Slaughterhouse High

The body accepted puncture and impalement as though they were crude afterthoughts, the sudden flair of the ice pick handle stopping its forward hurtle in a pit of depressed serge.

Flann's head pitched forward as three bodies sandwiched unbalanced against the wall. A shove at his suit helped unflesh the weapon.

Brandy's eyes widened. Her mouth readied a scream.

Her boyfriend flailed about, arms whipping wide and ineffectual. The lovelobe his teeth had abruptly severed hung like a blood-engorged tick from his lips. Staggering like a drunk upended in a slippery room, he fell away, his skull making a loud smack against the white wall.

Screams now, muffled in the insulated room.

Screams wrapped in puffs of breath.

Brandy's left hand rose to her maimed ear, blood gush vining down her frail wrist.

The ice pick lifted once. It pinned the girl's right hand rising to resist, pinned it like a stuck butterfly against her left breast, and filled her heart with steel.

Her eyes held, even as they clouded with death. Healing lay in Brandy's empty gaze. And in Flann's. Those eyes begged to be icicled, as had Sheriff Blackburn's.

Behind them through racks of meat waited the fat ghoul, an icicle dagger upraised at the end of his massive arm.

That would do fine.

But time pressed.

Do Queen Brandy first. Then her lover. Come out of the cold, regain warm passageways, again dare the fear of heights.

The next bit of payback would be a challenge and a thrill, courage and sheer strength tested to the limit. But close by awaited love and healing and an end to years of torment.

Through the motor hum and the meat racks, the leaden-footed dancers' shoetops scuffed across the floor.

*****

Gerber Waddell sat in his supply closet, the door closed, a dim lightbulb over his head.

Like a great ape after eating, Gerber settled cross-legged on the floor, scratching his belly through janitorial denim.

Thoughts struggled to pierce his rage.

Something not right was seeping through the school tonight. This weren't your ordinary prom, no way, no how.

He was used to grisly thoughts on prom night.

Young bad flesh in rich clothing.

The anticipated smack.

That's how Gerber always heard it in his head when they brought the victims in. Smack! An echo from the slash that few if any saw, 'cept for its aftermath, which he had to clean up lest it settle into the walls.

Couldn't have it settling into the walls.

Had to make them pristine again.

Well tonight, he was hearing lots more oof too, feeling bad things transpire, almost as if he were right there and they were happening in front of him.

He had a feeling there'd be lots more cleanup than usual. Lots more walls to make pristine.

They didn't pay him overtime neither.

He remembered the hospital geeks.

In particular he remembered good ol' Gary the nose-picking nurse, who must've thought Gerber was some piece of meat that cared not a whit about the niceties of living. Nope, good ol' Gary could just, privileged as you please, snuk a finger up into his nostril right in front of the sliced-up brain guy lying on the bed.

Gerber's head had hurt after the operation. But otherwise, he hadn't felt any different. He wanted to shove an ice pick up Gary's nose, get a bloody booger on its tip, maybe take some of his brain out along with it.

His hand went to the utility belt: Axe head. Plastic pouch o' screwdrivers. Empty place.

Gerber looked down.

No ice pick.

He sighed.

Always losing stuff. The Bleaks was always getting on him about that, about stuff being lost around the house.

Missus Bleak always pig-yammered at him out of her lipsticked oinker of a yap, till he'd had enough and cried in front of her like a big baby. But in his head she was taken apart, all that flab torn open so the blubber came spilling out on the rug and he weren't about to clean might mind you, dance on it. Nor would he care a tinker's damn about his boots, nope, he'd just make sure he didn't slip on the grease and bang the back of his head where the surgeons had left the deep dimple.

Did they need him at the prom?

Probably so, but goddamn if he would go where they wanted him to go. Not with all the early unscheduled oof in his head, not with all the unruly visions of struggle warring up there.

He didn't want to see nobody.

I better get up, he thought. Head off to the next place. Where was that? His feet would know, as they always sooner or later did.

It was quiet in the supply closet. Quiet and close and difficult to breathe. They oughta make these denim suits with air holes, not make a head janitor sweat.

Maybe they wrung 'em out, he thought. Maybe they grabbed 'em out of Missus Bleak's bathroom clothes hamper. Maybe they fueled Corundum High with his sweat.

Gerber smiled.

Them teachers ain't got nothin' on me, he thought. Them shitty students, they pass through this place like a digested meal. Gerber, he repairs the walls and linings, frees up blockages, keeps the little shits moving through until they blat out the low-slung buttock end o' things.