Slaughterhouse High

"Yep. No blood's gonna be spilled here. What the hey, they're not gonna you-know-what where they eat," said the other girl. "Well I guess, for form's sake and so they don't kill us 'n' shit for disobeying the rules, we ought to sit on the couch, under our number."

They quieted down and hugged a bunch. Among the rustle of dresses and the slaps and slurps and moans they gave out with, the deep-voiced one sometimes shushed the other and asked if she heard any screaming yet.

Pill hugged Gigi and pretend-whispered that these two were silly and a bother, and she hoped they would go back to the dance soon so she could curl up again in the stuffed chair and count the dots in the ceiling tiles.

Then a loud crack startled her. It sounded like a huge toaster popping bread.

The high-pitched one said, though not in reply to anything, "'Mjust askin'!" followed by "But you can't-!" which was cut off by a thud.

Pill hunched up tight and held her breath.

A weak no from Flense gave way to sounds of running and the rattle of a locked door. Then a louder series of no's pierced the air as she was struggled back across the room.

The hunching made Pill's shoulders hurt. She felt light and funny in her head.

She had to keep breathing. Had to trap her whimpers inside.

Through the thrashing, Pill moved her right hand to the closet knob, grasped it, afraid it would creak. Then she froze her arm there. She had been ready to shut the door. But the noise gurgled away, and Gigi warned her not to.

Putting an eye to the crack, Pill saw a glove gripping a tiny pellet. The pellet was all swirly with mist. The gloved hand thrust it between the Flense girl's lips, fingers jammed in, abruptly, in an ungentle way like her old daddy shoving a pill into their cat Puff's pried-open jaws and forcing him to swallow.

Then the glove smacked Flense's face and was gone, and Flense fell out of sight, oddly quiet as the struggle stopped. "Wait!" she said. "What did you-? Leave Pesky alone! Oh jeez, oh shit. Make it stop. Please make it stop." She sounded like she had bad tummy-ache pain, like she wanted to throw up but couldn't.

Someone fell like a sack of potatoes.

Dragging sounds outside.

Grunts of effort.

Pill was suddenly sure that the knocked-out Pesky was going to be shoved into the closet, and that the hurty man with the dark blue arms and the bloody workgloves was going to see her then and do really bad things to her.

Should she scream?

Could she get away if she darted out right now, clonked him with a chair or something, and broke down the door?

Then the shuffling sounds stopped.

The girl who'd been forced to swallow the misty pellet cried and moaned like wind in a lonely cave.

Pill could see the other one through the crack. Her skull knocked hard on the counter top. Then a shoof sounded, like some weird heavy car door closing in the distance, and the girl's face bunched up and opened wide into a scream like Pill had never heard before.

Pill started to shiver. She no longer trusted her hand on the knob, but she didn't dare move it.

"My fingers!" came the high scream.

Pill remembered her mother working at that same counter, squaring paper on a green grid and clumphing a curved blade sharply down.

Pesky's face smeared out of the crack as she tried to tear away, but again she was grabbed, to judge from the violent waver in her voice, and the noise grew really loud and close. Pill's fingers flared with pain as the crack shut and the closet door slammed and darkness struck her like a heavy fist.

Pill heard whimpering. When she realized it was her own, she made it go away. Outside, dulled to cotton by the closed door, the fierce fighting went on.

She backed up against warm wood, touching it with one hand and hugging Gigi to her chest with the other.

An angled corner, pillows, her little nest. She inched downward, the walls sliding up around her, soft comfort beneath her as beyond the black muffle the killing continued.

Go away, she prayed.

Go away, go away.

*****

At the Shite House, one side of the split-screen showed the scrubbed teens sitting beneath the number 57, the other the Home Ec teacher poised to spring open the metal panel above them.

She's closing in for the kill," murmured the announcer.

Secretary Wanker suppressed a laugh.

Prom night always fired up the President and his cabinet. The slaughter of the young fueled a year of decisions and proved far more effective a teambuilding effort than any touchy-feely retreat with teams of fake-empathetic facilitators.

To be sure, the cabinet secretaries' juices flowed free, and the naughtiness of their exposed lobes gave everyone that extra jolt.

But the real thrill lay in eavesdropping on two frightened kids thinking someone else had been chosen. And on a teacher who, for one evening of planned mayhem, dropped all pretense of caring for her snot-nosed charges.

It revived memories of their own proms even as it firmed up governmental resolve.

But tonight, thought Wanker, something new would be added to the mix.