Slaughterhouse High

Bray caught on his chest a slap of liquid, a spray against his face. And a second inundation fell from above as kids backed away.

Bray felt Winnie melt against him. "Jesus, Bray," an echo of her lost strength, "what's our guy doing?"

Above, there sounded a clattering as though a handful of drumsticks were being badly negotiated.

Then something fell, shattering: an icicle, its fragments skating across the darkened canvas, smashing hard, and skidding across the floor.

11. A Ritual Taken to Excess

Sandy leaned against Rocky's back where he fidgeted on a long bench in the boys' locker room, massaging his neck and shoulders. She tried not to breathe smelly gymsuit odor but it couldn't be avoided.

"Is it time yet?" asked Rocky.

"No again, handsome."

Her man sat hunched over, hands clasped, as though he'd been benched for a foul.

He glanced at her and smiled. "We got those two dancers over a barrel, I can feel it."

"No contest, hon. Flann and Brandy, they're a couple of clothesracks. You and me, though, we do stuff. Kids cheer your tackles and your field goals. I give them a rise with my pompons and the occasional flash of my butt."

Rocky had worn a clean white jockstrap to bed once. Now she pictured him, his killer teammates too, arrayed down the dim empty bench, big swells of dick held in before them like whips of spackle, their buttock muscles tight, the playful thwap of towels against bare bottoms.

"We'll do that throne shit, huh?"

"That's right," she said. "They'll spotlight us. They'll give us a big brassy fanfare, robes, crowns, the whole shootin' match."

"And then the newspaper!"

"Uh huh." She nodded vigorously, relieved that the lesson had finally begun to sink into Rocky's thick skull. "Tonight, big grins to the peons, flashbulb pops, royal waves and armloads of roses. Monday morning, our picture will grace the front page of the Gazette -"

"Dead corporate grunts'll've stepped aside at their Sunday afternoon picnics."

"-yes, and there you'll be, ready to take your pick of the jobs opened up by their deaths."

Rocky chuckled.

He rubbed his palms together, like she did when she smoothed hand cream on, but more briskly. "And then," he said, "we'll find a third to round us out."

"Yes. A nice man. Maybe some old guy with a good job and yummy lobes."

Sandy would stay home with the pup. Which pup she wasn't sure. But it had frizzy caramel-and-cream fur and a cute wet black nose. She could see the little yapper now. She would hire a landscaper to put in a perfect flower garden, then sit back and spend the money her husbands brought in.

"Nobody from school though," said Rocky, parroting her.

"No one."

Her sights had been raised considerably since their nomination as prom royalty. It had put them safely beyond slaughter. That release from terror had given Sandy a far wider vision of the future, up from the confined sandbox of high school to the unending stretch of beach frontage that lay before them.

"They're all such children here," she said.

"They sure are."

Bending to him, Sandy pressed her breasts against his back and kissed his thick coconut-aroma'd hair.

Gaunt gray lockers aisled off parallel into the gloom, ending at yet another wall of them. Murmurs of other couples arrayed elsewhere back near the showers floated in dim stifles of air. Ghost-voices. Soon to be memories only.

"Is it time yet?"

"Not yet. Soon."

"I swear, I'm gonna cut you a big bleeding hunk of corpse."

"I'd like that, Rocky."

Bobbing knee. "You sure it's not time yet?"

*****

The shrill bell had startled Pill. Gigi, her stuffed goat, huddled close then.

The bell was much louder than when she walked down the halls in the daytime to visit her biology teacher mommy, holding Daddy's hand.

Outside in the hallway, Pill heard heels and giggles. She had just enough time to rush into the coat closet, a nice non-squeaky door that let her leave half an inch and didn't swing open when she took her hand away. It smelled woody, but it was warm enough that cool air blew on her from the thin bright crack.

Two girls came in, noisy and excited. They were very happy to be here.

Pesky, the high-pitched chatterbox of the pair, kept squealing and jumping up and down, to judge from her leathery taps on the tile floor.

And Pill heard laughter in the calmer, lower voice of Flense. It sounded like her daddy when he was agreeing to something Mommy had said but was really patting himself on the back about how much brighter than her he was.

The squealer, the one named Pesky, skipped and danced around the room, hand-kissing stuff on the long counter and peeking into the mini-fridge. Pill caught glimpses of her: a shiny pink ribbon in shiny black hair, her creamy neck and lobe-flesh going by, the gleam of a pleased eye.

Pill was afraid one of them would fling open her closet door and she would get yelled at.

Flense called Pesky a teacher's pet. " you here cuz you kiss their big fat behinds all the time."