttocks as he rose to meet his attackers.

Back into the armchair they drove him, riding its floorward arc but not missing a battering beat as they tumbled across the carpet.

Mia lost herself in gaiety and torn clothing, ending up in her favorite position: cushioned by soft pillows, plugged below, her crop hand free to punish her lovers.

Bonn crouched to rouse her as his lickables bobbed hot against her lips.

Their laughter stopped when Fido yelled, not for the first time, "Dad, Mom, Dad. Bowser just drove up."

Mia, unBonning her mouth, angled toward her son. Spiffed and slicked to steal the heart of any youngster, Fido, class clown, stood there waiting for his special night to begin.

Door chimes rang out bing-bong-bing-bong, followed at once by Bowser McPhee's irritating shave-and-a-haircut rap.

The skin on Pelf's shoulder was red and raw. He slipped out of her, pulled about himself the tatters of his bathrobe, cinched it, and said he would get the door.

Mia righted the armchair and sat down.

She'd be damned if she would bother getting up to greet a belligerent little no-account like Bowser McPhee.

She touched the gaping flesh of one welt and made sizzling-lips sound and a face of pain. As the door opened, her fingers shot up to check her left lobe.

No problem, nothing showing, bag in place. But it never hurt to be sure.

Bowser McPhee was as fleshy and dark as ever. "Good evening, sir. Good evening, sir." He waved at Mia and she nodded. "Ma'am."